Class Matters

“So where ya from?”

“I’d consider myself more Eagle Rock than Highland Park,” Jayson responded, in such a way that one might describe being closer to one side of the family more than the other. When I interviewed Jayson, he was 25 years old, meaning that he was old enough to remember the “gang problem” that plagued the Eagle Rock-Highland Park area through the early to mid-1990s. Some Filipinos, especially the men I interviewed, remember this period as a time when Eagle Rock was “more ghetto”—a stark contrast to the utopic hipster, mom-and-pop’s neighborhood that most described it as today. Some said that Eagle Rock wasn’t actually ghetto, but more so just another middle class neighborhood whose young people were mesmerized by the emerging popularity of rappers like Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and Dr. Dre, who brought gangsta rap—and gangsta fashion—from the inner city all the way to the American mainstream. Regardless of how Jayson remembered it, it seemed that my usual opening interview question triggered old memories of a time when “Where ya from?” actually meant “What gang do you belong to?” Such was a common occurrence for many young Filipino men I interviewed, even if they themselves grew up in a nice house in the upper middle class side of the neighborhood.

“When you say Eagle Rock, you think of Filipinos,” Jayson explained, “You think of the Eagle Rock Plaza and all the things that you can associate with being Filipino. I lived on the border of Eagle Rock and Highland Park, but I was always in Eagle Rock. I went to school in Eagle Rock, my life is in Eagle Rock, and my friends are here too.”

To Jayson, Eagle Rock’s “Filipinoness” was typified by the neighborhood’s local mall, the Eagle Rock Plaza. At the center of this mall was a Seafood City, a popular U.S.-based Filipino grocery chain that sold everything one might need to prepare an authentic Philippine cuisine. Right outside of the grocery were small kiosks owned and operated by Filipino immigrant entrepreneurs, who vended everything from karaoke machines, to Filipino DVDs and CDs, to t-shirts donning the Philippine flag. Along the first floor of the mall were sit-down Filipino restaurants like Goldilock’s Restaurant, as well as fast food joints like Jollibee’s, the Philippines’ equivalent of McDonald’s.

“What’s so different about Highland Park?” I asked.

“The population, for sure. You associate Highland Park with more of the Latino crowd,” he said. It was interesting how Jayson qualified the “Latinoness” of Highland Park, given how he had just talked about Eagle Rock. I had expected him to point out the plethora of Mexican stores, restaurants, and businesses that lined Figueroa Boulevard—the main street linking Eagle Rock and Highland Park. But instead, Jayson instead segued into talking about crime and safety.

“Going up on the street that I grew up on, it’s a very Latino neighborhood. It’s not as well kept as say the other parts of Eagle Rock. Safety is an issue. There’s more gang activity in my area, and I’d hear gunshots every now and then when I was a kid. It’s not really in my area, per se, but I live on a hill that overlooks all of Highland Park, so all that stuff that goes on there, I can easily hear from up where I lived.”

Jayson had a different set of rules when he hung out around his Highland Park friends versus when he spent time with his friends who lived a few miles away in Eagle Rock. His said his parents were not particularly overprotective, especially in comparison with how they were with his sister, but he would have a different curfew if they knew he was hanging out in Highland Park.

“They’d always check up on me if I was at a homie’s house in Highland Park. I’d always have to be home earlier, but if I were at a friend’s place on Hill Drive, they wouldn’t set a time when I had to be home. I could always stay out longer.” Hill Drive was what some folks described as the “Beverly Hills” part of Eagle Rock. Also known as the place “where all the white folks and rich Filipinos live.”

Jayson said that neither he nor his parents had ever seen any crimes happen firsthand in Highland Park, even if he, on occasion, had heard some raucous while growing up on a hill adjacent to that neighborhood. I wondered what crystallized this association between crime and Highland Park, beyond the “one or two times” Jayson had heard gunshots growing up.

“The news,” Jayson was quick to answer. “I hate to say it, but it’s when my parents see the news. When they think of crime, they think of the Latino population. They’re old fashioned. They see bald heads, and they think something is up. They overgeneralize to the larger population in the neighborhood, which is mostly Latino. Technically, I should have gone to high school at Franklin right around the corner from us. But they were overprotective, so they sent me away to private school all the way near downtown LA.”

The irony was that Eagle Rock was not immune to gang violence anymore than Highland Park was. Many of the Filipino men, especially the one’s who attended the local high school, remembered gangs—both Filipino and Latino ones—as part of the scenery loitering around Eagle Rock High School. In fact, the only times that Jayson and other Filipinos reported having actual gang encounters was with other Filipinos, never Latino gang members. The main difference was that the Filipino gang members that respondents encountered never seemed newsworthy enough to make the mainstream media, which conveniently framed gang violence as a social problem lurking only in Latino and black communities.