Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 7

                                                                 Van Nuys to Burbank

     Race is a floating signifier as Stuart Hall points out. If race is a story that people tell each other then there is bound to be some conflict. Sometimes the boundaries of one race's story is not distinguishable from the others. Since race is historical it is hard to determine to which race did the story belong to especially if it is a some symbol from the BC. Some races battle over those cultural symbols or get into arguments when the meaning behind them is not clear. In the L.A. times article "Program Seeks to Reduce Latino-Armenian Tensions at School" by HILARY E. MacGREGOR , the racial tension is being analyzed in Grant High school.

      I did my second blog post on Los Angeles Valley College which is next to Grant High school. The article points out a couple of reasons which lead to a conflict that is still not solved( the article was published in 2000).

"One district official speculated that tension between the Latino and Armenian students may have originated from disputes over relief efforts in the mid-1980s after earthquakes in Mexico and Armenia. At the time, students from each ethnic group claimed that the other received more empathy and relief". I don't know how true that is but I know that now it is not one of the issues that leads to fights between the students.

       I think the fights break out when one of the racial groups points out the other's painful historical floating signifier. In the article it points out  the issues  addressed to help bring peace which are also the weaknesses of each race in my opinion. "students talk about the early decades of this century, when 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which is now Turkey, were killed. The Turkish government denies that the Armenian genocide ever happened.Then students talk of the history of immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America." If the weakness is well known it is easy to start a fight by stating a particular historical fact in an offensive way.People will go to great extents to keep their cultural symbols, stories,identity. Sometimes the conflict is unavoidable but most of the time there is a way to sidestep it.

            Most Armenian parents want to avoid the fights and send their kids to Burbank High School where the Armenian students "can stay with their own group" and not get into conflict with other ethnic groups. It is not only about the conflict but the need to protect the cultural values which is a  rather hard to do in the " the melting pot" known as Los Angeles.   Burbank is a really safe city. It is worth driving the kids every school day to Burbank because the parents don't have to worry about the kids accidentally getting in the middle of a fight. It is also possible to take a bus there. I took the 154 bus on Thursday at around 1:04pm from Van Nuys( Oxnard Strret). It took me about 50 minutes to get to the First Street bus stop next to the mall. The inside of the bus was cleaner and safer then I imagined it would be. The people were mostly middle aged , some seniors, some college kids( I saw them board from the Fulton stop next to LAVC), a young mother with a cute kid with a bow on her head. The  Burbank High School is a walking distance away from the Burbank Town Center( mall) on Magnolia  Boulevard.  The weather was nice so it was a quite enjoyable walk from the mall to the BHS and along the N. 3rd street and the N San Fernando Boulevard. It is always clean, well lit and full of people, not only because of the mall and the restaurants, but also because of the  three AMC theaters  located a safe walking distance from each other.