Vincent Chabany-Douarre

My PhD dissertation grapples with the evolution of racism and whiteness in American cities. By the postwar, American racism took on far subtler and coded forms. Using the case study of Los Angeles, I argue that midcentury whiteness, within the context of the Cold War, suburban sprawl, and a new era of U.S. global ascendancy, fixated on its perceived social embattlement, mandating a frantic quest to acquire and hoard resources. I argue that while this stigmatized and pauperized Black Americans, white Americans somewhat sincerely believed their actions were driven only by a rational desire to make a better city and society. Overall, the process of making whiteness did as much to enshrine American racism as it did to dissimulate it, casting American society as essentially fair, white American liberals, as heroes, and racism, as regrettable and incidental, rather than systemic and foundational.

Unlike established scholarship, which mostly focuses on moments when white Americans clashed with Black Americans, such as segregation or busing, I argue the entitlement and victimhood of midcentury whiteness was elaborated through in-group rituals and disputes which affirmed that society should be ordered by property owning white Americans, mostly by opposing whiteness to the state. Elaborating a theory I term civic whiteness, I thus argue midcentury whiteness was profoundly self-obsessed, crafted in the everyday life of ordinary white Americans, and prone to abstract rather than vilify other races, securing its color-blind patina. The sites where civic whiteness was elaborated, in protests for suburban industrial development, in beauty pageants, in trash collection and in many more seemingly innocuous moments, structure this dissertation.

Conducting a sociological study of whiteness in 1950s Los Angeles, I thus argue for a renewed framework of urban studies, namely questioning the urban/suburban divide and its political significance, interrogating the methodology of whiteness studies and suburban studies as potentially over-reliant on readings of culture and media, insisting on material readings of race and gender, rather than the discursive ones which have become prevalent in the field, correcting tenacious assumptions about the 1950s as an era of white suburban victimhood, and urging for more involved study of the role of underexamined historical agents, such as women and local businesses.

Keywords: urbanism, Los Angeles, midcentury, whiteness, suburban history, social history, race, gender.

My PhD dissertation grapples with the evolution of racism and whiteness in American cities. By the postwar, American racism took on far subtler and coded forms. Using the case study of Los Angeles, I argue that midcentury whiteness, within the context of the Cold War, suburban sprawl, and a new era of U.S. global ascendancy, fixated on its perceived social embattlement, mandating a frantic quest to acquire and hoard resources. I argue that while this stigmatized and pauperized Black Americans, white Americans somewhat sincerely believed their actions were driven only by a rational desire to make a better city and society. Overall, the process of making whiteness did as much to enshrine American racism as it did to dissimulate it, casting American society as essentially fair, white American liberals, as heroes, and racism, as regrettable and incidental, rather than systemic and foundational.

Unlike established scholarship, which mostly focuses on moments when white Americans clashed with Black Americans, such as segregation or busing, I argue the entitlement and victimhood of midcentury whiteness was elaborated through in-group rituals and disputes which affirmed that society should be ordered by property owning white Americans, mostly by opposing whiteness to the state. Elaborating a theory I term civic whiteness, I thus argue midcentury whiteness was profoundly self-obsessed, crafted in the everyday life of ordinary white Americans, and prone to abstract rather than vilify other races, securing its color-blind patina. The sites where civic whiteness was elaborated, in protests for suburban industrial development, in beauty pageants, in trash collection and in many more seemingly innocuous moments, structure this dissertation.

Conducting a sociological study of whiteness in 1950s Los Angeles, I thus argue for a renewed framework of urban studies, namely questioning the urban/suburban divide and its political significance, interrogating the methodology of whiteness studies and suburban studies as potentially over-reliant on readings of culture and media, insisting on material readings of race and gender, rather than the discursive ones which have become prevalent in the field, correcting tenacious assumptions about the 1950s as an era of white suburban victimhood, and urging for more involved study of the role of underexamined historical agents, such as women and local businesses.