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On planning, place, and race: how trauma imaginaries reveal communal trauma and impact collective well-being

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On planning, place, and race: how trauma imaginaries reveal communal trauma and impact collective well-being

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ON PLANNING, PLACE, AND RACE:

HOW TRAUMA IMAGINARIES REVEAL COMMUNAL TRAUMA AND IMPACT
COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING

By

Jocelyn Poe

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT)

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Jocelyn Poe

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It seemed crazy to abandoned planning practice and move across the country to
attend the University of Southern California. I only applied because they waived the
application fee. I only visited because they were willing to reimburse me for travel. However,
when I first met with Professor David Sloane on that visit, he sparked in me the desire to be
a thought leader, and he entertained all of my thoughts and theories. And for the last five
years he has been instrumental in helping me cultivate thoughts, theories, and research that
was important to me.
When I first arrived at USC, Connie Rogers told me to stay in the David-Lisa-
LaVonna world, and that is primarily what I did. Each of them carved out a space for me at
Price: a space where a could be myself and explore my own intellectual curiosities. This was
a privilege extended to me by the work of these brilliant Professors. I appreciate Professor
LaVonna Lewis’ spiritual and social support, as she connected me with her community in
South Los Angeles and was instrumental in making my snowball sample a success.
Professor Lisa Schweitzer is one of the most generous people I know. Not only did
she provide monetary support, but she also introduced to Belonging at a critical time in the
program. I felt so out of place at USC and so displaced and unstable, trying to navigate USC.
I wanted to leave, and I had just brought a one-way ticket home. I ran into to Lisa in the
halls of RGL, and she told me she had something for me. It was a stack of bell hooks books
wrapped in a beautiful ribbon. I devoured each of them and felt a kinship as bell hooks
described her transition from the south to graduate school as a black woman. I read myself
into her story and found the courage to get a return flight.
I am also grateful to my additional Committee members who challenged me to think
critically and holistically. I met Professor Lisa Bates, when she gave a lecture at USC on
Black Spatial Imaginaries along with Professor Sharita Towne. I was familiar with her work
and inspired by the way they were thinking about Black spatial production. Lisa Bates

iii
provided a space for me to explore artmaking as ways of knowing and helped me cultivate
placed biographies as a Black way of knowing. I appreciate our conversations and her efforts
to promote me as her PhD student.
Encouraged by one of my PhD student colleagues, I enrolled in Professor Benjamin
Carrington’s Critical Theories in Race and Culture Course. I did not know what I was getting
myself into; we were reading a book (sometimes two) a week. This course not only
challenged the ways I was thinking about race, but it also provided a global understanding of
racialized production. Ben taught me how to think more critically and write more clearly,
challenging my analysis and helping me to become a better thought leader.
There is a host of friends who helped me find a home in Los Angeles. Without them
my time would be miserable, and my research would be lacking. Whether it was making
sure I was eating, sleeping, and taking care of myself, or getting me out of the house, they
were there for me. I especially want to thank Liane Hypolite, who was intentional about
being my friend and introduced me to Sista PhD, which was critical in teaching me how to
work. I appreciate my friendships with Thai Le, Ben Toney, and Sean Angst. I express much
gratitude to LaWanda Lawson and Jameika Manrage, who help me get settle in in Los
Angeles, and the Manrage family who helped me transition during Covid-19. They feed me,
walked me to my care, babysat my care, helped me move, and made me have fun. Racquel
Nunley was my first friend in L.A., even though we met in Chicago. I am overwhelmed by
the love she has shown me, as she invited me into her family, and they quickly became my
family. They were also instrumental in helping with the snowball sample, as was Amber
Tolan. Amber and I became fast friends, and I am so grateful for her. She has been my
constant safe place to process, to grieve, to think and to get-away when I needed a break.
Finally, I would like to thank the members of Abundant Grace Ministries who supported me
in any way I needed in order for me to stay on course and finish this degree.
This work would not be possible with the Village that raised me and the city that
supported. I am eternally grateful for every thought, encouragement, prayer, resource,
support given to me. I am fortunate to have a host of aunts, uncles, cousins, god-families,

iv
friends, and mentors, who urged me on. I especially want to thank Debra Poe, who is my
biggest cheerleader and sacrificially supported me throughout my years in graduate school.
Erica Cornelius and her family for providing a space for me to process, to vent, to think, and
to share. I also want to thank Adron and Doretha Baily, who hosted a writing retreat, just
when I was about to give up, and Redina Holtzclaw, who hosted me during my field work. I
appreciate my godparents, Charles and Claudette Williams, Minnie Riley, Albert and Diane
Jones, and Melvin and Velma Grant for their support.
I appreciate all of my mentors: Dr. Latoya Hart, Dr. Charles Williams, Jr., Dr.
Roderick Jackson, Dr. Deana Rhodeside, Dr. Zinzi Bailey, and Shemeeka Ebony. I especially
want to thank Dr. Pamela Felder who served as a reader for my dissertation. I asked a lot of
questions, took up a lot of time, and sent a lot of texts and emails. They were patience,
helpful and thoughtful, always wanting the best for me. I am also grateful for the Robert
Woods Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars program, which is responsible
for introducing to Zinzi Bailey and Shemeeka Ebony. The funding and resources provided
gave me the freedom to choose where and how I worked. The courses enriched my research
as it gave me a foundation in public health. The interdisciplinary comradery gave me an
opportunity to have conversations and friendships that would otherwise never exist. I am
grateful to me named a scholar in this program.
Finally, I am grateful for Roy and Anne Decker and the Duvall Decker team for giving
me an opportunity to lead planning processes, the West Jackson community for educating
me on how to be a good planner, and the participating partners from South LA for sharing
their lives with me. This work is in turn respectfully dedicated to you as a strive to fight with
you to achieve the healing and resources stolen from you.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. ii

List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................... vi

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. viii

Introduction: Mississippi Goddam ................................................................................................... 1
Rerouting: The Road to Trauma Theory ................................................................ 4
Study Design ............................................................................................................ 11
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 12

Chapter 1: Theorizing Communal Trauma: Examining the Relationship between Race,
Spatial Imaginaries, and Planning in the U.S. South .............................................. 14
Motivations and Methods ...................................................................................... 18
Toward a Theory of Communal Trauma ............................................................. 30
Implications for the Planning Field ...................................................................... 35
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 40

Chapter 2: To Live And Die in (South Central) L.A.: Understanding Trauma Imaginaries
and Communal Trauma Manifest in Los Angeles ................................................... 42
Site Context .............................................................................................................. 44
Methods .................................................................................................................... 47
Placed Biographies .................................................................................................. 50
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 91

Chapter 3: “Loaded Bases, That’s My Motivation”: How Trauma Imaginaries Impact the
Crenshaw/Lax Rail Line ............................................................................................ 92
Making Of ‘Tha Shaw’ ............................................................................................ 94
Methods .................................................................................................................... 97
Communal Trauma & the Crenshaw/Lax Line Case ......................................... 99
Implications for Planners: Politics of Care ......................................................... 118
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 123

Conclusion: Towards a Reparative Praxis .................................................................................. 124
Towards a Reparative Praxis ............................................................................... 126

References ....................................................................................................................................... 133

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: West Jackson Public Meeting ........................................................................................... 3
Figure 2: Communal Trauma Diagram ........................................................................................... 5
Figure 3: West Jackson Planning Process Images ...................................................................... 16
Figure 4: West Jackson Public Meeting ........................................................................................ 17
Figure 5: Analysis Diagram ............................................................................................................ 19
Figure 6: Map of South Central Los Angeles ................................................................................ 47
Figure 7: Diagram of Placed Biographies Process ....................................................................... 48
Figure 8: Placed Biographies Process with Participant Richard Burns .................................... 49
Figure 9: Diagram of Participating Partners by Age and Sex .................................................... 50
Figure 11: LaRae Cantley ................................................................................................................ 52
Figure 12: Richard Burns ................................................................................................................ 52
Figure 13: Charles Delong .............................................................................................................. 53
Figure 14: Martina Giles ................................................................................................................. 53
Figure 15: David Turner ................................................................................................................. 53
Figure 16: Richard Burn’s Placed Biographies Map ................................................................... 55
Figure 17: LaRae Cantley’s Placed Biography Map .................................................................... 57
Figure 18: Charles Delong at the Place he was Shot ................................................................... 70
Figure 19: David Turner’s Place Biography Map ........................................................................ 77
Figure 20: Mr. Ron’s Art of Barbary .............................................................................................. 78
Figure 21: The Site of Ujima Village .............................................................................................. 82
Figure 22: Diagram of Dataset ....................................................................................................... 98
Figure 23: Diagram of Analysis Process ....................................................................................... 98
Figure 24: Metro’s Map of the Crenshaw Line .......................................................................... 100
Figure 25: Construction of I-10 Freeway ................................................................................... 103
Figure 26: Construction of Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line .............................................................. 106

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Figure 27: Tweet from Councilmember Harris-Dawson picturing Nipsey Hussle and youth
at a Destination Crenshaw Meeting............................................................................................. 111
Figure 28: Rendering of Crenshaw Metro Stop and Development Released by Metro ....... 113
Figure 29: Rendering of Proposed Destination Crenshaw Wall Released by Destination
Crenshaw ......................................................................................................................................... 115
Figure 30: Proposed Design for Sankofa Park Released by Destination Crenshaw ............. 116

viii
ABSTRACT

While planning theory has long acknowledged the profession's role in producing
racialized spatial realities, few have explored how place-based trauma shapes places, spatial
processes, and lived experiences. To fill this gap, I develop communal trauma as an
analytical planning concept by examining trauma imaginaries through a three-part research
approach. First, I employ my experience as a practicing planner working primarily in Black
communities in Mississippi, where I observed a psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon
happening in a place. Through autoethnography methods, I analyze this phenomenon as
trauma imaginaries, the intersection of spatial imaginaries and communal trauma. Then,
based on these findings and informed by an interdisciplinary survey of the literature, I
conceptualize communal trauma theory.
Second, I assess the validity of this theory by exploring these concepts in South
Central Los Angeles (SCLA), a place radically different from Mississippi. In this phase, I
cultivate a method for exploring spatial consciousness and spatial imaginaries. These placed
biographies methodology involves an intensive place-based journaling process, including a
cognitive mapping process and photographic field interviews in places meaningful to
participants. In applying a transdisciplinary methodological approach, I gain a rich data set
that reveals new insight into the relationship between place, race, and planning.
Third, I ask how trauma imaginaries impact planning processes in SCLA? Situating
this question in the case of Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line, I use mixed qualitative methods to
analyze how trauma imaginaries impact planning and development processes and
community health. This work seeks to help planners better understand how racialized
communities hurt and equip planners to redress this hurt through reparative praxis. I argue
that planners cannot achieve their goals of maximizing communities' health, safety, and
economic well-being without addressing communal trauma.

1
INTRODUCTION: MISSISSIPPI GODDAM

“All I want is equality/

For my sister my brother
my people and me/

Yes you lied to me
all these years/

You told me to wash
and clean my ears/

And talk real fine just
like a lady/

And you'd stop calling
me Sister Sadie/

Oh but this whole
country is full of lies/

You're all gonna die
and die like flies/

I don't trust you anymore/

You keep on saying "Go slow!"

-Nina Simone,
“Mississippi Goddam”

Chapter Cover images have been produced through an
artmaking analysis produced by placed biographies.

2
It was the eve of my last day, and I could not stop staring at the sunset over the
cotton fields. Staring would not have been a problem if I were not driving home from my last
public meeting in Moorhead, Mississippi (MS). Something about driving through the
Mississippi Delta put me in a reflective mood. Maybe I was being introspective because my
tenure as a practicing planner in MS was ending in some capacity. Perhaps it was the lyrics
to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” playing on my car stereo (because if you are driving
through the Delta, you have to be listening to something soulful). But I had been periodically
staring at the sunset and thinking about all the interactions I had experienced over the years
working in predominantly Black communities across MS.
While driving, I thought about the moment I learned I would be working in West
Jackson. I was a young, bright-eyed planner with such hopes to make a difference in the city
I called home. I thought about my first public meeting. Community elders quickly checked
my naivety, and my hopes were dashed as the community educated me about the violent
histories of planning. I gained a particular awareness that was not taught in planning school.
I reflected on the intense interactions with community members during the planning
processes. Over time, I learned that this tension was not personal; I had good relationships
with people outside the planning process. Yet, a psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon was
profoundly rooted in place and tied to collective memories of oppression. This phenomenon
prevented communities from achieving collective well-being.
As I listened to the lyrics of “Mississippi Goddam” on my drive, I began to think
about changes since Nina Simone penned the song. As she belts out, “Lord have mercy on
this land of mine,” I reflected on the pattern of visceral reactions to placed-based questions
that led to seemingly unrelated connections. Her lyrics, “I don’t belong here, I don’t belong
there,” made me think about how in these conversations, (1) the past was ever-present, (2)
place and identity were intrinsically linked, and (3) changes in place, whether development
or abandonment, were interpreted as threats to Black collective well-being. I wondered what
song Nina would write about this experience. What would she write if she witnessed such
visceral reactions, even though many of these communities had Black political power,

3
economic resources, and deep social networks? How would she feel if she knew that her
lyrics were still relevant as the Black people of Mississippi even now cry out, “Just give me
my equality?”
But not just Black Mississippians were crying out. Based on my conversations with
planning colleagues, I realized this phenomenon is not unique to Mississippi but a
consequence of national racialized histories. On the eve of my last day, I was just beginning
to make meaning of the last seven years of practice. I began to make sense of the
conversations, the visceral relations, the strange comparisons, and puzzling language
choices. This work is a continuation of this meaning-making process as I ask: What is this
psycho- socio-cultural phenomenon I experience in practice?

Figure 1: West Jackson Public Meeting

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REROUTING: THE ROAD TO TRAUMA THEORY
Since the inception of the United States, patterns of disinvestment, displacement,
removal, and erasure, enabled by racialized practices and policies, have traumatized Black
spaces and places (Soja, 2013; Pulido, 2008; Thomas, 1998; Sandercock, 2004; Huxley,
2010; Whittemore, 2017; Rothstein, 2017; Hannah-Jones, 2021). As a professional practice
and field of study, planning plays a central role in facilitating these spatial processes. As a
tool of the modern nation-state, planning has simultaneously sought to create safe and
healthy places of whiteness (Sloane, 2006; Sandercock, 1998; Feinstein and Defillis, 2015)
while inflicting harm, wrongs, and destruction in other places (Thomas, 1998; Lichter et al.,
2012; Lipsitz 2011; Redford, 2017). Despite advances in civil rights legislation, equitable
access, and political representation, Black communities still struggle to achieve equal access
to resources, infrastructure, well-being, and wealth (Lipsitz, 2011; Sharpio, 2004; Coates,
2015).
Planning has long acknowledged the profession’s role in producing racialized spatial
realities, and many have theorized strategies to address these injustices (Sandercock, 1998;
Thomas, 1998a; Yiftachel, 1998). I found Schweitzer’s reinterpretation of Sandercock’s
(2004) ‘therapeutic planning’ most applicable to my experience. A “therapeutic planning”
imagination is the means by which public institutions can undergo social learning processes
in ways that elevate the position of historically oppressed voices and bodies. Schweitzer
(2016) situates Sandercock’s “therapeutic imagination” in political theory to examine the
ethics governing the role of public institution planners in social learning and healing. She
argues that Sandercock’s “therapeutic imagination” creates an opportunity for planners to
heal relationships in communities with a collective memory of harm and wrongs committed
against them. Healing processes can incite a social and institutional transformation towards
inclusivity. Identifying injury is only one phase in restoring relationships, but planners also
possess an ethical obligation to “remedy what harm they can as well as make a credible
commitment to reform” (Schweitzer, 2016, p. 131).

5
Schweitzer’s (2016) discussion of harm and wrong is beneficial in determining how a
public actor's decision impact communities. I interpret the difference between the two as a
matter of intent. Harm happens in various degrees when planned, or unplanned change
occurs. However, a wrong carries a criminal intent and “falls outside the norms and values
of the political community" (Schweitzer, 2016, p. 132). That is, people willfully choose to
inflict harm. As I applied these concepts of harm and wrong to my experience and
contextualized them in theories and histories of race and culture, trauma emerged as a
critical theme. Despite being defined, redefined, and appropriated by almost every discipline,
trauma always involves a rupture affecting how people conceive, render, and experience
time, self, and the world (Caruth, 1993, p. 3). These characteristics occurred in my
experiences as the past is ever-present (rupture of time), place and identity were intrinsically
linked (rupture of self), and changes in place, whether development or abandonment, were
interpreted as threats to Black collective well-being (rupture of the world). Thus, to
understand the phenomenon I experience in practice, I frame racialized harms and wrongs
as communal trauma and identify the psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon I experienced as
trauma imaginaries, the intersection of communal trauma and spatial imaginaries.

Figure 2: Communal Trauma Diagram

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Communal Trauma
Trauma theory has evolved dramatically since its first use as a medical term that
originated from the Greek word meaning “to wound.” As people integrated the word into
everyday conversations, the Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines developed a lay
trauma theory, defining trauma as a naturally occurring event that disturbs an individual’s
or collective’s well-being (Alexander 2012, p. 14). In recent years, cultural sociologists have
advanced the concept of trauma by introducing cultural trauma, which differs from
collective in that it involves shared identity rather than just shared experience. Alexander
(2012) defines cultural trauma as a process initiated by a “horrendous” event, whether real
or imagined, that is believed to have significantly affected a cultural membership, forever
embedded in their memory and permanently changing their identity (Alexander, 2012;
Smesler, 2004).
While my experiences incorporated all of these layers of trauma, these existing
definitions were inadequate to define the psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon happening in
place. In this work, I define communal trauma as harms and wrongs committed against a
targeted racialized group so horrendous that it triggers trauma conditions that disrupt
conceptions of time and place, destroy relationships between place and identity, and
threaten collective well-being through spatial processes (Eyerman, 2001; McKittrick, 2011;
Alexander, 2012; Caruth, 1996).
Like cultural trauma (Eyerman, 2001), communal trauma is mediated through a
conversational, cultural, and reflective process in which the community ascribes a traumatic
meaning to an event that collectively disrupts time, self, and place. This traumatic meaning
becomes implanted into a collective memory and passed down through generations. The
involvement of collective memory and the transmission of that memory gives communal
trauma a reflective characteristic, linking the “past to the present through representation and
imagination” (Eyerman, 2001, p. 3). As a cultural process, communal trauma is represented
in cultural products through this meaning-making process.

7
The visceral reactions I experienced were trauma reactions, uncovering a traumatic
condition brought forth by violent planning histories. As residents sought to make meaning
through shared reflective conversations, they articulated a communal trauma embedded in
the lands they inhabit. Traumatic histories of oppression have been left mostly unmediated
and consequently have implications for ongoing planning and development processes. Thus,
I embark upon building a communal trauma theory as a means to identify the psycho-socio-
cultural implications of planning decisions in racialized communities. However, applying
trauma to this work is risky, as it may infer that some racialized people groups are inherently
traumatized, implying that the idea advances racist ideology (Kendi, 2016). While I
understand this risk, I use trauma theory not to retraumatize; instead, I aim to highlight that
the harms and wrongs committed against racialized groups have a tremendous impact,
despite the group’s humanity, agency, and resilience. I use communal trauma to focus on a
collective experience of racialized encounters, struggles, and resistance. In doing so, I
recognize trauma imaginaries as a communal agency responding to and resisting oppressive
spatial practices.
Spatial Imaginaries
Spatial imaginaries emerged in academic literature when David Harvey (2005)
applied the idea of the sociological imagination to geography, arguing that place is just as
vital as biography and history in connecting individuals to public issues. By place, I mean
the material product of the social and cultural meaning ascribed (discursively) to a
geographical location through human interaction (Massy, 1995; Hall, 2017; Relph, 1992),
the intermingling of life and environment (Fullilove, 2011), and the imagined and material
boundary that dictates the belonging or not of our identity (Hall, 1995). Space is the
material, social, and cultural landscapes where interactions, activities, and interpretations
happen in and between places (Lefebvre, 1991).

8
If the sociological imagination enables us to know “the social and historical meaning
of the individual in society, and in the period in which he has his quality and his being”
(Mills, 2001), then, Harvey (2005) argues, this knowledge requires a spatial consciousness.
Spatial consciousness allows people to understand the centrality of space and place in their
biographies and how space and place influence all interactions and transactions people
experience (Harvey, 2005). To the extent spatial consciousness is shared, spatial
imaginaries are produced.
While there are many varying definitions, conceptualizations, and languages
describing spatial imaginaries, I define spatial imaginaries as performative discourses that
construct, influence, and produce space and place and the collective understandings of place
and spatial practices (Davoudi et al., 2018; Watkins, 2015). A performative discourse
“materializes the phenomena it names, regulates, and constrains” (Butler, 2011). Spatial
imaginaries represent a place in ways that produce knowledge and construct meaning (Hall
2017, p. 86). That is, spatial imaginaries simultaneously materialized space and place while
also being shaped and reproduced by space and place. Thus, spatial imaginaries are not
merely representations of space, but instead, they produce place through performative
discourses (Watkins, 2015; Gregory, 2004; Greyson & Rose, 2000).
In this work, I emphasize three major characteristics of spatial imaginaries. First, a
central component of spatial imaginaries is that they are shared by a large group of people
(Davoudi et al., 2018). While the Black communities I worked in were diverse with many
positionalities and experiences, people communicated a common set of stories, memories,
and associations of place. While not every narrative was widely held, similarities emerged
from various discourses, indicating collective ideas of space and place.
Second, spatial imaginaries are deeply held (Davoudi et al., 2018). Distinct from
folklore, spatial imaginaries have the power to call place into being and give a place meaning
and identity (Healey, 2006). The collective stories, memories, and associations are held as
community truths, influencing spatial practices. For example, while working in a small town
in the Delta, I noticed that people still referred to the town’s geography as “the White side of

9
town” and “the Black side of town,” even though Black people made up nearly 95% of the
city’s population. Residents performed this deeply held imaginary by refusing to use the
library in the “White part of town” because it was the White library, even though the Black
library was closed years ago, and Black people lived in the “White part of town.” In this way,
imaginaries called into being a spatial restriction imposed by a white power structure so
powerful that it outlived the presence of white people in the town.
This example leads to the third major characteristic of spatial imaginaries. By nature,
spatial imaginaries reveal positions and networks of power; therefore, we must acknowledge
who gets to enable, legitimize, and materialize spatial imaginaries (Watkins, 2015; Said,
2000). Spatial imaginaries are unmistakably linked to ‘othering,’ the process of producing a
hierarchy of difference by promoting one group as the usual and suitable standard and
ranking other groups by degrees of inferiority (Sharp, 2009). Constructing spatial
imaginaries involves demarcating boundaries that materialize concepts of what is inside and
what is outside, what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, and what is ours and what is theirs
(Watkins, 2015, p. 511).
I apply spatial imaginaries to this study because it provides a language and concept
that explains how people conceive, perceive, and produce place. In essence, spatial
imaginaries offer an understanding of the lived experience of place. Davoudi et al. (2018)
capture this essence, expressing spatial imaginaries as “collective understanding of socio-
spatial relations that are performed by, given sense to, make it possible and change collective
socio-spatial practices” (p. 101).
Trauma Imaginaries
Spatial imaginaries influenced, constructed, or shaped by communal trauma yield
trauma imaginaries. If communal trauma is the subject, then spatial imaginaries are a
mechanism by which communal trauma can be identified, analyzed, and interpreted.
Trauma imaginaries are performative discourses that integrate collective memories of
racialized trauma with the processes by which people conceive, perceive, and produce place

10
and spatial practices. Thus, trauma imaginaries exist at the intersection of communal
trauma and spatial imaginaries and provide a conceptual framework to understand how
places hold communal trauma.
Like spatial imaginaries and communal trauma, trauma imaginaries are deeply and
widely held and expressed through cultural artifacts, such as text, film, art, etc. (Eyerman,
2001; Davoudi et al., 2018). As deeply held representations of knowledge, both involve
creating and maintaining collective memory, narrated, re-narrated, and passed down
through generations. The concept of collective memory derives from Durkheim’s collective
consciousness to connect collective identity with “how societies remember” (Connerton,
1989). Collective memories are “recollections of a shared past” retained and transmitted by
the members of a group (Schuman and Scott, 1989, pp. 361-62). They involve combined
discourses of our sexual, racial, historical, regional, ethnic, cultural, national, and familial
selves (Singh et al., 1994). In this sense, collective link spatial imaginaries to communal
trauma as it is in memory that “the past becomes present through the embodied reactions of
individuals as they carry out their daily lives” (Eyerman, 2001, p. 5).
Trauma imaginaries make meaning through conversational and iterative processes.
Spatial imaginaries are the mechanism by which we collectively make meaning of land and
sea, how we create space and place, and all the context accompanying them (Massey, 2005,
p. 118). Communal trauma is the process by which a collective identity makes meaning,
through public discourse, of a horrendous event that disrupts aspects of collective being
(Alexander, 2012; Smesler, 2012; Eyerman, 2013; Till, 2012). When these two concepts
intersect, they produce spatialized meanings intrinsically intertwined with racialized
production. Razack (2018) argues that race becomes space through articulating racial
hierarchies in space and place. The concept of trauma imaginaries is relevant to planning
because past planning failures are not merely incidents of the past but are absorbed into
cycles of communal trauma expressed through contemporary spatial imaginaries.

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STUDY DESIGN
Because this work developed out of my professional and personal routes, my
positionality is central to this research design. As a practitioner, my lived experience as a
Black woman who has lived in traumatized communities became a valuable asset in my
work. As an academician, I feel pressure to disconnect from my lived experience to achieve
some type of objectivity in a more traditional approach that “fits” into acceptable social
science methods. However, my research questions organically emerge from my journey
within and from Jackson, MS, to South Los Angeles, CA. Thus, I chose to resist academic
inclinations by fully acknowledging my positionality and centering my experience as
valuable knowledge.
Therefore, I lean on methodological principles that focus on Black ways of knowing
(Isoke, 2018). While I acknowledge and hope that this theory of communal trauma applies
to many communities of color that have been oppressed by whiteness, my lived experience is
one of Blackness. Thus, I focus on Black people living in Black communities.
As I seek to understand and conceptualize communal trauma in Black places, I
present a three-part study that conceptualizes the psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon I
experienced in place as trauma imaginaries and built a theory of communal trauma. To do
so, I ask:
1. What are trauma imaginaries?
2. Do they exist in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA)?
3. If trauma imaginaries exist in SCLA, do they impact present-day planning &
development processes?

I answer the first question in Chapter 1, as I conceptualize trauma imaginaries based
on my experience as the senior planner of the West Jackson Master Planning Process.
Informed by various literature (including Black Geographies, Cultural Studies, Social
Psychology, and Cultural Sociology), I use autoethnographic data to conceptualize
communal trauma as a place-based theory that can help planners understand how racialized
communities hurt and address it. I, first, analyze autoethnographic data as trauma
imaginaries, the intersection of spatial imaginaries and communal trauma. From this

12
analysis, I construct communal trauma as harm and wrong committed against targeted
racialized groups so horrendous that it induces a traumatic condition. Finally, I discuss the
implications for the field of planning. I argue that identifying trauma imaginaries as an
indicator of communal trauma can help planners develop trauma remediation approaches
that advance ethics and justice in the field.
In chapter 2, I ask, do trauma imaginaries in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA)? In
doing so, I am to test the validity of this theory and concept in a place radically different
from Jackson, MS. To analyze trauma imaginaries in SCLA, I engage spatial consciousness.
Spatial consciousness allows people to understand the centrality of space and place in their
biographies (Harvey, 2005). I cultivate a Placed Biographies to explore spatial
consciousness— a method for traversing the intricate relationship between time, place, and
being. Because spatial imaginaries are the collective consciousness of a group (Davoudi et
al., 2018), I cross-reference this spatial consciousness work with a discursive and content
analysis of spatial imaginaries present in SCLA’s literature and news media. I found that
trauma imaginaries exist in SCLA as resistance, survival, activism, and resilience.
In Chapter 3, I address the final question: do trauma imaginaries impact planning
and development processes? Through a case analysis of the Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line, a
mass transit project impacting the last standing culturally Black community of Los Angeles,
I examine the presence of trauma imaginaries in the planning processes. I embark on mixed
qualitative methods, including participant observation, interviews, and archival research to
identify trauma imaginaries. I found that trauma imaginaries impact planning and
development as they shape space and influence outcomes.
CONCLUSION
In this study, I offer trauma imaginaries as a conceptual framework to identify a real,
observable phenomenon that impacts present-day planning processes. I argue that planners
have an ethical obligation to address communal trauma in ways that bring healing to
communities where trauma imaginaries persist. Only when this healing process occurs can

13
planning achieve its goal “to maximize the health, wealth, and well-being of all people”
(American Planning Association, n.d.). I hope to contribute to principles and practices that
build healthier communities by acknowledging the trauma held in places. Despite advancing
environmental, political, economic, and physical resources, communities cannot achieve a
culture of health without dealing with communal trauma through reparative praxis.

14
CHAPTER 1: THEORIZING COMMUNAL TRAUMA:
EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RACE, SPATIAL
IMAGINARIES, AND PLANNING IN THE U.S. SOUTH

This chapter was published in Planning Theory in 2021.

15
As the small community center fills with residents, elected officials, and other
community leaders, I grow nervous yet excited at the idea that I would be “making a
difference” in my community. I had just completed graduate school and returned to my
hometown, Jackson, MS, to work as a professional planner for a private firm. It’s my first
public meeting in this new role, and I am eager to practice all the communicative, equity,
and advocacy planning techniques for citizen participation learned in graduate school.
After Roy, a principal, and planner at the firm, introduces the project, I attempt to engage
the audience in a fruitful discussion about improving the neighborhood. But I’m met with
silence. As I survey the crowd, I see blank faces, troubled faces, and even angry faces. I
grow increasingly nervous. Finally, an elderly Black woman speaks, “I am happy to see a
young woman doing something like this.” She points to me, “This is my first time seeing a
young, Black woman talking about planning, and I’m encouraged, but, and I don’t mean no
harm by you, but how is this gonna be different?” I stand awkwardly in silence and nod to
indicate I am listening. She continues, “We have been planned and planned, and nothing has
happened. Nothing ever happens on this side of town. While ya’ll [consult- ants, non-profits,
city officials] make thousands of dollars, we still struggle. We talk, ya’ll extract; we treated
like prostitutes— worse than prostitutes, at least they get paid. This community has been
raped. Planning ain’t never benefited the Black community.”

Although a little deflated, I understood. Not only did I learn about planning failures
in Black communities in graduate school, but I lived through them. However, the metaphor
of planning as a violent crime struck me as a particularly traumatic response. At the time, I
did not realize that this language, these feelings, and the visceral reactions to place and
spatial processes would reoccur throughout my career. Even when I moved to Los Angeles,
California, a vastly different place from Mississippi, even when I talked to planning
colleagues practicing across the United States, this pattern emerged. These expressions were
not unique to this project; they were more than just feelings of distrust of authoritative
planning, only requiring more communicative engagement (Huxley & Yiftachel, 2000).

16
Instead, they revealed a psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon in spatial processes mostly
unexamined in planning literature but impacting planning practice.
In this paper, I explore this phenomenon by engaging autoethnography. Although
challenging to define because of its multifaceted nature, autoethnography always relates the
personal to the social, political, and cultural (Adams & Holman Jones, 2008; Bochner, 2012;
Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Bochner, 2000). I examine the psycho-socio-cultural responses,
profoundly rooted in place and tied to collective memories, that emerged in my work as lead
planner for the West Jackson Planning Process.
1

Voice of Calvary Ministries (VOCM), a
local community development non-profit, believed that a planning project initiated from
within the community could help bring much-needed improvements to the community
without creating the harm done by governing agencies. In 2012, the VOCM secured
Community Block Grant Funds to begin a planning process for a 4.25 square mile district
encompassing over ten active neighborhood associations in West Jackson. The project
aimed to identify the most productive avenues for development in ways that prioritized
community voice. We cycled through research, analysis, and intervention design phases
while collaborating with the community. For over two years, I facilitated various community

1
For more information on the Planning Process, you can review the guidebook here: https://
issuu.com/westjacksonguidebook/docs/1210_wj_guidebook_final
Figure 3: West Jackson Planning Process Images

17
engagement
processes, leaning
on communicative,
advocacy, and
equity planning
theories and my
experience as a
community native.
Yet, all my training
had not prepared
me for the psycho-
socio-cultural phenomenon I observed.
In employing autoethnography, I found that the interactions I experienced were
spatial imaginaries that carry the hallmarks of trauma. The term trauma, originating from
the Greek word, sraῦma, meaning to wound or damage, has abandoned a strictly medical
context to permeate political discourse, mass media, and everyday language. It commonly
refers to an event that disturbs an individual’s or collective’s well-being (Alexander, 2013, p.
14). I situate this work in trauma theory because I found that harms and wrongs (see
Schweitzer, 2016) committed against a targeted racialized group induce traumatic
conditions that impact every aspect of place production, including lived experiences.
Conceptualizing these harms and wrongs as trauma helps contextualize place-based
processes within national histories and provides a concept to describe psycho-socio-cultural
processes happening in place.
While planning literature has long acknowledged the profession’s role in producing
racialized spatial realities (Sandercock, 1998; Thomas, 1998a; Yiftachel, 1998), few have
explored how communities hurt due to place-based trauma. In this paper, I first discuss the
methodology for this theory-building work. Second, I present and analyze the data as
trauma imaginaries, the intersection of communal trauma and spatial imaginaries. Third, I
Figure 4: West Jackson Public Meeting

18
construct communal trauma as an analytical planning concept. Finally, I discuss three
significant implications of communal trauma theory for the planning practice.
MOTIVATIONS AND METHODS
A few weeks after beginning the process, we initiated a steering committee made
wholly of community members. Dr. Jackson, a prominent community member, has
reluctantly joined the committee, even though she feels pressure from her local organization
not to participate. We meet in her office to discuss the tension she felt around the project.
“Jocelyn,” she speaks slowly and clearly, “you don’t really know this community. I know you
grew up here, but you are young. Your people aren’t from here. You don’t know the history.
You don’t know what we have been through as a community.” She proceeded to tell me some
of the histories, ending with, “So you see, we have experienced a lot of trauma.”

After having many conversations like the one with Dr. Jackson, I began to reevaluate
the planning concepts learned in graduate school. My everyday experiences in practice
revealed a massive dissonance between how planning defines and situates itself and how the
communities I worked with describe the profession. Planning scholars address the “dark
side of planning” (Yiftachel, 1998), discuss racial injustice (Song, 2015), and, more recently,
expose racialized planning that has perpetuated white supremacy (Williams, 2020). While
essential contributions, assessing the field through the lens of residents whose lived
experiences are directly impacted by planning decisions provides a unique set of
information. In practice, I gathered valuable data to interrogate the day-to-day practice of
planning. As a result, autoethnography emerges as a powerful way of knowing. In it, I honor
my experience as a “complex and multi rhythmic knowledge-making space” (Isoke, 2018,
pp. 157−158) and embark on a mode of inquiry that puts issues of being into circulation and
dialog (Bochner, 2012, p. 53).

19
Methods
Autoethnography is “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and
systematically analyze (graphy) personal experiences (auto) to understand cultural
experience (ethno)” (Ellis et al., 2011). Because of the experiential nature and definitional
variety inherently implicated in this method, autoethnographic processes and products look
different but unite under one purpose: to advance the understanding of social phenomena
(Boylorn & Orbe, 2016). In this work, I use narrative reflection informed by an
interdisciplinary survey of the literature.
I begin by writing my memories, thoughts, reflections, and feelings about what I
observed in practice. I ask reflective questions, such as What are the most memorable
moments of the project? How did I feel then, now? How does my positionality shape my
perspective on these events? Setting the narrative aside, I then read through the project
archives and used open coding to identify concepts and themes. I reflexively compare the
narrative to the dataset to understand and analyze the data; here, I do memory work
(Giorgio, 2013), seeing what is present, what is not, and exploring why. Next, I surveyed the
literature to provide further context from the concepts, themes, and observations. Finally, I
Figure 5: Analysis Diagram

20
rewrote the narrative after another round of coding to re-identify concepts and themes now
understood through literature.
Through this iterative process, two findings emerged. First, the interactions I
experienced held the characteristics of spatial imaginaries; they illustrated how the residents
perform discursive practices that construct and shape place (Redwood Hill) and the spatial
process (planning). While planners typically focus on how structural ideologies and
managerial strategies shape place, spatial imaginaries strongly influence how people
interact, perceive, and exist in places and spatial processes. Spatial imaginaries emerged in
academic literature when Harvey (2005) applied geography to Mill’s (2000) sociological
imagination, arguing that place is just as vital as biography and history in connecting
individuals to societal issues. If the sociological imagination enables us to know the context
by which people have social and historical meaning within their timelines (Mills, 2000),
Harvey (2005) argues that this knowledge requires a spatial consciousness. Spatial
consciousness allows people to understand how place influences all interactions and
transactions people experience (Harvey, 2005).
While there are many varying definitions, conceptualizations, and languages
describing spatial imaginaries, for this work, I define spatial imaginaries as performative dis-
courses that construct, influence, and produce space and place and the collective
understandings of place and spatial practices (Davoudi et al., 2018; Watkins, 2015). A
performative discourse “materializes the phenomena it names, regulates, and constrains”
(Butler, 2011). As a discursive practice, spatial imaginaries represent a place in ways that
produce knowledge and construct meaning (Hall, 2017). Spatial imaginaries simultaneously
materialized space and place while also being shaped and reproduced by space and place.
Thus, spatial imaginaries are not merely representations of space; instead, they produce
place through performative discourses (Gregson & Rose, 2000; Watkins, 2015).
Second, trauma emerged as a prominent theme throughout the narrative and
archive. The data revealed three major themes that align with the characteristics of trauma:
(1) disruption of time and place coordinates, (2) destruction of place leads to challenges in

21
identity, and (3) placelessness threatens collective well-being. Despite definitional nuances
across disciplines, trauma always involves a rupture affecting how people conceive, render,
and experience time, identity, and place (Caruth, 1996, p. 3). The following narratives
expose a breach in time as the presence of slavery illustrate that the past is ever-present, a
rupture in identity as the destruction of place psychosomatically challenges belonging, and a
fracture in place as the dominating fear of placelessness shapes the planning process. These
findings correspond with residents’ language and descriptions, like Dr. Jackson, who proves
histories of place-based trauma during the community engagement process.
An Autoethnography
Because of these two findings, I translate this data into trauma imaginaries, defined
as spatial imaginaries that express, articulate, and bring forth the trauma embedded in place
and spatial processes. As I embark on this memory-work, this act of witnessing (Ropers-
Huilman, 1999), I acknowledge that this story does not exclusively belong to me; it is
intertwined with others’ stories and contextualized by histories that link our identities, set
our positionalities, and guide our interactions. Consequently, autoethnography involves
relational ethics. Although the West Jackson Planning Process is public knowledge, I
composite and pseudonymize neighborhood organizations and people to prevent any
specific group or person from being identified. I tell of experiences with Redwood Hill, a
pseudonymized neighborhood in the planning district in these autoethnographic excepts.
For each narrative, I use existing literature to construct them as trauma imaginaries. In
doing so, I establish the foundations for the concept of communal trauma.
WHOSE YA’ MASSA’?
Roy approaches my desk with furrowed brows and clenched lips and hands me a
single sheet of paper. I accept the paper cautiously. Puzzled, I look at Roy anticipating an
explanation. Receiving mere silence, I turn to examine the document. It’s a flyer with a
cartoon image of a plantation owner. In large font, it read, “whose ya’ Massa’
2
now?”

2
Massa is the dialect spelling of master. The image refers to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in which plantation
owners were titled masters and called massa’ by enslaved people.

22
Questions flood my mind: What is this? Who would do this? Why is my boss giving this to
me? Then, I see the West Jackson Master Plan logo at the bottom of the page, and the
meaning sinks in. Someone or some group had chosen to participate by critiquing the
“master” planning project, using the play on words. While I applaud this sophisticated act of
resistance, it bothers me. The satirical flier reveals a frustrating truth: the past is ever-
present, disrupting linear notions of time-place coordinates. The legacy of slavery still
haunts; no, it re-materializes as master planning becomes just another manifestation.
–Shrugging my shoulders, I turn to my boss, saying, “Well, I get it. Naming the project
master plan was a mistake,” but I think to myself, even though that phasing came from the
funding source and community partner. But I know the wording was not the issue here,
even though “master” does connote oppressive power dynamics. I know that changing the
name [which we did—from Master Plan to Planning Guidebook] would not help; neither
would our transparent, communicative approach nor ethical, equitable practices. I
recognized a more profound issue was present.

The flier linking master planning to the U. S. slave plantation through an image of a
plantation owner signaled a performative discourse that materialized planning as an act of
oppression and produced the neighborhood as a place of the past, the plantation. Although
Black residents have owned and occupied this neighborhood for over 40 years, a
community-initiated planning process evokes the “plantation” as a place and time. The
legacy of slavery still dominates the Black spatial imaginaries in communities in Jackson,
Mississippi.
The plantation as an ever-present spatial imaginary also operates as a trauma
imaginary as it illustrates a breach of time-place coordinates, one of the main characteristics
of trauma (Caruth, 1996). The flier does not remind the community of a historical past;
rather, it brings forth the past and acknowledges its existence in present-day spatial
processes. The trans-Atlantic slave trade dislocated people from place, destroyed cultures,

23
and violently stripped people of identity, forcing them into deplorable and dehumanizing
conditions. In its original form, this traumatic experience ended over a century ago, yet the
plantation lives on and manifests in twenty-first-century planning processes. McKittrick
(2013) explains how the plantation, as a logic and geography, shapes and produces the
present-day places we inhabit. Plantation futures is a “conceptualization of time-space that
tracks the plantation toward the prison and the impoverished and destroyed city sectors”
and explains the continuation of the anti-Black violence of slavery in present-day society
(McKittrick, 2013, p. 17). This concept helps us trace the displacement of African bodies
from African soil to the present-day displacement of Black bodies from Black communities
when that neighborhood becomes desirable to those in power. It traces the acts of land
dispossession from the bodies that called it home. It charts the intentional erasure of African
culture during the slave trade to the erasure of Black culture in gentrified neighborhoods. It
maps the constriction of mobility on the plantation to current mobility limitations within
landscapes of segregation and surveillance. Because plantation logic and geography reify in
the United States’ racist structures, it invades lived experiences within Black communities,
making the proclamation “Black lives matter” and the Movement for Black Lives necessary
over a century and a half after the institution of slavery has ended.
Although many scholars hold that planning emerged as a professional field in the
early twentieth century in the United States, decades after the legislation that ended slavery
passed, this trauma imaginary reveals that the logic and geography of slavery connect to the
present-day practices of planning. Woods (1998) asserts that slavery is one of the earliest
master planning projects. It is preceded only by the “first real plan” of the colonial settler
society: “the total elimination, marginalization, or exile of indigenous people” to create a
place for settlers while erasing the places well planned by indigenous people (Woods, 1998,
p. 41). The concept of master planning and the language of “master” evoke subjugation and
oppression, linking planning to the well-planned plantation, a landscape that dehumanizes,
erases, and dispossesses. Thus, planning is indicted in this trauma imaginary because
planning made possible, structured, and reified traumatic colonial projects.

24
I AM REDWOOD HILL
We believed we were making headway by October, just a few months after the flier
incident. As we listen and respond, more and more people become open to the process.
Bertha, the neighborhood association president, calls to set up a meeting about the planning
process. Although delighted about her initiating contact, I’m apprehensive. A day later, she
walks into our office, swaying, and fidgeting. I realize this big personality with a big voice is
just as nervous as I am. I think that perhaps she feels like she is on enemy territory. After
exchanging southern niceties, we sit, and she looks down, then turns directly to me. She
says, “We just need to know. . . we need some understanding.” I nod, anticipating her
questions. I begin to restate the background and our intentions for the plan. But as I open
my mouth to speak, she signals with her facial expression to let her finish. She continues,
“You see, many of us have been in Redwood Hill for generations. We, our families, put our
blood, sweat, and tears into this neighborhood. I am Redwood Hill just as much as I am
Bertha. And many neighbors feel the same.” I sit back in my seat and take a breath as I
begin to understand. This resistance isn’t personal; it is about preserving her identity.
She stiffens, and her eyes narrow. She sits up and frowns, and although she raises
her voice, it shakes, “But Quick-Take
3
ravished our neighborhood.” She pauses and
swallows, “My heart is heavy. We still suffer the consequences of Quick-Take. People lost
their homes. I still don’t know where some of my neighbors are. We ain’t the same, and we
can’t bear to go through that again. We wouldn’t survive. This would no longer be Redwood
Hill; it would no longer be us.”
I exhale, “Mrs. Bertha, we are not trying to take your property.” Then I paused,
unsure about what to say. How could I comfort her when I represent the very thing that
destroyed a part of her community? I remembered the devastating impacts of Quick-Take. I
remember sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the news with my mom. I watched

3
Quick-Take, was initiated by the Jackson State University, a historically Black state-led institution. Quick-
Take was a planning legislation that tried to execute eminent domain to acquire land for stadium development.
Although rejected, many residents lost their properties.

25
residents respond emotionally as the interviewer asked about losing their property by
eminent domain for future development in the location of an existing neighborhood. I
remember thinking, why is this happening? This isn’t fair; this is colonizing. Has anything
really changed? As this memory popped into my mind, I understood the fear and anxiety
around the “West Jackson Planning Process.” She is fully engaged in resisting the project
because previous planning projects had destroyed her neighborhood, challenging her and
her neighbor’s identity in the process. I realized she wasn’t being contrary or paranoid;
instead, her resistance to the planning project reveals desperation and determination. A
deep fear of loss is producing these visceral reactions to the planning process. She is afraid
of losing her place. She is afraid of losing herself.

Bertha brings forth another spatial imaginary: belonging is placed. Her declaration, “I
am Redwood Hill just as much as I am Bertha,” is a performative discourse that produces
place as her identity and the identity of her neighbors. In this practice of spatial
consciousness, Bertha acknowledges the centrality of place in her biography and how
belonging to place is intrinsically tied to identity (Harvey, 2005). This spatial imaginary is
not uncommon among many groups as scholars have long theorized the intrinsic
relationship between place and identity (Price, 2013; Proshansky et al., 1976).
This spatial imaginary transforms into a trauma imaginary because Bertha distresses
the rupture of identity that happens when place—and belonging to place—is violently
disrupted or destroyed. This disruption of identity, the second main characteristic of trauma
(Caruth, 1996), is rooted in place. In Bertha’s proclamation, “This would no longer be
Redwood Hill; it would no longer be us,” she expresses the interconnectedness of identity
and place and laments the devastating impact of Quick-Take. Jackson State University’s
2008 Quick-Take Plan was an effort to accelerate eminent-domain processes to take private
land for a mixed-use development. While the plan failed, it forced many residents out of the
neighborhood, leaving behind blighted landscapes still unoccupied.

26
A psychosomatic reaction accompanied Bertha’s expression of loss, not just of
neighbors, neighborhood character, or equity, but also identity. This trauma reaction to
neighborhood destruction can be understood as root shock, “the traumatic stress reaction to
the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystem” (Fullilove, 2016, p. 28). In
Fullilove’s (2016) study of urban renewal, an infamous planning failure that swept through
the United States, she connects psycho-physiological processes to environmental processes
by asserting that if place is integral to identity, then the destruction of place is akin to the
process the body undergoes when it goes into shock to compensate for the loss of fluids. Like
biological systems, a person’s mazeways, the external harmony between that person and the
world, experiences a shock (Fullilove, 2016). This root shock impacts the health and
wellness of residents who experience this place-based destructive trauma.
Deepening this concept by mapping it onto to place, Till (2012) derives “wounded
cities” as the “densely settled locales that have been harmed and structured by particular
histories of physical destruction, displacement, and individual and social trauma resulting
from state-perpetuated violence” (Till, 2012, p. 6). This concept holds that the city is not
merely a composition of properties; instead, it is socially and psychologically intertwined
with humanity; that is, “places become part of us, even when held in common, through the
intimate relationships individuals and groups have with places” (Till, 2012). When places
are “wounded,” it is not just a spatial or material process. It is also a psycho-socio process
that impacts residents, communities, and social structures. Because this process happens in
a community, these experiences are internalized as collective memory and transferred, often
generationally, through communal activities. These concepts explain why Bertha’s spatial
imaginary is linked to identity and the traumatic process that occurs when the psycho-socio
ties to place are disrupted.
Quick-Take, ultimately a tool of planning, deeply wounded the neighborhood.
Eminent domain, a controversial planning tool in the United States, erases and displaces in
the name of public good. However, it is a traumatic process for those who survive it. And for
Black communities, disproportionately affected by eminent domain (Fullilove, 2016), it is

27
traced to plantation logic, reifying the trauma of the slave trade. As such, this act not only
causes a breach of place-based identity but also disrupts collective racial and cultural
identities. In this way, planning influences identity-forming processes and induces
spatialized trauma for communities of color.
AIN’T NOBODY EVER PLANNED FOR US
It is the day of the public meeting. After my conversation with Mrs. Bertha, Redwood
Hill neighborhood leaders invited us to discuss the plan with their association, whose
members have been incredibly cynical about the process. Roy and I walk into the stuffy, hot
building, unsure what to expect. They greet us warmly and direct us to our seats. I wait
patiently for our turn to speak, mentally tracking agenda items and comments. Finally,
Michelle, the group's secretary, introduces our agenda item. With an intensity that made me
feel like I had taken the stand in a courtroom, she says, “There are some people trying to
“plan” (said with air quotes) Redwood Hill. We all know what that means.” Heaving, she
raises her voice, “They are planning for white people. Ain’t nobody ever planned for us or
with us. They are planning for the others, and they gonna remove us. And where are we
gonna go? This is our neighborhood; we worked hard to make it our home when they
wouldn’t even let us on the east side. Now they want to move us outta the way. If we let them
do this, Redwood Hill won’t exist anymore. We can’t be complacent about this. We must act,
we must fight, if we don’t, we will disappear, and white people will thrive on our property.”
Wow, how are we supposed to follow that? I think to myself. Yet having had the
conversation with Bertha, I understand where Michelle is coming from. While her body
language seems intimidating and her impassioned speech threatening, I feel she is
protecting her neighborhood. Again, I think about how these acts of resistance aren’t
personal but indicative of the painful histories of planning and policy-making that have
been so oppressive for this community. As I sit in the seat, pleading with my eyes for Roy to
respond first, my thoughts shift from just getting through this meeting to how do we get
through this planning process when there is so much baggage. In the beginning, I believed I

28
could make a difference in my community. Now I begin to question the role of planning in
Black communities. Am I doing the right thing? Can we heal from this?

Michelle presents a spatial imaginary that discursively constructs a spatial practice,
planning, rather than a specific space or place. “Planning is for white people” reveals that
residents perceive, conceive, and construct planning as a practice of whiteness,
4
by white
people and for white people. This speech points to how planning operates as a governing
tool to reify racial hierarchy and sustain white supremacy. This performative discourse
constructs a trauma imaginary because the process of planning as an exclusionary act
threatens collective Black being. In this way, planning induces trauma because it disrupts
conceptions of place, the third main characteristic of trauma (Caruth, 1996).
While the city of Jackson’s economies and geographies make erasure seem
unfeasible, Michelle’s fear is not unfounded. Across the United States, planning often leads
to dispossession, displacement, and gentrification processes that erase, disrupt, and destroy
Black communities. These processes are not merely coincidental; instead, they result from
intentional cumulative and circular development that happens as the modern nation-state
development model (Myrdal, 1962). In Winant’s (2018) analysis, development is circular in
that it reiterates the cycle of racial oppression and antiracist resistance practices.
Development is cumulative in that it operates in conjunction with other racial projects, past
and present, to maintain racial order. In this way, racially oppressive practices and their
counterpart, antiracist resistance, reifies through development practices and policies
(Winant, 2018). This reification happens within and is a product of “deathscapes,”
Mbembé’s (2003) term to describe postcolony. Mbembé (2003) argues that multiply
concepts of sovereignty originate in and because of modernity (and the age of empire), and
“to exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the

4
I define whiteness as the systems, practices, processes of racial injustice to secure and maintain white
advantage (Goetz et al., 2020). Goetz et al. (2020) outlines four themes of white- ness: whiteness as exclusion,
the value of whiteness, the invisibility of whiteness and the durability of whiteness (also see Bonilla-Silva,
2012; Harris, 1993; Lipsitz, 2006).

29
deployment and manifestation of power” (p. 12). The United States’ development as a
(sovereign) Nation-State is a deathscape, as it is designed to institutionalize, operationalize,
and produce (the imaginary of) white homogeneity (white supremacy). Goldberg (2002)
argues that the nation-state as a dominating institution plays a critical role in managing
racial threats “through repression, through occlusion and erasure, restriction and denial,
delimitation and domination” so that homogeneity can dominate (Goldberg, 2002, p. 33).
In the Redwood Hill spatial imaginary, reification happens in planning practices. As a
tool of the nation-state, planning has and continues to enable racial hierarchy through
design, policy, regulations, and practices (Huxley & Yiftachel, 2000). While the definition
and boundaries of planning might differ, most theorists agree that the chief goal of planning
is to “first and foremost act to improve people’s physical living conditions” (Yiftachel, 1998,
p. 396; also see Fainstein & DeFilippis, 2015; Hall, 2014). While this goal seems promising,
the Nation-State’s influence translates this goal into improving white people’s physical living
conditions and thus becomes a goal to achieve white, heteropatriarchy, capitalist
homogeneity (Goldberg, 2002). Thus, planning has become one of many racial projects that
has destroyed Black communities’ health, wealth, and wellness (Omi and Winant, 2014).
Many scholars discuss the lasting impacts of racial segregation embedded in the
landscapes of nearly every U. S., racial zoning’s impact on reinforcing a racial hierarchy, and
the intentional relationship between racial oppression and housing that limits mobility
(Boyer, 1986; Delaney, 2010; Lipsitz, 2011; Rothstein, 2017; Thomas, 1998b; Whittemore,
2017). Using the celebrated notion of the public good, planners impose nation-state
(imagined) homogeneity, even within socially, culturally, and ethnically heterogeneous
places. This imposition requires violence, erasure, and removal. Planning as “an act for white
people” is not merely the perceived reality of Redwood Hill but indicates how the profession
has interacted with Black communities throughout its history. Thus, government-
sanctioned planning and development provoke fears of perceived and actual threats to Black
being because it changes geographies in ways that reify racial hierarchies.

30
The persistence of spatialized racial hierarchy reveals that planning has, at best, not
addressed the underlying problems of racism and, at worst, worked to uphold racial order,
rather intentional or unintentional. In this way, planning has induced trauma by causing a
breach in place. McKittrick (2011) illustrates how this trauma is trapped in place by defining
the Black sense of place as “materially and imaginatively situating historical and
contemporary struggles against practices of domination and the difficult entanglements of
racial encounter” (p. 949).
TOWARD A THEORY OF COMMUNAL TRAUMA
Analyzing these experiences as trauma imaginaries reveals how racialized
communities hurt and how trauma saturates place. From this analysis, I conceptualize
communal trauma to understand the intersection of spatial processes and layers of trauma
present in the trauma imaginaries of Redwood Hill. Communal trauma is harm and wrong
committed against targeted racialized groups so horrendous that it induces a traumatic
condition in which one or more of the following processes occur:
(1) It disrupts conceptions of time and place.
(2) The destruction of (the relationship to) place challenges identity, causing
psychosomatic reactions.
(3) Targeted groups perceive spatial processes (planning and development) as
threats to collective well-being.

These traumatic conditions exist and evolve in collective memories of racialized
harms and wrongs tied to a shared identity, experience, and place, and it is worked through
in everyday consciousness. I present communal trauma as a placed-based trauma to
understand psycho-socio-cultural aspects of place and provide a foundational framework for
communal trauma theory with four critical characteristics.
Communal trauma is not victimhood; it is a legitimate response to harms and
wrongs
Communal trauma does not characterize people or places as inherently damaged,
resulting in re-traumatization. Instead, it interrogates how racialized ideologies, policies, and
practices that intentionally harm targeted communities are embedded in place and spatial

31
processes triggering placed-based trauma with generational implications. This trauma is
neither a choice nor an indication of a cultural flaw; it is not a weakness (Visser, 2015) but a
natural, protective function that signals potential danger (Menakem, 2017, p. 7). Trauma
imaginaries operate as a critical response to an event that signals a need for safety and
survival. They signal that planning processes lack ethics and justice, generating communal
trauma.
Thus, present in each of these imaginaries are performative discourses of resistance;
the trauma imaginary itself is an act of resistance to oppressive spatial processes. It reflects
these past histories and an expression of trauma through acts of resistance. Just as racial
hierarchies reify through plantation logics and operations of the nation-state, “differential
modes of survival” (creolization, the blues, maronage, revolution, and more) emerge and
reify (McKittrick, 2013). As much as Redwood Hill is a survivor of violent planning policies
and practices, it is also a geography of “survival, resistance, creativity, and the struggle
against death” (McKittrick, 2013). Each of the Redwood Hill narratives indicates histories of
harms and wrongs. This agency and participation are vital for planning as it reveals
communal trauma through the expression of trauma imaginaries.
In the body, trauma is helpful to analyze a threat to the self. However, if unaddressed,
it becomes stuck in the body, never moving through and out of the body when the danger is
no longer present (Menakem, 2017). Likewise, communal trauma can be trapped in place if
unaddressed, resulting in ongoing trauma imaginaries. Redwood Hill is one example of how
trauma imaginaries persist in racialized communities disrupting planning practice. These
trauma imaginaries necessitate a conceptual understanding of trauma to understand how
communities hurt and respond meaningfully.
Communal trauma is multilayered
Communal trauma builds upon psychological, collective, racial, and cultural trauma
theories to understand how trauma affects every aspect of life, individual-identity (psycho),
collective-social-spatial (socio), and collective-biological-geographical (cultural) processes.

32
Psychologically, a person experiences a “wound inflicted upon the mind” because their
identity is challenged (Alexander, 2013). Psychological trauma is present in Redwood Hill
when Bertha is psychosomatically disturbed when discussing Quick-Take. She
communicates this disturbance at the neighborhood level, making it a collective trauma.
Collective trauma emerged as a concept in the early twentieth century as researchers
understood how communities could be “in shock” rather than individuals (Anderson, 2006;
Erikson, 1991).
Other prominent layers present in communal trauma are racial and cultural trauma.
Race and culture are complicated concepts that warrant discussions beyond the scope of this
article. However, I want to acknowledge that although they are deeply intertwined, they are
not interchangeable. Yet, their traumas are very similar. Psychologists define racial trauma
as “the events of danger related to real or perceived experience of racial discrimination”
(Comas-Díaz et al., 2019). Racial trauma is race-based stress that describes the effect of day-
to-day interactions such as microaggressions that impact racialized groups’ health and well-
being. It is the stress that accompanies what Fanon (2008) describes as being Black “in
relation to the white man” (p. 90). This way of being demands a “double consciousness,” as
Dubois and Gates (2007) explain, as a racialized being must find a way to exist under the
white gaze that constructs him as the other. It is existing and often learning to thrive in a
society where your very being is a contradiction (Fanon 2008).
Cultural sociologists define cultural trauma as a process initiated by a “horrendous”
event that is believed to have significantly affected a cultural membership, forever embedded
in their memory and permanently changing their identity (Alexander, 2013; Smelser, 2004).
This process is a struggle for meaning as the event causes “an acute dis- comfort into the
core of the collectivity’s sense of who they are, where they came from, and where they want
to go” (Alexander, 2013. p. 19). Cultural trauma focuses on historical events that shape
cultural identity.
Both racial and cultural trauma address a specific trauma that happens due to
practices that impact a group with a shared physical, geographic, and social identity; thus,

33
communal trauma encompasses both. For example, in Redwood Hill, Michelle’s trauma
imaginary of “planning is for white people” is racial stress resulting from histories of race-
based discrimination. Furthermore, the evocation of the slave plantation directly relates to
Eyerman’s (2001) theorization of trans-Atlantic slavery as cultural trauma. Eyerman (2001)
proposes that the African American identity would not exist if it were not for the institution
of slavery. Reconstruction’s failure to successfully integrate Blacks into full citizenship
ignited a fight for the meaning of memory and representation. The event of slavery caused “a
dramatic loss of identity” and continues to be re-worked in collective memory (Eyerman,
2001, p. 1). Cultural identity is filtered and renegotiated through racialized processes. While
Eyerman (2001) discusses African American identity as a cultural membership, it is also a
racialized identity. African American culture is complicated, multifaceted, and intertwined
with other histories and identity-forming processes. However, processes of racialization, that
is, creating the other, or as DuBois and Gates (2007, pp. 116−117) puts it, the marking of
race “upon them in color and hair,” induces a commonality in which communal trauma
operates.
Communal trauma centers the role of place in identity formation
Whether at the individual or collective level, trauma is always an identity informing
process, and identity is always placed. Thus, communal trauma analyzes trauma as a spatial
phenomenon. Bertha’s concern reveals the intricate relationship between identity and place.
To be placed is to be located spatially, socially, and culturally (Sundstrom, 2003). Place
provides kinship and belonging, critical components shaping identity. Belonging to a place is
belonging to a people, having a “home” (Hall, 1995), and possessing a pastness (Wallerstein,
1991). Personal biographies are attached to place, as “we associate places with the fulfilling,
terrifying, traumatic, triumphed, secret events that happened to us personally there”
(Gieryn, 2000, p. 48). Places meaningfully shape our identities and realize our social
interactions and networks, making relationships possible and allowing for community
formation (Hague and Jenkins, 2004; Relph, 1976).

34
Communal trauma acknowledges the centrality of place in histories of racial
domination. Place (space, land, coordinates) becomes a central tool of oppression, as
property ownership (owning place) became synonymous with symbolic and material power
and whiteness (Harris, 1993). The production of space and place also becomes the
production of excluded (abnormal) and included (normal) bodies—as spatial processes
essentially become an exercise of power (Razack, 2018). In Mohanram’s (1999) comparison
of the spatial characteristics of the Black body and the white body, the white body is mobile
and unmarked while the Black body is static and marked. Racial difference is also a spatial
difference (Mohanram, 1999). This spatial distinction occurs throughout United States
histories: the middle passage cargo versus the deck, the plantation slave quarters versus the
big house, the surveilled Black neighborhoods versus the unobserved white neighborhood.
The disruption and destruction of place is a traumatic event that shatters a
community’s sense of time, identity, and place. If place plays an integral role in shaping
identity, then planning is as much about shaping identity as it is about shaping place. This
relationship lives within the colonial matrix of power, in which identity-making processes
are processes of power (Mignolo, 2011; Rose, 1995).
Communal trauma contextualizes current events in past histories
Communal trauma fully recognizes that harmful place-producing processes do not
just occur spontaneously. They are intentional acts that happen in Mignolo’s (2011)
“colonial matrix of power.” Inspired by Quijano (2007), the colonial matrix of power,
abbreviated as coloniality, explains the continuation of colonial power dynamics long after
the destruction of Euro-centered colonialism. Coloniality holds that for all its enlightenment,
modernity also produced “poverty, misery inequalities, injustices corruption
commodification and dispensability of human life” through othering and racialization
(Mignolo, 2011, p. xviii). Quijano (2007) argues that if we trace present-day resource
distributions, exploitation, and social domination globally, we will find that the formally
colonized populations, those distinguished by race, ethnicity, and nation, still

35
overwhelmingly experience oppression. The social category of “race” is key to marking the
colonizer and colonized (Quijano, 2007). From its inception, racial hierarchy has structured
every aspect of the United States. These logics of race still operate in post-colonial societies.
Within this historic context, communal trauma is produced, maintained, and reified through
coloniality despite colonialism’s perceived end.
Communal trauma provides a model that can understand and analyze present-day
trauma imaginaries in the context of past histories. For example, Because of the failure to
mitigate the traumas of slavery, slavery appears in the Redwood Hill case. Even though
laws, culture, and geography change over time, racial domination persists due to the
reification of a homogenous society (Goldberg, 2002, p. 176). Thus, state-sanctioned racial
hierarchy only mutates in response to changing social and economic structures. This trauma
is not merely the history of the Atlantic slave trade that dislocated and destroyed cultures but
also the continuous blow to African American cultures as they work through ongoing
targeted harms and wrongs.
Planning tied to dominating government institutions, or what Williams (2020) calls
racial planning, aligns with the logic of coloniality. Racial planning is both a progressive
advancement of place for some and a traumatic practice of disinvestment, removal, erasure,
and dispossession for others. In the United States, DuBois and Gates’ (2007) “double
consciousness” or, to center place, McKittrick’s (2011) “Black sense of place” illustrate this
parallel history, as Black communities are constantly navigating a dual consciousness and
developing strategies of resistance planning to combat racial planning. Although nuances
exist in these processes across places, a “Black sense of place” reveals the preeminence of
racial oppression in spatial processes.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PLANNING FIELD
Although communal trauma theory derives from a specific case (Redwood Hill) in a
specific geography (U.S. South), it can help planners in places beyond this region
understand how past histories impact present-day spatial processes. Using trauma
imaginaries as a tool of analysis, this autoethnography reveals the role of planning in

36
inducing communal trauma, showing how state-sanctioned racial planning dominates and
oppresses communities. This experience analyzed through racial-state, deathscapes, and
coloniality theories illustrates how communal trauma is not a phenomenon unique to
Mississippi but a product of systemic ideologies, processes, and practices co-constructed
with the modern nation-state. Therefore, racial planning enables racial hierarchy and
induces communal trauma through design, policy, regulations, practices, and the field across
varying geographies (Huxley & Yiftachel, 2000). Because of this pervasiveness, I offer three
suggestions for how communal trauma theory can impact planning practice.
Ethical practice
Many scholars discuss the lasting impacts of racial segregation embedded in the
landscapes of nearly every U.S. city. Often in planning literature, these discussions are
framed as histories, past planning events from which we can learn. However, hardly any
literature addresses the ongoing psycho-socio-cultural implications of past planning acts.
Communal trauma helps planners understand the ever-present past and how racial
planning induces a trapped-in-place trauma. If planning has induced communal trauma, as
Schweitzer (2016) argues, the field has an ethical obligation to acknowledge trauma
imaginaries and redress communal trauma.
Planners have the expressed goal “to maximize the health, safety, and economic well-
being of all people living in our communities” (American Planning Association, n.d.).
Planners also have the ethical obligation to “seek social justice by working to expand choice
and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special responsibility to plan for the needs of
the disadvantaged and to promote racial and economic integration” (American Planning
Association, 2016). Planners cannot realize either of these principles without addressing
communal trauma because communities cannot maximize health if trauma remains present.
Neither can planners seek social justice without acknowledging their role in oppression and
holistically dismantling the structures that allow trauma to persist. However, acknowledging

37
is just the first step; planners must seek reparative actions to mitigate trauma to achieve
these goals.
Sandercock (2004) offers a “therapeutic planning” imagination as a means by which
public institutions can undergo social learning processes in ways that elevate the position of
historically oppressed voices and bodies. Schweitzer (2016) situates Sandercock’s
“therapeutic imagination” in political theory to examine the ethics governing public
institution planners’ role in social learning and healing. She argues that Sandercock’s
“therapeutic imagination” creates an opportunity for planning to heal relationships with
communities that have a collective memory of harm in ways that incite a social and
institutional transformation toward inclusivity. As such, identifying injury is only one phase
in restoring relationships; but planners have an ethical obligation to “remedy what harm
they can as well as make a credible commitment to reform” (Schweitzer, 2016, p. 131).
Communal trauma theory helps planners understand what harm has been committed to
take steps toward remedy to achieve ethical practice.
Reparative practice
Schweitzer’s (2016) argument for restorative ethics points to the need for
compensation or reparations to remedy past harms and wrongs. One approach to remedy is
a reparative praxis that acknowledges induced communal trauma and involves trauma-
informed and trauma-remediation practices. Reparative planning “seriously consider[s]
planning’s entanglement with white supremacy” (Williams, 2020, p. 7). Reparative
planning, as a process of transitional justice, seeks to not only redress past harms, but
redistribute resources, undermine dominant power structures, and honor community
agency.
5
In short, a reparative planning framework disrupts distributions for white
advantage while paying for past racial injustices.
Reparative planning engages directly with communal trauma—seeking to understand
and address the past and ongoing harms of racial planning through a trauma-informed lens

5
This working definition comes from an on-going project with colleague Sean Angst, drawing from Darity and
Mullen (2020).

38
and post-traumatic growth model. Investing in a reparative praxis is crucial for racialized
communities to experience ongoing healing processes and become healthier. To do so,
Williams (2020) calls for a deeply politicized “therapeutic planning” that leads to a just end.
Planners can begin to evaluate how they engage with each one of these principles in their
practice and begin to pivot as necessary.
Reflective practice
Communal trauma theory can provide insight into how to engage in a deeply
politicized “therapeutic planning” process that leads to ethical, reparative planning and
achieves the American Planning Association’s goals for planning. While the framework of
communal trauma helps planners understand disruptions of time-space coordinates, the
method for identifying trauma imaginaries can help planners participate in reflective
processes. Through the autoethnographic process, I learned to position myself in local
histories. Instead of dismissing intense, awkward, and uncomfortable conversations, I
analyze them to understand the underlying issue. Through the critical and reflective process,
I identified the trauma imaginaries impacting the planning process. Planners must engage in
critical thought to identify and assess how their practices and processes uphold white
supremacy and induce communal trauma.
If planners implement a reflective practice of identifying the trauma imaginaries
present in the communities they work in, they can make meaning of complicated or
contentious community engagement processes. By bringing those imaginaries to the
forefront of planning processes to be understood, planners could implement what
Sandercock (1998) describes as humanistic approaches.
Because diverse patterns of deprivation appear in different geographies, trauma
imaginaries may appear different in unique contexts. Thus, the reflective process may look
different for planners across the globe as varied modes and mechanisms of racialization
manifest in other places, yet all advance the dominant power structure’s agenda. In places
impacted by processes of othering and power-difference hierarchies, trauma imaginaries will

39
be present. For example, in Jerusalem, the white-Black binary does not exist in the same
way as in Redwood Hill; however, the process of othering is achieved using development,
planning, and housing policies to segregate groups along national, ethnic, and class lines in
Jerusalem, a place radically different from Mississippi (Shenhav, 2003; Yiftachel, 2006). To
abolish racial planning and move toward ethical, reparative planning, these trauma
imaginaries must be addressed no matter how different they are in other geographies.
If planners reject racial planning and engage in reflective processes, the field could be
better suited to address place-based trauma. Through her therapeutic planning intervention,
which sought to address collective intergenerational trauma within a comprehensive
planning process, Erfan (2017) suggests three ways that planning is well-suited to address
place-based traumas. First, planning involves collective and public activities, making the
general public relatively accessible through planning processes. Second, planning as a
future-oriented practice can navigate trauma’s time-space coordinates as traces of past-
future relationships. Third, as applied social science, planning can ground discussion around
trauma and healing in the material realities of everyday life.
While planning may have the access and capacity to address place-based traumas, to
do so without implementing critical, reflective processes that lead to reparative praxis could
induce more harm. Planning must resist the white savior complex pervasive in planning
literature and center community histories, knowledge, and planning approaches. While, as
the paper outlines, planning has done much harm in racialized communities, planning
history tells a story of a “heroic, progressive” field, “part of Western or Enlightenment project
of modernization” (Sandercock, 1998, p. 3). Understanding planning in this way ignores
trauma and positions the planner as the solution, which has not worked well for Redwood
Hill’s Black residents and other groups that have been racialized or characterized as
subdominant in a racial hierarchy. Instead of positioning planners as solutions, planners
must acknowledge racialized communities hold knowledge integral to liberating spatial
orders. Essentially, planners can learn how to disengage from racial planning by
understanding the resistance planning processes present in racialized communities.

40
Through a critical and reflective process, planners can invest in the agency of the
communities they serve to envision spaces and places that dismantle white supremacy. For
far too long, planners have seen resistance as an opposition to public good and economic
development when they should come alongside communities in solidarity.
CONCLUSION
After sitting for nearly 8 hours in our office, Clara, a vocal community member,
stacked the papers proclaiming, “I think that is everything.” She had volunteered to read
through the plan to fact-check and copy-edit. Clara had been vehemently opposed to the
plan at the beginning of the process. Fortunately, instead of withdrawing from the project,
she inserted herself into the middle, correcting, chiding, and providing critical feedback.
Somewhere along the way, we gained her trust, and I’d like to think in our own little way,
became colleagues. Clara stood to leave, and she turned to me, saying, “this is the first time
someone has done a plan in our neighborhood where we have gotten all of the raw data.”
She continued, “Thank you for listening to us and for creating a guidebook instead of a plan.
That is what we need, rather than someone coming in telling us how it’s going to be. I
appreciate that.” I responded, “Thank you for your input. We wanted to do what is best for
the community no matter the circumstances.” At this moment, I knew the actual planning
interventions resulting from the process weren’t going far, but I counted it as a success
because, to some extent, the community got what it needed.

While in practice, I did not fully understand the phenomenon I was experiencing, I
began to respond to the trauma imaginaries present. As a reflective practitioner, I intuitively
responded to these interactions, these trauma imaginaries, in the best way possible. Our
team acknowledged the community’s pain and oriented our work to their needs. We became
active listeners to understand how planning has impacted the residents’ lived experiences.
We engaged in ethical processes, being transparent about the data and past planning
failures. We aligned the plan’s values with the community and began to resist oppressive
planning structures, which meant that sometimes we were at odds with the organization

41
paying for the plan. We even engaged in reparative planning acts such as providing
monetary compensation to neighborhood organizations from the project’s funding. While
we were able to achieve some measure of community trust, I believe going into the process
with a communal trauma framework would have provided an opportunity to partner with
the community for a healing process that could have resulted in a justice-centered approach
to healthy growth for West Jackson, instead of merely providing a guidebook.
In theorizing communal trauma by analyzing the trauma imaginaries presented in
autoethnographic data, I introduce an innovative way to analyze the presence of trauma in
racialized communities. Trauma imaginaries and communal trauma are emerging concepts
that will grow as future research seeks to understand how they operate in different places
and different racialization processes. The more we understand the multilayered, place-based
trauma impacting spatial processes, the better we can develop post-traumatic growth
practices in collaborations with communities that can help achieve the goal of planning.

42
CHAPTER 2: TO LIVE AND DIE IN (SOUTH CENTRAL) L.A.:
UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA IMAGINARIES AND COMMUNAL
TRAUMA MANIFEST IN LOS ANGELES

“To live and die in L.A., it's the
place to be/

Let my angel sing/

You've got to be there to know
it/

When everybody wanna see/

And my angels
go/

To live and die in L.A./

it's the place to be,
To live and die in L.A/

You've got to be there to know
it/

When everybody wanna see/

Let my angel sing/”

Tupac,
“To Live and Die in LA”

43
“Being Black in L.A. [Los Angeles]…,” LaRae paused as she pondered my question.
“You know that Tupac song, To Live and Die in L.A?”
“Yes,” I exclaimed, “that’s how I always imagined L.A. It’s what I named this study.” I
pointed to the consent form to show LaRae the title. Between music videos and shows like
Moesha, all of my exposure to L.A. came from Black cultural production when I was
growing up.
LaRae smiled and nodded vigorously, “I am looking to rebrand that. I am working
on building out a To Live and Die with L.A. video.” The differential preposition wasn’t lost
on me. Tupac’s music video explores L.A. landscapes by riding through the city in a
beautiful yellow convertible. While the video portrays a constant party, the song's lyrics
detail a “city of angels in constant danger” and proclaim, “South Central L.A. can’t get no
stranger.” Given the realities of being Black in LA, I nod encouragingly at LaRae,
understanding her desire to rebrand because of the difference between living/dying in a
place and living/dying with a place.
“When I say being Black in L.A., it’s having these connections to art and spirituality,
and autonomy and creativity and imagination and wonder,” LaRae pauses, “that’s to live
and die with L.A.” She continues, “L.A. is a unique place; if you can make it here and you go
somewhere else, bo-o-o-y! You got a hustle to you. You got a way of thinking and a way of
being that is unstoppable.”

LaRae’s analysis of being Black in L.A. echoed so many others and challenged my
own spatial imaginaries of L.A. L.A. was the music video in my spatial consciousness—a
Black city and a constant party. A place where the gangstas in the music video achieved
fame and success (NWA, Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre), a Black man could be a successful judge,
wealthy enough to have a butler and live in a Mansion (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), and a
middle-class family could be unapologetically Black while navigating everyday situations
(Moesha). For me, it was a place where Blackness could thrive. While it is true that

44
Blackness thrives in L.A., Tupac’s lyrics highlight the struggle of Black life. Upon arriving in
Los Angeles, the duality of the song’s lyrics and the video came to life for me. L.A. was not
just the spatial imaginary portrayed in the video. It also holds the struggle found in the
lyrics, which speaks to political oppression (Pete Wilson tryin' to see us all broke), gang
culture (Better learn about the dress code, B's and C's), the prison industrial complex (On
the curb watchin' the ghetto bird helicopters/ I observe so many niggas gettin' three strikes,
tossed in jail/ I swear, the pen' right across from hell), and violence (Shed tears as we bury
niggas close to heart/ What was a friend, now a ghost in the dark). Yet the song
communicates an undying love for L.A., South Central specifically.
These lived experiences showed up in my interactions with Black Angelenos, and I
began to hear very different stories that reflected the same sentiments and visceral reactions
to place and spatial processes that I experienced in Mississippi (MS). Thus, I tested the
validity of the trauma imaginaries concept in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA), a place
radically different from Jackson, MS. This study is a comparative case study between West
Jackson and South Central Los Angeles (SCLA). Instead, I sought to understand if and how
trauma imaginaries show up in SCLA based on the definitions developed in previous work.
If trauma imaginaries are present, they bring forth communal trauma embedded in the
landscape. In this chapter, I ask: do trauma imaginaries exist in South Central Los Angeles?
SITE CONTEXT

“South Central is the name we all grew up knowing. It was the name that
reflected where we lived at, how we behaved, what we believed. A lot of our
music paid homage to South Central and it gave us a sense of pride about
where we lived. I left and lived in a couple of other cities and [when I] came
back, it was South Los Angeles. At first, I felt like I was losing the identity that
I called home. South L.A. wasn’t the same any longer. The demographics had
shifted so dramatically. In a lot of ways, I am relearning what South L.A.
really is.” - L.A. Native Corey Matthews (Jackson-Fosset, 2021)

Many historians locate the origins of South Central Los Angeles in a patch of
landscape bounded by Washington Bouvard (North), Central Avenue (East), Vernon
Avenue (South), and the Harbor Freeway (West). As the great migration of the early 20
th

century brought an influx of African Americans seeking to escape the oppressive forces of

45
Jim Crow to Los Angeles, many found themselves contained to downtown and then
eventually south of downtown, now identified as the Historical South Central District
(Flamming, 2005). While Black Angelenos experienced unique access to housing, ‘the color
line’ still ruled the geographies of Los Angeles. Decisionmakers used restrictive covenants
and redlining to confine African Americans to the area along the southern portion of Central
Avenue (DuBois & Diggs, 2017 [1913]). Although restricted to a designed ghetto, Black
residents engaged in place-making and spatial processes that converted Central Avenue into
a thriving cultural enclave with a central business district. Affectionally dubbed “The
Avenue,” the geography became synonymous with Black arts and culture, Black
entrepreneurship, and Black political movement (Chapple, 2010). It was more than just a
place; South Central entered popular vernacular as a space to describe Black life in Los
Angeles and beyond.
In-migration bloomed in the 1940s, as World War II demanded new defense
industries and Executive Order 8802 outlawed discrimination against African Americans in
the workforce. Smithsonian historian Lonnie Bunch estimates that the Black population
doubled in the 1940s, but Black life “remained confined to pre-war boundaries,” creating a
housing crisis (Sonksen, 2017; Robinson, 2010). As Black Angelenos gained affluence and
political organizing power, they began to push past the boundaries imposed by white power.
They were met with physical violence and confined by Nation-State policies. However, when
the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case Shelly v. Kraemer rendered restrictive housing covenants
unenforceable (Chapple, 2010), Black people slowly and sacrificially moved West towards
Crenshaw, Inglewood, and Leimert Park, and South towards Watts and Compton. Although
police and white violence kept remnants of boundaries and White residents fled to adjacent
suburbs (Felker-Kantor 2018), Black life expanded, and so did South Central.
By 1970, half of all Black people in the county lived in SCLA, making the geography
80% Black (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor 2021). The area included not only the historical
core but most of the landscape between Interstate 10 and Willowbrook, East of Interstate
405, and roughly West of Almeda Street. Given that place isn’t just geography but is also

46
associated with social, cultural, and psychological meaning (Massey, 1995; McKittrick,
2011; Price, 2013), the suburbs of Compton and Inglewood are often included in the spatial
imaginary of South Central, as they have become internationally known as places of
Blackness due to cultural production (Wiggins, 2016). As people define South Central in
various avenues stemming from rap music lyrics to street conversations, many see South
Central not as a specific location but as a Black space. In this way, Compton is distinctly
Compton while also being South Central. In the same way, Inglewood is both its own entity
and a part of the South Central spatial imaginary.
In 2003, the City of L.A. rebranded South Central Los Angeles, dubbing it “South Los
Angeles,” in some ways reflecting the demographic shift resulting from spatial processes. In
2021, those identified as Black only made up 25% of SCLA’s population (Hondagneu-Sotelo
and Pastor, 2021). Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor (2021) found much dissension about how
to define the area south of Interstate-10. While some feel like South L.A. is inclusive and
representative of the demographic shifts and the place-production that accompanies it, for
many Black Los Angelenos, the term South L.A. feels like erasure. Like Corey Mathews,
many Black residents struggle with this change as it signals a loss of place and Black identity
rooted in place.
Some Black residents see this shift as an intentional effort to move Blacks out of the
city (Vargas, 2006). Spatial patterns of segregation/ containment, gentrification/
displacement, and dispossession/ erasure coupled with political economies that induced
brutal policing and systematic surveillance, and limited access to jobs and economic
mobility, facilitated this dramatic shift (Davis, 2006; Vargas, 2006; Felker-Kantor, 2018;
Wiggins, 2016; Redford, 2017). During my time in L.A., Black political activists rejected
South L.A. in efforts to reclaim Blackness by clinging to South Central as name and space.
In most conversations, landscapes of Blackness were described as South Central L.A. At the
same time, South L.A. has its own meaning tied to racial identities. In this chapter, I use the
title South Central L.A. to reflect the Black voices, Black lived experiences, and Black place-
making I encountered in my work. And although South Central is no longer

47
demographically a Black place, its histories permeate in collective Black memory, shaping,
narrating, and understanding identities through place.
Figure 6: Map of South Central Los Angeles

METHODS

To explore trauma imaginaries in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA), I engage the
spatial consciousnesses of African American/Black adults who grew up in SCLA (areas
South of the I-10, Watts, Inglewood, and Compton). Knowing self requires a spatial
consciousness. Spatial consciousness allows people to understand the centrality of space and
place in their biographies and how space and place influence all interactions and
transactions people experience (Harvey, 2005). To the extent that spatial consciousness is
shared, spatial imaginaries form in ways that shape and (re)produce place. Thus, spatial

48
imaginaries are the collective spatial consciousness of a group (Davoudi et al., 2018). And
where communal trauma manifests in the spatial imaginaries, trauma imaginaries emerge.
In this chapter, I identify trauma imaginaries in the Black spatial imaginaries of
SCLA by exploring the spatial consciousness of Black Angelenos. To do so, I cultivate placed
biographies to explore spatial consciousness—a method for traversing the intricate
relationship between time, place, and being. I embark on transdisciplinary and co-
productive ways of knowing, remixing oral history, participant observation,
autoethnography, artmaking, and Black ways of knowing (Isoke, 2018). This approach
allows for co-production, as it is designed to center the partners as the central knowledge
producers, informing an evolving method. Because of this approach, the process is
inconsistent across experiences, as questions and processes are responsive and often curated
by the participant. However, each process involved a self-directed journaling process with
three components that each partner chose to engage with in their own way and order:
1. Mapping- Partners map/draw/write about the spaces and places meaningful to
them and explain their spatial experience in SCLA.
2. Storytelling- Partners narrate their life’s events, experiences, and processes,
paying close attention to the places that shaped them.
3. Placed Memories- Partners visit places to reflect in proximity to their chosen
places of memory.

Figure 7: Diagram of Placed Biographies Process

49
During the process, I
photograph, film, and record
the person, the places, and the
person in the places to gather a
broad set of data. I capture
facial expressions, body
language, gazes, interactions,
speech patterns, rhythms,
inflections, and tone. In doing
so, I gather the visual data needed to analyze spatial imaginaries and their impact on the
body. The visual and audio components provide vital context and the collection of data that
centers Black storytelling (Toliver, 2021).
This journaling process creates a relational space between facilitator and partner,
which lasts anywhere from one hour to six, with the average being about three hours. In this
space, there is room to process—celebrate, grieve, remember, heal. In essence, the method
aims to be a liberating space, allowing participants to tell their stories and providing space
for them to make meaning of their placed biographies. In honoring this method's relational
aspect, I acknowledge how our stories intersect and how my experiences have shaped how
I’m interpreting spatial consciousness. Together, we seek out spatial consciousness in the
context of SCLA.
After these interactions, I analyze the dataset using three modes of analysis. First, I
engage in autoethnography, as I use reflection and writing to position myself and identify
how I influenced and responded to the participating partner and how I might project upon
the dataset. Second, I familiarize myself with the dataset (including photos, film, and
transcripts), finding connections and patterns. Third, I write transcripts as narratives, using
the words of the participant informed by their body language, inflections, emphasis, rhythm,
repetition, and tones. Then, I openly code and analyze the narratives and accompanying
visual data to categorize and identify common themes across placed biographies. Finally, as
Figure 8: Placed Biographies Process with Participant
Richard Burns

50
art is an essential Black way of knowing, I perform a thematic analysis of the visual data,
using double exposure as a method to understand how places are inscribed on our beings
and communicate the knowledge provided in the subtext of the experience. Because spatial
imaginaries are the collective consciousness of a group (Davoudi et al., 2018), I cross-
reference this spatial consciousness work with the spatial imaginaries present in SCLA's
literature and news media to distinguish between isolated experiences and collective
memories.

PLACED BIOGRAPHIES

The placed biographies (n=26) yielded an immense data set with varied stories
across the differentiated geographies of SCLA. Yet, the data also revealed a collective
consciousness, as the Black experience is both nuanced and communal. It is different, but it
is the same. The sameness reveals larger forces that, in the words of one participant,” bully”
Black Angelenos. This shared experience contributes to the Black spatial imaginary. Spatial
imaginaries are performative discourses that construct, influence, and produce space and
place and the collective understandings of place and spatial practices (Watkins, 2015). The
Black spatial imaginary carries a unique perspective that can be understood through
Figure 9: Diagram of Participating Partners by Age and Sex

51
McKittrick’s (2011) “Black sense of place,” which involves “the process of materially and
imaginatively situating historical and contemporary struggles against practices of
domination and the difficult entanglements of racial encounter (p. 949).” While racial
oppression is not the totality of the Black spatial imaginary, it does reveal a unique condition
of struggle produced by “the relational violence of modernity” (McKittrick 2011, p. 949).
These conditions of struggle can be articulated through trauma imaginaries, spatial
imaginaries that express, bring forth, and respond to the communal trauma embedded in
place and spatial processes (Poe, 2021). In this way, communal trauma is present in the
Black spatial imaginary as it is a placed-based racial oppression that induces traumatic
conditions rooted in place.
In this work, I found that trauma imaginaries exist in SCLA as they communicate
ongoing communal traumas that have never been redressed. While these placed biographies
produce a wealth of data, I focus this chapter on the communal trauma of being “boxed in.”
The term “boxed in” emerges from the data as participants used it to describe conditions
placed on them by societal structures. In the Placed Biographies presented, it is a spatial
phenomenon (being boxed in by confinement and segregation). It is a political phenomenon
(being boxed in by exclusion from constructive decision-making processes). It is a social
phenomenon (being boxed in by labels of Black, no education, ghetto). It is an economic
phenomenon (being boxed in by the distresses of poverty). Being the spatial-political-social-
economic phenomena of being “boxed in” describes a communal trauma, defined as a
targeted harm or wrong that induces a traumatic condition that disrupts time and place,
destroys place (relationship to place) resulting in psychosomatic responses, and produces
spatial processes that threaten the well-being of a community. The trauma of “boxed in” is
expressed and responded to with four dominant trauma imaginaries:
1. Survival- do what you can to stay alive in the box
2. Resistance- refuse to accept the conditions of the box
3. Activism- work to dismantle the box
4. Resilience- overcome the box to create something otherwise

52
Using five placed
biographies as a representative
sample of the dataset, I present four
categories of narratives. The first
narrative, Gang life was…what it
was, reveals the role of gang life in
creating the conditions of being
“boxed in.” Richard Burns grew up
on the Westside on Figueroa and
Gage. Now in his 60s, he reflected
on his experience as a gang member
for over 20 years. His story is not
unique, as gang life touched nearly
every participating partner in some
capacity. Charles Delong, young
enough to be Richard’s son, chose
gang life as a means of survival after
a traumatic experience at school and
became a gang veteran until he eventually got out. For some, like David Turner, a 30-
something scholar-activist, and LaRae Cantley, a housing advocate in her forties, gang life
exposure came through family connections.
The second set of narratives, Hood PTSD is a real thing, reveals how being boxed in
creates spatial circumstances that produce trauma. Martina uses “Hood PTSD” to describe
what it was like to grow up in a place where violence characterized her lived experiences.
Participating partners tend to define violence widely, not just as physical violence but also as
psychological violence. LaRae recounts the harm of experiencing the differential spaces and
Figure 11: Richard Burns
Figure 10: LaRae Cantley

53
places created by redlining. While
Richard explains the lasting impacts of
gang life, Charles recounts a critical
point that led to an existential
evaluation of this life.
In the third set of narratives,
Gentrification is a dangerous thing,
David, LaRae, and Martina discuss the
impacts of spatial processes such as
gentrification, erasure, and
neighborhood change. This topic came
up in more than half of the 26 placed
biographies as people were either
grappling with neighborhood changes,
working to provide affordable housing,
or trying to figure out how to stay in
place.
Finally, in Can we sit back and
heal?, everyone reflected on spaces of
healing. What it means to belong,
take space, and be resilient emerged
in the spatial imaginaries of Black
Angelenos. These five placed
biographies reveal themes of
resistance, survival, activism, and
resilience that permeated through the
entire dataset.
Figure 12: Charles Delong
Figure 13: Martina Giles
Figure 14: David Turner

54
Centering the voices of the participating partners, I use narratives from the placed
biographies to examine trauma imaginaries in SCLA. The narratives below are written in the
spoken words of Black Angelenos, who have spent most of their lives in South Central Los
Angeles. Ways of knowing can be found in their repetition, emphasis, and word choice. The
ways they structure sentences, the ways they shift focus, the ways they fluctuate between
first person and third person, and the ways they reenact conversations reveal data about
their spatial consciousness. Thus, I present their original data in the form of edited
narratives, inserting discussions between each spatial imaginary that identifies the trauma
imaginaries and associated communal trauma.
Gang life was… what it was.
Although gang life narratives involve a variety of mythology, folklore, and histories,
there is no doubt that it permeates the spatial imaginary of L.A., especially SCLA. When I
came to Los Angeles in 2017, discourses around gang life were minimal; if spoken about, it
was mainly in the past tense. For example, People would say, “Back in the day, when the
crips used to … or when the block was hot…” Gang life did not seem like it was a dominant
part of the present-day landscape. However, when I began to explore the past through these
placed biographies, the deep scars of gang life were ever-present, whether the participant
was involved in gang activity or not. These five stories reflect the stories presented in
popular media, music, television and film, documentaries, and academic research. As spatial
imaginaries are found in cultural artifacts such as these, the narratives here connect to a
larger collective spatial conscious that reveal gang life, whether mythology or reality, still
saturates the spatial imaginaries of L.A.

RICHARD BURNS

I grew up between Gage and Slauson, Figueroa and Hoover. That’s all I knew. I put
a star by 59th street; this is where it all started. Originally, I stayed at 59th and Bonsallo as
a child. I had a great time playing marbles and stuff in the field. I remember being able to

55
run the streets and go where I want to go. Then, I got introduced to gang life. I forget what
grade I was in, but after that, everything changed. It was an early age, like maybe 1976 or
so. I was maybe 10 or 11 when I joined.

Figure 15: Richard Burn’s Placed Biographies Map

56
That neighborhood birthed me into gang membership. That’s all we knew where we
lived. From then, my life just changed a whole lot from where I could maneuver to in the
city. Hoover is where we flowed. We didn’t travel to many other places outside of Hoover.
It was gang life from then on. And I wasn’t about just claiming a gang. I was a real gang
member. Wherever I went, it was like that’s who I was. It was my identity. It was the area
that I grew up in. We had some guys from 7-4 Hoover Crips used to stay down where we
lived at. They were cool. So, all my buddies from 59th street, we grew all over this area, we
just decided to start gang banging. 59th Street Hoover Crips, 5-9 over Crips. Initially, this
was all Bloods areas, but that was way back in the early 70s.
Everyone was gang members, my brothers, all my friends in that community. Gang
life was…what it was. I was in a gang with people I grew up with, with my boys that I
would do anything for. It wasn’t just belonging to group; it was more family connection. We
were family. That’s what it was. It was like, ‘hey, we all run together, we all live together, so
we gonna click up together. That’s what it was all about.’
Gang life was really like a real brotherhood back in the day. You wanted to be a part
of that, you know. Knowing that this dude got your back, and you got his back. And that’s
the way it flowed, and that felt exciting. It was exciting to be a part of a big group. It wasn’t
just 59th group, but you have Hoovers, from as far as 43rd all the way to 112th. You talkin’
about maybe 5-6-7-800 gang members that you are collectively a part of. You know that if
anything goes down, these niggas got your back. And that’s what it was about. We grew up
Hoover.
In the early days, I remember Rolling 60 Crips used to come in our neighborhood
East Coast Crips used to come kick it with us, you know what I mean? Before all the
shooting and killing started, they were somewhat of our allies in early ages. But as time
progressed… you know, the drug trade coming in… that changed everything. The East
Coast Crips was one of the first gangs that killed one of my first friends, Loco Smiley. I
believe that was in 1980. That was the first person I saw lose their life to gang violence. But
that didn’t stop us. You know how people might see death and want to change their life?

57
Well, it didn’t stop us; it just enraged us. So, a war started with the 60s East Coast Crips,
and then it was just war with everyone.
Hoover was so bad back in the days that most gangs didn’t really want to mess with
us. At some point, we changed from Hoover Crips to Hoover Criminals because we were
killing Bloods and having shootouts with Crips, killing them. So, we was like, ‘why would
you claim, continuously claim, to be Crips? Even though we say, Cuz, we kill Bloods, we kill
Crips.’ So our H-C-G stands for Hoover Criminal Gang. Instead of a blue rag, we bang an
orange rag.
Joining the gang changed everything. I had buddies that I ran with in junior high
school, but they came from 6 Deuce Brims. They were our known enemies. Even thought
they were real cool, we really couldn’t kick it like we wanted to. They couldn’t visit my pad;
I couldn’t go to their pad. So, our relationship kind of segregated. You lose some good
friends, not just to prison or violence, but because of the division of gangs.
LARAE CANTLEY
Figure 16: LaRae Cantley’s Placed Biography Map

58
My mom told me I was born in Hollywood and brought home to the projects. I think
about that hospital I was born in, surrounded by the nuns that had delivered me. They had
much different beliefs and lifestyles than the one my mom grew up under. I was brought
home to the projects. The projects we lived in were the Pueblos Projects. This was just one of
the projects I remember. The Pueblos is where the Bishop Piru gang organized. As I do my
own research— trying to make sense of my childhood— I found out that they’re the most
organized gang, similar to the mafia. So, it makes a lot of sense now, all of the shenanigans
that happened in my life.
You see, my dad was an interesting character. He remembered coming out of his
house, getting ready to go to school, and being approached all the time. It was like, ‘Look,
you gonna join this hood, or we’re going to do something for you or to you.’ He was like,
‘okay, I see this Black Panther movement kind of happening. And I see this gang movement
kind of happening. And I need some sort of protection because I got to walk these streets to
go to school.’ He eventually joined and began participating in gang activity.
This was around the time when the three-strikes law became more punitive in the
way it that it made it seem like there was more criminal activity when in fact it was just
more punitive laws. So, while my daddy stayed under the radar of the police as much as
possible, he also had a lot of opportunities to engage with the police. They harassed him.
They would drop him off in other hoods. If he didn’t comply with the illegal stuff they were
asking him to do, they would beat him up and take his drugs. After every interaction, he
would have to restart and figure it out. It was this weird dynamic because he would spend
time in jail, just long enough for us to lose everything and have to live with someone else. We
would have to figure life out all over again. And then, we would see him, and he would look
like life was working. As a kid, I’m like, ‘this is crazy. One day we have no clean clothes and
the next we are going to buy new clothes; why couldn’t we just like maintain washing?’
We had to move locations quite often. The gang activity was very dangerous to the
point where I witnessed shootouts, drive-bys, and houses being raided. We knew that at a

59
certain time, it was just best to be low to the ground. And when you hear certain things just
get low to the ground. What kid should grow up like that? Kind of knowing that code?
It was pretty tricky for me figuring this out. At one point, my life really started to
change, because my dad’s situation was so stressed. As a kid, he didn’t tell us that there was
hit out for his life from other gangs. He didn’t tell out how the police was harassing him. We
just saw a lot of drama and a lot of pain. Him knowing things and not being able to
communicate it. There was like this suicidal-homicidal type of thinking that he was holding
because he wanted to rid of his family before the police had a chance or the gang had a
chance. But again, as kids, we didn’t understand why he was acting so crazy.
My dad was selling the drugs, my mom got addicted to drugs, and my childhood was
very colorful. I think about how policies, how laws, how structures, supported those
decisions—the decision of my dad to join a gang. I wonder how did seeing factories close
down and seeing the education systems start to dismantle impact my parents’ decision. I
think about how policies made it to where there was so much separation; who had access to
quality education? Who had access to certain housing opportunities in certain areas? Who
had access to the jobs? Who was being deemed a criminal? It was laws that were put in
place just to make it seem like people are more dangerous. And there was this narrative,
right? The weird narrative that they still push out about Black people that is just so
irritating, that they won’t support narrative that truly capture the essence of Black people.
They won’t support the true narrative at a mass production the way they promote the
shenanigans.

DAVID TURNER

My pops used to be bangin’. He was from a blood set: the Bounty Hunters out of
Nickerson Gardens. He got strung out on drugs, but then changed his life. Met my mom,
and they had my sister and me. After that, he started doing intervention work and after-
school programs. He was one of those dudes that was trying to undo the shit that he was

60
doing back in the day. He was hard on us, but he was a good influence. But he was still
connected.
My dad would take me to this annual picnic. And it would be like, four sets. Like the
original. There was the Businessman, the Slauson’s, the Gladiators, and one more. Dang, I
can’t remember. But most of them, those “gangs,” existed largely to protect Black folks from
White folks. My dad and his friends were down with the Businessman. Most of them, well,
most of their children would become Bloods. It’s really interesting looking at the genealogy
of gangs and how they evolved. There is some sort of remnant of people staying true to the
hood, true to the principles or codes. Certain OGs get a lot of respect and deference. But
some of these lil’ homies don’t give a fuck about none of that. I know because I taught them.
But, with that being said, when you are trying to do the right thing, some folks see that, and
they respect it.
Because my pops was connected to gang life in that way, I had safety that I didn’t
know that I had. This one time me and my sister, we got pizza. We was actually on
Crenshaw and 109th walking back home, from the Pizza Hut by the check cashing place at
111th. There were these cats that came out the woodwork some fucking way. I don’t even
know where they came from. They was walking towards us. We stepped into the streetlight,
and I heard one of them say, ‘oh hell nah. Them Dupe’s kids. Leave em alone.’ So, we
started to scurry home, but we was like, ‘who the fuck is our dad?? Who is our dad that he
got that much juice? Who is our dad that these losers was getting ready to take whatever the
fuck we had and just saw us and said no, we’re good. Did he show them pictures of us, bro?
Like who is our dad?’
So, I had a Pops who was very much connected to gang life, but outside of it. He was
outside of it in a way that was trying to do good. Most folks respected that. They respect
OGs who have put in work, who have changed their lives, and who are working to do things
better in the community. Most of those folks are able to get what you would call: a pass.
That’s what I was able to get, a pass. And in places where my dad didn’t have juice, I got

61
away from gang life, because I was a hooper.
6
So, in the neighborhood, if they saw
someone playing ball, or someone who’s like, what they would say, ‘on their way,’ you
would get a pass. They wouldn’t mess with you.
You know now I kind of see myself as my dad. Being there with the little homies,
seeing what they go through, and being that support system that my cousin Aaron was for
me. I’ve taught lil’ homies from everywhere, different parts of Compton, Inglewood, you
know, from all over South Central. I can pull up in a hood and be like, ‘you know so and so.”
They will be like, ‘yeah we know him. How you know him? Where you from?’ And I will be
like, ‘I don’t bang, I organize.’ And it’s all copacetic, you know. For me, that’s how I kind of
keep my dad’s work alive. And if you are doing good work, people recognize, regardless of
whatever medium you are doing it in. People gon’ recognize it.
From my work, I know one of the reasons being a part of a gang is so important to a
lot of boys and young men is to have some kind of a space… they need to have a space
where they can be decision makers. For many of them they never have access to decision
making through participatory democracy. For Black people, oftentimes, our participation
in democratic processes is very bureaucratic, slow, and isn’t rooted in the type of change
young people want to see. When you toss in capitalism and all the other bullshit, it ends up
becoming a choice because people need to make money; people need to survive. Gangs
provide a place where their voices actually make a difference. So that’s how a lot of young
bruhs end up in that life or just drawn to it.
I remember some of my little homies that were banging were in situations where
they could have killed people and didn’t just because the person, they were aiming at was
also in the program I was working with. They would be at totally different schools and
totally different neighborhoods. But that proximity through the program, like literally being
in proximity to each other, not only helped changed the cycle of the violence. It also shows
that these young folks can take control of their own lives. Social science folks would write

6
A hooper or Ball player refers to David’s career as a Basketball Player

62
that experience up as toxic masculinity when it’s so much deeper than that. There’re so
many other parts—their lives, their decision-making processes, what they have access to—
that shape who they become. Let’s not get it twisted. Patriarchy and all that stuff is still
playing a role too, but it is so much more complex than that. It's a more nuanced picture.
CHARLES DELONG
I had an innocent childhood, and then my world was shook when I got to middle
school. My middle school was kind of like the center point of all Watts gangs. I went to
Markham Middle School, so you had every gang there. It wasn’t like your typical middle
school or high school, where you had like the Jocks here, and the Chess Club there or you had
the all the Blacks here and the Hispanics there. No, it was like you had that gang, this gang,
that gang. I learned very early to associate with the people group that I knew. The people
from the four-block radius of my neighborhood: Imperial Courts. At that time, anything and
everything I knew was the projects. Just only the projects.
I already kind of knew the dynamics—stay within the confines and people you know.
But I didn’t know how severe it was until I witnessed this kid who had no association with
gangs get pressed. He was probably from a different city or state. He was asked where he
was from, and the kid was like ‘oh, I don’t gangbang.’ The kid who asked him said, ‘oh, you
gonna gangbang’ and socked him. That kid had a seizure, and the ambulance had to come.
Immediately, that was the day, I knew my life changed. I knew that I had to be a part
of something. When you talk about gangs, and why people join gangs, it’s mostly for a sense
of brotherhood and a sense of want and belonging. Me joining a gang wasn’t necessarily
too much of that. Rather, it was just security. That’s how I ended up joining a gang. You had
to join a gang to be able to survive. I knew I had to associate with something or otherwise,
I’m like dead meat, you know. That day kind of shaped my life; it shaped my life very
dramatically. If that day would have never happened, I would have gone down a different,
route. My choices would have been different.
It forced me into this lifestyle of egotistic, very toxic masculinity. You have to show off
how thuggish you are, how manly you can be. Even though I had this passion to be an

63
individual and wanting to pursue life and learn about myself, I was forced to live in this box
where the only thing you can do is survive. If there’s one term that you can probably
associate with anyone here in Watts or anyone in the urban area is the term survival. Like
there’s something about Black people in general, surviving. We do what we need to do to
survive. The gang was my survival tactic. It protected me from potential harm.
Six years later, I was a gang veteran… just a teenager in high school. I was heavily
involved in gang activity, even though as I was partaking, I would think, ‘Bro, how did you
get here? This is not you, right?’ But again, you know, you got to put on this façade of
survival. To be able to be one of us is to live, you know, our lifestyle. And to live here is to be
one of us.

In these placed biographies, the trauma imaginaries of survival emerge as dominant
imaginaries that point to the communal trauma of gang life. Charles’ discourse, I was forced
to live in this box where the only thing you can do is survive, is a trauma imaginary that both
expresses the communal trauma of being boxed in and responds to this trauma with the
façade of survival. In evoking the trauma imaginary of survival, Charles articulates one such
condition of struggle present in the Black spatial imaginary (McKittrick, 2017): survival.
Charles's story reflects the popular discourse of gang life. It reveals that protection and
security are one of the main reasons young men join gangs, the other being for a sense of
brotherhood, as expressed by Richard. Thus, Charles’ façade of survival is not just his story,
rather, it is a trauma imaginary that provides a collective understanding of place and spatial
processes in ways that articulate a communal trauma is present.
More than 30 years before Charles's experience at Markham Middle school, LaRae’s
father faced the same decision. Needing some sort of protection because he got to walk these
streets to go to school, LaRae’s father decided his mode of protection would be gang life as
well. Similar to Charles, the trauma imaginary of survival motivated his decision. This
imaginary creates spaces of survival in LaRae’s childhood spatial consciousness. For
example, her discourse when you hear certain things just get low to the ground reveals a

64
trauma imaginary of survival, as she navigated the gang life that controlled what happened
in the everyday spaces she inhabited.
While on the surface, gang life seems to be the communal trauma communicated by
the spatial imaginary of survival, situating these placed biographies in a narrow and spatial
history reveals a more complicated narrative. While there is evidence of Black street gangs in
LA as early as 1930s (Alonso, 2010), many people credit the origins of contemporary gangs
to the formation of street clubs in the 1940s and 1950s. In Crips and Bloods: Made in
America (2008), Kusami, founding member of “The Slauson’s” describes the social context:
“We couldn’t be Cub Scouts, Boy scouts. Couldn’t be Explorer Scouts.
We couldn’t get involved in organized activity that would take us
anywhere that would bear us any kind of good fruit. So, we build an
ancillary alternative.”
Street-front fraternities emerged as an alternative to organized groups that prevented
Black membership. According to Alonso (2010), they also organized to combat white
violence happening in Los Angeles. White gangs had already formed as a product of the Ku
Klux Klan resurfacing in the 1940s and their mission was to fight against integration. That
is, they aimed to keep Black people in the spatial confinement in the Central-Vernon area by
attacking Black students at South Los Angeles schools and any Black person seen outside of
the confinement area.
Thus, while redlining and restrictive covenants did the work of segregation through
the bureaucracy (Redford, 2017), White street gangs illegally enforced and supported the
work of the government (Alonso, 2010). This work of segregation produced communal
trauma as segregation as a spatial process was a targeted wrong that threatened the
collective well-being of Black Angelenos. While there were minimal opportunities for Blacks
to experience other parts of the city, planning, development, and discriminatory policies,
created spatial processes of confinement leading to overcrowding, housing congestion, and
substandard accommodations. These dehumanizing conditions hurt the Black community
producing communal trauma (Collins, 1980). The effect of this communal trauma is seen in
LaRae’s spatial consciousness. Being born in Hollywood and brought home to the projects

65
functions as a present-day discourse rooted in these spatial histories. Segregation and
confinement created differentiated places still embedded into the landscape long after the
laws forbid such spatial processes.
In 1948, restrictive covenants were deemed unconstitutional, making it legal for
Blacks to live anywhere in the City. However, integration would not be easily attainable. The
battle was won in the courts, but enforcement happened on the streets. Thus, Black street
fraternities became the primary mode of protection from the terror of white street gangs.
And after the 1965 uprising, these fraternities (labeled gangs by the media and
police) shifted focus and unified against police brutality (Alonso, 2010). If white street gangs
illegally enforced spatial processes, the police were the “legal” enforcement. Police power
gave police the right to terrorize Blacks in whatever way they saw fit, whether
constitutionally or not. As Compton resident Josiah* stated, “everyone knows the L.A.
Sheriff’s office is the biggest gang in Los Angeles.” A sentiment backed up by recent
investigations into deputy gangs.
7
Thus, Black gangs organized, and as a result, the Black
Panther Party (BPP) of Southern California materialized. Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, a
member of the original Slauson’s Club, became President, and many gang members got
involved, not only with the BBP but also with the US organization founded by Ron Karenga
(also known as Maulana Karenga). Thus, gang life unfolded as a trauma imaginary of
activism as collective action became a mode of resistance to protect the Black community
from white gangs and deputy gangs.
The spatial, social, and cultural structures created by the Nation-State that led to
oppressive confinement created the conditions in which LaRae’s father decided to join a
gang to survive. I need protection because I got to walk these streets illustrates the trauma
imaginary of survival as it points to the need for protection as the communal trauma of
confinement had ravished his neighborhood. This neighborhood was created for him
through policies, planning, and development. As COUNTELPRO, an FBI covert program

7
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1088905429/lasd-gangs-investigation-los-angeles

66
created to surveil and eliminate political organizations seen as a threat to the Nation-State,
virtually annihilated the BPP in Southern California (Blackstock, 1976), Black street gangs
resurfaced to fill the void (Alonso, 2010). Thus, LaRae’s father found his survival in street
gangs.
By the time Richard experienced his coming of age around 1976, gang life was
embedded into the geography of SCLA. In Richard’s bio, gang life shifted. Kusami (Peralta,
2008) said, “Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that
they become the instruments of their own oppression.” In this way, gang life became a
communal trauma that induced targeted harms and wrongs that destroyed relationships to
place, causing psychosomatic responses, and reified spatial processes that threatened
collective well-being. My life just changed a whole lot from where I could maneuver to in the
city describes how gang life craved an already segregated Los Angeles into more nuanced
spaces of exclusion. Gang life imposed a self-segregation that limited members' ability to
move through place. Richard was boxed in by Gage, Slauson, Figueroa, and Hoover, and as
the neighborhood birthed me into gang life, there were no other options for him. Communal
trauma made it so.
In David’s spatial consciousness, activism emerges as a trauma imaginary as he sees
himself as doing the work of undoing that his dad did. Activism responds trauma of being
boxed in by gang life. He describes young Black men’s need to be decision-makers and not
having those needs met legitimately. Activism not only reveals the condition of struggle in
the Black spatial imaginary, but it also works to transform these conditions. In David’s
spatial consciousness, this is done through the work of organizations that aspire to empower
young men of color to live outside of the box placed upon them.
Activism has a deep history in Black communities across Los Angeles. In the case of
David, his activism shapes place by placing clashing gang members in proximate spaces to
change the cycle of violence. Through the program, he provides opportunities for
constructive decision-making processes. David’s experience shapes place as it changes how
violence is attached to place and prevents the loss of life. As identities are inherently attached

67
to place, shaping place as place shapes identities (Price, 2013; Gieryn, 2000), the loss of an
identity, a person, also produces a loss of place.
Hood PTSD is a real thing.
While Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has traditionally been associated with
military veterans, recent studies expose PTSD associated with inner-city living (Post et. al
2014; Gilikin et al., 2016; Peralta, 2008). Hood PTSD emerged in popular discourse around
2014 due to a news report that interpreted new research findings as a type of “hood
disease.”
8
This term carries much controversy, as many argue that it pathologizes people of
color placed in inner-city neighborhoods while ignoring the structural forces that made it so.
Others wonder why PTSD is appropriate for a continual traumatic experience.
9
Regardless
of the label, no one denies the reality that inner-city youth experience traumatic stress that
invades spatial imaginaries of the Hood. SCLA does not escape these imaginaries, as
Martina explicitly uses Hood PTSD to describe her own experiences in which the past is
ever-present. Like gang life, these stories are not isolated experiences; instead, they exist in
collective discourses around Hood living.

RICHARD BURNS

If you live your life in a gang like some of us have, you start to understand that gang
banging is not gonna be the end all be all. They say it’s only goes two ways: you go to
prison, or you end up dead. That’s what gang life is. For some of us, we made it out, and
thank God for that.
You lost a lot of people. That was the terrible part about it. One of my closest, closest
friends I lost to gang violence. I don’t think he would have been a gang banger if I wouldn’t
have enticed him to become one. All his life, he was a Jehovah's Witness. I pursued him for a
long time. He got killed in that 54th Street Massacre, and that just hurts me to this day. I

8
https://www.mic.com/articles/89691/hood-disease-is-everything-wrong-with-how-we-talk-about-inner-
city-youth
9
https://www.theroot.com/ptsd-in-the-inner-city-needs-a-name-that-respects-its-v-1790875722

68
don’t know what his life would have been like if I would not have pursued him to become
part of our gang. He could have had something else in life; his life could have meant so
much more. It still hurts me to this day. But I know he forgives me because that was the type
of person he was. And I know God forgives me too.
Even though I’ve been out of a gang now for like 20 years, it still kind of sits with me
in a way. In the way that I walk, in the way that you deal with people in relationships. The
company you keep. It sits with you. Even though I don’t claim to be a gang member now,
and I’m not an active gang member, the ways of the gang, it hasn’t left me. The
representation, what I live for, and the things I want in life, all that has changed. But the
ways still sit with me. Like, I can’t function in a big crowd of people because I always feel
like I’m on the watch for somebody to do something. I’m always watching my back from
activities I would have picked up on from gang life. I’m thinking, ‘man, he looks suspicious.
She looks suspicious.’ Those are just cues from that life that continue to carry over with you.
It’s like the persona is there, but the representation is not.
LARAE CANTLEY

In all this craziness I was living in, my mom decided to bus me out to the Valley. As a
kid, I had to wake up before sunrise, catch the MTA to get on the yellow bus to go to school,
where nobody looks like me. No one talks like me. I had to learn the dynamic of me needing
to be able to talk in a certain way to not be characterized. No one had my kind of problems.
No one was talking about how their dad was brought home by the police last night. No one
else was not knowing if there would be dinner when they got home. Everyone was talking
about quality problems, you know.
And the color looked different. It was speckles of Black people in the space. It was
different. As a child, I didn’t know about redlining. I just knew we lived in a lot of places, but
in very similar surroundings, very similar environment. Lots of trash. And just this feeling
of heaviness. But the Valley was different. Thinking about how it looks different over here
and how the books look different, it really shaped me.

69
Having access to the Valley schools was having access to this certain awareness. An
awareness of what could be. I’m glad that my mom got me to be able to attend the Valley
schools because I got to have access to a quality of thinking that wasn’t being supported in
my community. So, I would come home with the viola, and my parents would be like, ‘you
ain’t playing that shit. Nobody doing that over here.’ And I would go back to class, and the
teacher would be like, ‘LaRae, whatever we need to do to support you like we’ll make sure
you can get to the events, and we will make sure you have resin, and we will make sure you
have a rental to take home.’
But it wasn’t sustainable. There was a time I had to go to the neighborhood school
because life was so unstable. They actually wanted me to skip two grades. That’s how
different the education was. My mom was like, ‘oh no, your attendance is not up to par, and
I think if you do skip up, you will end up falling back.’ I think I definitely could have pulled it
off, but I understood mom’s concern. But I seen then clearly the difference in the quality of
education. I was in class bored as ever! Like, ‘What is happening?’
I was aware of how the books looked, how the desk looked, and the ways that the
schools looked more like a prison in the hood when they looked more like a science lab in the
Valley. At the hood school, there was these distractions of drama. We are living in these
tightly fitted conditions, being weighed down by the distresses of poverty. All the insecurities
and inequities impact people's moods and emotions. So as a child growing up under these
standards, and their parents are carrying such heavy weights, the children are carrying
stress that children should not be.
CHARLES DELONG
This particular day, it felt pretty weird. I’m not a guy who kind of leans heavily on
suspicion or conspiracy, but I had déjà vu that day. Like, around 2005-2006 was a bad
time to be outside. It was heavy with gun violence. I lost my cousin, who was like fairly close
in age with me, around 15, to a drive-by shooting. I literally saw him die. The next year, I’m
outside with a friend, and he persuades me to go over to one of his friends' houses. I knew it

70
was a bad idea. I
was like, ‘hey man;
you don’t know the
climate that’s going
on right now. It’s 12
o’clock at night. You
need to be inside.
Folks getting shot.’
But we decided to go
anyway.
We’re
outside, and I‘m
pacing back and forth. I’m getting cold. Getting a little bit nervous because it’s getting later
into the morning. Then, I see this van. It’s like the van from Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid,
M.A.A.D. City Album cover. So, the van pulled up, the passenger door opens, and a young
guy in all Black jumps out and decides to start shooting at us with an assault rifle. I can
remember thinking, ‘Dang, dude, like, how did I get in this predicament.’ All these thoughts
are racing in a fraction of a second, until I pop out of it and told myself, ‘Run dude, you
getting shot at.’ As I run, I slip. Getting up, I just book it and run behind the building. When I
fell, I thought I had just slipped, but I fell because I was shot in the leg. I didn’t even know
until after the ambulance came; it took them like 30 minutes to show up.
That was a moment in my life where I decided, this is not the lifestyle for me. Being
shot didn’t actually have too much of a physical effect on me. But it made me analyze my
position. You know, where I was in life at the time. It forced me to evaluate just all the things
I was involving myself in. I knew for a while I was different. And I was just kind of like
going along with the process. I knew no other option. I knew nothing else. There’s nothing in
my environment that showed something opposite. Unfortunately, a lot of my friends have
Figure 17: Charles Delong at the Place he was Shot

71
passed away. Gang violence had shaped my mind and world since 11 or 12 but being shot
gave me a different perspective.
MARTINA GILES
I felt like I was always put in this box. I felt the world just wanted to box me in. Those
four walls were Black, ghetto, no education… I don’t know what the fourth would be, but I
just felt boxed in. But I didn’t grow up accepting that box.
Before my parents moved in the neighborhood, it was definitely predominantly
White. Five or ten years prior to that, it was mostly white. Then, it changed. By the like,
Rodney King era, the whole area was Black. My neighborhood was Black, with a few Latinx
families there. Back then, it was very common for me to just be walking out my house to go
to the store and see fights. I would see people getting stabbed and stuff like that. There was a
lot of robberies; everyone was always getting robbed. But we had some protection because
my dad had relationships with the people in the neighborhood. Our house wasn’t really a
target. Shooting was normal. If you didn’t hear gunshots every day, it wasn’t a day in
Compton. It just wasn’t when I was growing up. It was just a normal thing. But it shouldn’t
have been. That’s why I say Hood PTSD is a real thing.
I remember being a child, no older than eight years old, maybe seven. My mom was
taking me and my sister and brother to the neighborhood park. You know, we was just
trying to do normal family things. We get there, and it’s like, ‘boom.’ Gunshots. Fire. I
remember just running. Tryna go through a window for cover. Grabbing my sister and my
brother. I was like seven. That is the difference between hood experiences versus elsewhere.
Those instances just stay with you. They stick in your memory. I’m like, ‘we just wanted to
spend time as a family.’ But this is the place we lived. And it was like, weird dynamic. Even
though I was frustrated, I knew a lot of gang members. A lot of people that were in the
struggle. And I don’t have any judgement. It’s all love. I see it like this: you never had to live
that person’s life, so you can’t say, ‘here is what I would’ve done or here is what they should
have done.’ That’s pure ignorance. At the end of the day, people make their choices, but you
don’t know the conditions upon which they had to make those choices.

72
In Compton we’re trying to figure it out. Nothing is handed to us. There is a beauty
in that struggle. People just put you in the box, and they don’t understand what it is like
being in those different environments, or they don’t appreciate different types of love, the
different types of creativity that comes from being in a place where you have to just figure it
out. I always say, Black people, you can put us anywhere, and we’re gonna be great.
Because we have had to be great, in order to at least get the bare minimum. You put us
somewhere, and we figure it out.

Martina introduces another dominant trauma imaginary: resistance. Her discourse
But I didn’t grow up accepting that box materializes a trauma imaginary that expresses the
communal trauma of being boxed in by the spatial and social implications of calling
Compton home. It also responds to this trauma by refusing to accept the box. Resistance is a
mode of protection that reveals the conditions of struggle present in the Black spatial
imaginary by confronting such conditions. For Martina, resisting is creating space for herself
outside of the box, even while the box haunts her memories.
In contextualizing her bio in the metaphor of the box, Martina defines the box as
labels placed upon Compton residents that define them as Black, ghetto, and having no
education. These labels point to the communal trauma of ghettoization, described by Brown
et al. (2012) as “poverty and neighborhood deterioration” (p. 213). In this work, I describe
ghettoization as the process by which spatial imaginaries create a racialized place-based
identity (Watkins, 2015). Spatial imaginaries do not escape the concepts of power and
“othering” embedded in the spatial processes that make people, places, and ideas naturally
different and inferior (Sharp, 2009). However, there is nothing natural about ghettoization.
It is the process by which whiteness racializes space and place to create the benefits of
whiteness through the oppression of the other (Lipsitz, 2013; Razack, 2018). It is the
process of materializing the ghetto using performative discourses that constructs labels
through policies, practices, and spatial processes. Thus, the box placed upon Martina is the

73
ghetto and all of its associated social, cultural, political, and economic meanings. This
placement causes Hood PTSD.
Ghettoization occurs through policies and practices that exclude people from
geographic freedom. Restrictive covenants, racial zoning, and redlining restricted
communities of color to ethnic enclaves that were systematically disinvested from producing
slum-like characteristics (Brown et al., 2012). Ghettoization involves the practice of
excluding African Americans from prosperous industries relegating them to menial jobs with
insufficient pay (Klein and Schiesl, 1990). It is the process of telling what LaRae calls “weird
narratives” developed from popular media's white gaze, thereby solidifying its reality. It is
the practice of violence through policing or unchecked white violence allowed to run rapidly
through Black communities and the resulting expression of rage communicated through
uprisings. While this is not an exhaustive list of the processes and practices of ghettoization,
it provides evidence that ghettoization can be identified as a targeted, racialized wrong that
produces traumatic conditions aligned with communal trauma.
Ghettoization produces the communal trauma of differentiated places, a spatial
process that threatens collective well-being. This trauma is communicated and responded to
by the trauma imaginary of resistance, leading to the decision to bus LaRae out to the Valley
Schools. In her Hood PTSD narrative, LaRae describes what it is like for a child to
experience differentiated spaces, comparing her time at the Valley Schools to her time at the
Hood Schools. Her assessment that’s how different the education was reveals how resources
are distributed inequitable, as whiteness demands quality at the expense of Black
communities (Lipstiz, 2011). Being weighed down by the distress of poverty is not a choice
or a product of laziness. Instead, the weight of poverty is intentionally distributed by systems
of power (Foucault, 1980), processes of othering (Razack, 2018), hierarchies of difference
(Hall, 2017), and histories of violence (Feagin & Ducey, 2018).
Ghettoization also carries the characteristics of communal trauma that disrupts time
and place. The gun violence that interrupted Martina’s visit to the park continues to
interrupt her consciousness; she explains how those instances just stay with you and stick in

74
your memory. This commentary communicates the disruptions of time and place
coordinates resulting from the structural processes that produce hood life and the trauma
condition of Hood PTSD. Yet these productions of hood life produce trauma imaginaries of
resistance, as Martina refuses to accept the narrative of gang members placed upon her by
popular discourse. In communicating, I don’t have any judgment, and it’s all love, Martina
resists the box that dehumanizes and boils a place down to Black, ghetto, and no education.
This disruption of time and place is also seen in the narratives of Richard and
Charles. For Richard, it is how gang life still sits with him even though he has been out of
gang life for over 20 years. He has taken on a new identity, but in certain circumstances,
gang life reemerges. The trauma of loss also reveals this disruption of time and place, as he
switches from past tense to present when discusses the murder of his friend. In his
narrative, he explains how his friend got killed in that 54th Street Massacre (the past) and
how that just hurts me to this day (the present). He laments his life could have meant so
much more (the past), but declares I know he forgives (the present) me because that was the
type of person he was (the past).
In Charles’s narrative, the shooting triggered an existential evaluation of life. In real-
time, conceptions of time and place are disrupted as he processes the reality of being shot at
while needing to run for cover. In expressing how Gang violence had shaped my mind and
world since 11 or 12 but being shot gave me a different perspective, Charles experience not
only disrupted time and place and brought forth another response to communal trauma,
resistance. Thus, his spatial imaginary shifted from survival to resistance as he decided to
refuse the box's conditions by asserting, that was a moment in my life where I decided this is
not the lifestyle for me.
Gentrification is a dangerous thing.
Gentrification is a buzzword that has taken on many meanings. In my work in L.A.,
different folks used unique meanings when discussing gentrification. While the term root
word applies to old English use of the word gentry to describe the middle-class,

75
gentrification as a process refers to the change that occurs in inner-city neighborhoods when
middle-class populations invade them (Glass, 2010). These changes include the processes of
displacement and erasure presented by the following narratives. Gentrification is not unique
to these stories; instead, it is a household term as “the price of land becomes a central
economic determinate and a dominant political issue” (Stein, 2019, p. 5). Thus,
gentrification dominates the spatial imaginaries of cities across America, especially in L.A.,
where Market forces create development pressures, making it difficult for people to stay in
place.

LARAE CANTLEY
I enrolled in a program for teen moms that incentivized them to stay in school. Once
I graduated, they gave me money. That’s what I used as a down payment to get out of my
mom’s house. And then, I married because that was what religion told you to do. It’s like,
‘you can’t stay in a house with the person unless you’re married. And I thought I needed
that. I thought I needed two incomes. And eventually, when multiple kids came, I thought I
needed help with that too. It didn’t work out well. It was an abusive relationship. We both
came from very highly stressed situations where we never had access to therapy to work
things out. Now you have two unhealthy people coming together thinking they was gonna
save each other. It don’t work.
We moved so far away from family, so it was easy for the outside family to think, ‘oh,
they’re fine.’ We moved to Palmdale because there was just no affordable living in Los
Angeles, especially for a young child who just graduated from high school. Palmdale was
very underdeveloped when we were there. There wasn’t even a satellite connection where
you could watch TV. So, there we were. Out there in Palmdale. Away from family. away
from everything that I knew. This is something that really irritates me about understanding
that social connection being disrupted: When people are coming in to purchase properties,
they are moving people out who have been living there for-freakin’-e-v-e-r. Now people

76
have been displaced. They have to move to wherever it feels like their income can afford
instead of choosing where it's best for them to live. Man, to be able to say, ‘I choose to live
here because this is where I choose to live.’ I have a clearer understanding of why
gentrification is a dangerous thing. When people are disconnected from that socialized
structure that makes them feel a sense of safety, it’s like taking their voice away. That
confidence to be able to speak up and to be fully authentic and express themselves is that
much more toned down because you don’t got nobody to stand with you. You are going into
foreign places, and that is very dangerous.
So, we did that for long enough until the abusive situations got way out of control.
We bounced around some, but the farther I got away from family, the more dangerous
things got. Life got super hard again, going from abuser to homelessness and back. And
finally, I was like, I’m done. I need to figure this out. I don’t care what it takes. I’m leaving.
So, me and my children ended up in my mom’s single bedroom.
DAVID TURNER
Most working-class folks lived in different parts of South Central, whether it was the
west side or east side. Maybe even some parts of Compton or Inglewood. Some stayed in
Hawthorne. People lived all over the place, and if you didn’t move all around, you likely
went to school around. So, most Black people have this fluid story because you were
economically unstable. You might have had one family member that was stable and who
was able to anchor folks here.
My Aunt Jerry was the anchor for my family. She passed in 2012; after she left,
everybody is gone. So, it’s pretty intense here. My dad's family all lived in L.A. He has seven
siblings. At one point, the entire family lived along Crenshaw Boulevard. My Aunt Cynthia
(we called her Cyntwo) lived of off 54th. My Aunt Julia stayed with Aunt Jerry, who was the
family anchor. They stayed off 73rd, and my Uncle Donald would always be there even
though he lived in Compton. It was like he was practically living at Aunt Jerry’s. Aunt Eileen
stayed off 82nd and Crenshaw. My Aunt Di, she lived off 111th and Crenshaw, and her
daughter, who was old enough to be my aunt, stayed on 113th. And we stayed off 104th and

77
Crenshaw in the bottom. I mean you couldn’t walk 10 blocks down Crenshaw with, running
into somebody’s house you were related to.
But after my Aunt Jerry passed, people started moving. Some folks moved to the
Inland Empire. Some folks moved to Vegas. A lot of the younger generation is still out here.
The millennial age folks. Its 9 of us. But everyone else is gone. Gentrification! Folks just
couldn’t afford to stay. Rents started going up. My Aunt Jerry, she owned properties
everywhere. She had an apartment building around the corner from the El Pollo Loco on
LaBrea. She had a condo near 69th and Western. She had her house and owned the house
on 82nd. She was the anchor because she had multiple properties that family was able to
move between when times were getting hard. After she passed, it’s like, ‘who is going to take
care of those properties now?’ Her kids weren’t necessarily old enough. So, folks had to
leave.
Figure 18: David Turner’s Place Biography Map

78
There is a lot of activity in–plots of bringing commerce to—Crenshaw now. But it’s
bringing commerce at the expense of the people who live here. People don’t consider what it
means to care about the people who currently live there. People totally disregard renters as
political stakeholders. Then, the geography of the landscape of a place gets forgotten.
For example, there was a barber shop off Crenshaw and 110th. Mr. Ron’s Art of Barbery.
Mr. Ron was an old head brother. You go
there, you’re gonna be there at least two
hours. It was an amazing space. He had
archival pictures from when the Lakers won
championships back in the 80s. He had
photos on his wall of all the people who
would get their hair cut there. I was on that
wall. My dad was on that wall. My cousin
Harold was on that wall and my cousin
David.
Because of Mr. Ron, I got my first
job. He gave me a free haircut, so I could
look relatively decent. He told me all I had to
do was make sure I get the job. That was
payment enough. So, he hooked me up, and then I went back and gave him my little $20
after I got my first check. He was one of those community pillars, you know. At some point
in 2018, it just closed. I remember going up there one day to give them some news about
how I was doing. And he wasn’t there. I kept going up there. I kept calling, and there was
never an answer. Now it’s a fucking karaoke bar. I’m like, ‘what the fuck?’ This was a
legitimate pillar of the community, for that to just disappear and to evaporate like it never
was even there.
That’s just one place lost to the changing landscape of Los Angeles. I mean, I think
about Ujima. So, basketball was central to my identity. So parks played a really big role. St.
Figure 19: Mr. Ron’s Art of Barbary
Photo From Google Maps

79
Andrew’s Park, Ladera Park, Darby, Rogers, you know? Those were the parks I was
allowed to go either because my dad knew people, or my cousins knew people. They knew I
wasn’t going to get messed with because I was Dupe’s son. I was also able to hoop at a park
in Nickerson Gardens and another one—it used to be called Ujima Village. That’s another
spatial project that got erased. It was a whole public housing project that was founded by
Maulana Karenga and the US Organization. They were kind of the rivals of the Black
Panther Party but rooted in African cultural history and values and shit. They tore that
whole place down. It really used to be a space where I would spend weeks at a time. I had a
godmother who lived there. That whole shit is gone. That was a whole hood. There are
people who still probable got ‘Village Town Piru’ tatted on them, and it’s like, ‘Village Town
don’t exist no more, bruh.’ It’s crazy to think that you can really bang for a hood that
tomorrow won’t even be there.
It’s not an uncommon experience for things to just shift like that. You know, just
seeing White people walking dogs where neighborhood Pirus hang out. That’s just weird. It’s
a shift, though. There is only one of two roads that we can go. There is no in-between. We
either double down on building racial solidarity. We double down on centering those most
marginalized. We double down on progressive values and push through a unified political
agenda that moves us closer to freedom. Or we become Oakland.
We need to be able to secure key victories that include affordable housing, resources
for the working class and poor folks, and getting unhoused folks housed. That is one
direction that would keep the demographic makeup of South Central Los Angeles relatively
intact. The only way to do this is to have an analysis of political economy in everything we
do. We can’t double down without money. We need a political economy approach. When I
say political economy… well, for example, so in my work, we use community schools’ model;
we invest directly in the student. We take school police money, and we use it for a Black
student achievement plan. Yeah, we taking money from cops and giving it to Black people.
Where else is that happening? We aren’t taking symbolic victories anymore. We really
pushing investment strategies to really build up our communities.

80

MARTINA GILES

By my late teens, the neighborhood started slowly changing again. You saw more
Latinx families, and then a lot more. There was less violence going on too. A lot of people
were moving out at that time as well. I forget the initiative, but there was this really big
initiative in Compton that was targeting gang violence. I can’t believe I’m blanking on the
name. I mean, it was h-u-u-g-e. It was controversial. What makes it controversial is that
there is a group of people that means well. They want to do the right thing. And then there is
another group of people who just want Black folks out of here, you know. I think efforts to
make a community safe is a good thing. But the means used to do it need work.
When it comes to gangs, the rehabilitation piece is missing. It just like, ‘bro, you out
of here. We throwing you in jail.’ There was no type of alternative. No option for them. Like,
what if they are really trying to get out of that life? And what if they just needed some
resources, you know? That’s not even a conversation for gang members. Now I think there
is some wisdom in understanding that people are going to be themselves. For some, it
doesn’t matter what you give them, they’re going to do the same thing, because it’s habitual
for them. That’s all they know and that’s all they are going to do. But that is not most people.
And those people don’t get a chance because the rehabilitation piece was never even thrown
in there. It’s there in some capacity for the homeless. But when it comes to resources for
gang members, there was nothing. And there are people in jail right now that I wish just
were given a different environment.
The gang initiative really changed the neighborhood. By the time I went to college, I
started to see more White families moving in and Asian as well. Now the neighborhood is
probably half Black, 35% Latinx, and the rest are White and Asian people trickling in. That’s
really changing the dynamic of the area too. Back in the day, people would go for a run, but
it wasn’t really a thing. Now you see White folks running around and Asians running in my
area. You see a lot more people walking with ease than before. Like before, if you were

81
walking around, you had a stick. You know, it’s these little subtle changes that communicate
safety. It’s crazy, how those signals communicate to our brain.
In David’s bio, activism emerges again as a trauma imaginary induced by
gentrification. While ghettoization is a box that produces deteriorating places, gentrification
is a box that produces instability and dispossession from place. Both are spatial processes of
power and oppression. David’s passionate discourse, “doubling down” on racial solidarity,
centering the most marginalized, progressive values, and freedom through a political
economy approach, evokes the trauma imaginary of activism as it seeks to dismantle
gentrification processes that permeate SCLA. This imaginary situates gentrification in
communal trauma, as it is a spatial process that threatens collective well-being.
While gentrification is primarily understood as a class-based phenomenon, given the
entanglement of class and race in the U. S. (Molina, 2018), many Black Angelenos see is a
targeted process of racialized erasure. Grigsby and Sojoyner (2018) theorize gentrification as
the “practice of capitalist surveillance,” and as capitalism and racism are co-constructed
(Robinson, 2020; Hall, 1980), gentrification then is a racialized process with one outcome
“the making of homelessness” (Grigsby and Sojoyner, 2018). LaRae’s narrative illustrates
this process, as she chronicles the dangers of not having access to affordable housing, being
taken away from social structures, and ultimately becoming homeless.
David provides concrete examples of how gentrification destroys place and threatens
collective well-being through the losses of Mr. Ron’s Art of Barbary and Ujima Village.
While Mr. Ron’s is still a mystery, the case of Ujima Village played out in popular discourse
and news media. With financing from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), Black community leaders initiated the housing project named Ujima,
a Swahili word that means “collective work and responsibility.” The housing complex, built
by Black people for working-class Black people, existed on an Exxon-Mobil Tank farm site.
When the property was sold to the LA County Housing Authority in 1995, a soil test
revealed chemicals in the soil. However, the initial analysis found no significant risk to
residents. Again, in 2007, testing resulted in no significant findings that the contamination

82
adversely impacted health outcomes. In 2009, the LA county Housing Authority declared
the site blighted and ordered all tenants to vacate so the complex could be demolished. In
2010, a lawsuit was filed alleging that the soil contamination caused at least 38 deaths and a
variety of illnesses. Eventually, Ujima Village was disappeared.
LaRae’s spatial
consciousness illustrates how
gentrification, as a communal
trauma, causes the
destruction of relationship to
place, thereby challenging
identity and causing
psychosomatic reactions.
LaRae describes how when
people are displaced, they
lose their ability to choose
their community. As people are disconnected from place, their emotional ecosystems are
destroyed (Fullilove, 2016). LaRae describes this as taking their voice away. This challenges
identity and induces psychosomatic reactions in how it strips agency or, in LaRae’s words,
confidence to speak up and be fully authentic and express themselves is much more toned
down because nobody is there to stand with you. This communal trauma is dangerous as it
can lead to individual physical and psychological trauma when isolation from self-created
socialized structures makes people vulnerable to domestic violence.
In Martina’s placed biography, we understand gentrification as an issue of
affordability and political economy, as she infers that the carceral state is responsible for
changing her neighborhood dynamics. Although I could not pinpoint the exact program
Martina was referencing, many programs have existed between 1980 and 2020 that aimed
“to clean up the streets.” For example, Compton received support from The National Public
Safety Partnership, a Department of Justice program that provided interagency frameworks
Figure 20: The Site of Ujima Village
Photo by Jessica Roberts

83
to promote public and community safety. Between 2015 and 2018, 4,000 people were
displaced from the community into the carceral system, paving the way for middle-class
Asian and White folks to take advantage of the Compton housing market.
Gang violence as a communal trauma is dealt with by investing in the prison
industrial complex, which induces more communal trauma (Felker-Kantor, 2018). While
Martina wants community safety, she resists the approaches that mediate trauma with more
trauma. She asks why don’t gang get the same extension of humanity as other populations,
especially when some need a different environment? This question points to the communal
trauma of ghettoization or differentiated spaces that created the environment for gangs to
exist in the first place.
Can we sit back and heal?
In choosing Black Angelenos still living in Los Angeles as participants, I have
automatically created a limitation. In one capacity or another, these people have shown a
degree of resilience to survive, resist or dismantle the box. In recent years, resilience has
entered popular discourse as it describes the ability to withstand (Folke, 2006). In the
context of this work, resilience emerged as the ability to overcome the box to create
something otherwise. Participants advocate for spaces of healing, places to start over, spaces
to be unapologetically Black, and places to be confident and successful. Thus, trauma
imaginaries manifest through participants' determination to create these spaces of resilience.

RICHARD BURNS
I grew up in the gang. I was one of the first young homies in the gang. When the
gang started, I was there, so it wasn’t like I had to perform any rituals to get in. And I didn’t
have to do anything to get out. What happened was I went to prison in 1994. I did 32
months. I was up against two strikes, and at that time, that three strikes law was heavy. I
made a decision with the help of God. He made the decision for me, and I just walked it out.
When I was released from prison in 1996, that was it. I might have hung out for about a

84
year or so after that. But it didn’t have that same attraction for me anymore. From ‘76 up to
‘94, it was getting mad anyway. And I knew it was time for me to identify my life with
something else. To do that, though, I had to get out of the inner-city.
We moved to the Valley for a few years. Living in the Valley, you aren’t gonna run
into too many people. But I had to get used to doing nothing. It wasn’t nothing to do. I found
a job out there, and that’s one thing I really wanted to do. I wanted to get out of prison and
find me a job. I didn’t care if it was low-paying or whatever. I knew that without a track
record of employment, it was going to be hard to get a meaningful job. I found little jobs
here and there. Then, I got hired at this telecommunications company. That was when I got
introduced to the corporate environment. But I got laid off 2000. Within five months, I got
another job, and I have been there ever since. May of 2001 was my hire date, and I’m glad I
got hired before 9-11. I wouldn’t been able to get a job after. Because my record was so
jacked up, no one would have wanted to hire me.
LARAE CANTLEY
I had signed up for housing way back in 1998, when I was that 15-year-old girl who
found out I was pregnant. They contacted in 2012. That’s when I got access to that housing.
2012. We left the abusive relationship in 2006. Between 2006 and 2012, we collected so
much trauma; we collected so much identity. We were just like losing ourselves more and
more, more and more. We were just modifying ourselves to get access to what we needed. It
was like, ‘okay, how do we get into this service? How do we stay in this house for a while?
How do we be a part of this community for a minute? Our lives became this, and we just
was losing ourselves.
I was grateful for the program I got in, in 2012. It was an income-based housing.
But at the same time, I couldn’t understand how they expected us to meet the requirements
to access this income-based housing? It was like you have to be doing all these things. It was
like, ‘put this amount of hours in here, put these hours in there if you want to stay in low-
income housing.’ So, life was really difficult because I have children who have been

85
modifying. In a sense, they have never experienced a real childhood because we’ve been
back and forth, moving all around.
They struggled, so to try to get the help they needed, my days were filled with my
mental health sessions, therapy sessions, family sessions, and domestic violence classes. I’m
trying to volunteer at schools to be supportive of my children. And I got to fill out all this
weird-ass paperwork. I mean, piles and piles of paperwork. There was no support that was
a holistic process, where we’re making sure we’re all connected at a table so that the
parent’s life is not as strained trying to get the services they and their family need. It’s like
the system wants you to enter into this game you have to navigate to get to the program.
Then, they what you to find a job? It’s like, ‘when and where am I gonna have time to find a
job?’ It’s like, you trying to survive, but when do you get to sit back and heal?
That’s one thing I vouch for: an opportunity for a person who’s lived chronically
homeless to get into that space and be able to prioritize their healing without missing a meal
because they’re prioritizing their healing. They should not be expected to stand in the food
line every Tuesday. They need to sit back and process, like, ‘ohh shit, I just finished living
like that. Now I need to focus on putting the healing pieces together. But they don’t mean I
don’t want good food or have an opportunity to sit down and read a book and probably
gain some friends if I choose to right now.’
In my work, I advocate for some opportunity for healing to be supported. There
should be some incentivizing of healing. And that shouldn’t always be connected to mental
health services through the westernized practices because too many people are missing out
on being able to be fully present and compassionate and loving for themselves and their
families with this idea of what mental health services are and the ways it puts people in
certain buckets. We need to make mental health services more expansive and accessible
based on the culture and the traditions, and what matters to people.
I think about what Martin Luther King, Jr. stated one time. Something like, ‘it’s one
thing for you to be my ally and low-key trying to get me, right? Instead of you being
someone who I already know is going to be trying to get me.’ The system plays it wa-a-a-y

86
too well. And it’s frustrating because you have people who are in that façade of caring. They
build and design systems and services for you to go through. They are the fundraisers. They
are the data holders and keepers. They are the gatekeepers. They are the ones sitting at the
tables, controlling the conversations, and bringing folks in to check the diversity box to
make them feel good about dismantling white supremacy. It’s sickening. It’s crazy because
they will get the funding and make it seem as though they’re really working to push forth an
effort for equitable quality of living. When in fact, they’re looking for something to put their
name on. They just like, ‘I want the credit for helping Black people.’ Essentially, it’s like, “I
will make money off of your Black ass, while all the time saying I helped you.’
It's like, ‘why can’t you just help us.’ If we say we need help, we need help. Just help
us. Don’t make us have to bow to poverty. Don’t make us have to tell this most horrendous
story. Don’t make us have to modify stuff to fit into your program and service. Chill on all
that and allow for equitable opportunities for Black people to heal, to have a place to heal at
and be able to become… Man, if I think about the ways that people have pulled themselves
together with all of the oppressions and that they are purposeful in society. Imagine if they
didn’t have so many barriers in the way. How much more purposeful would they be in
society? So if we could just put the policies in place that let us take the risk. Let us make the
programs. Let us be the decision-makers. Let us figure it out because we are the ones living
it. The pandemic showed us that even with all the securities they have put in place for
themselves, if they don’t see themselves tied up into the same oppressive structures, they are
going down with us. It may look different, ‘but you going down, buddy?’
DAVID TURNER
It’s important that we take space. We have to do that wherever we go. It was the
Bloomfield trip. We took the SJLI boys and Brother Crusade to San Diego State. We were on
campus, you know, doing a tour and all that stuff. At the end of the retreat, we was in a
circle, and I was just like, ‘y’all wanna turn up one time?’ we did the BYP chant. It goes,
Unapologetically,
Black.

87
Unapologetically,
Black.
Unapologetically,
Black.
Unapologetically,
Black, Black, Black, Black.
Unapologetically,
Black.
And we was just turn’t up, You know? We took space that day—all these Black boys
from South Central, Inglewood, Compton, Watts. Here we are in the middle of WHITE-ass
San Diego, just being unapologetically Black. For me, it’s being able to make the space for
them to do that and for them to be proud of that. For me, that is what makes the most
difference—teaching lil’ homies how to take space. Belonging for me is being with my people
wherever we find ourselves to me. And when we can do that and take that space. That’s
powerful. You know, I only ever feel that when I’m with the people. I feel it when I’m
organizing. I never felt that just alone. That power exists in community.
CHARLES DELONG
It got worse when I left. I didn’t have a stable living condition. My English teacher
was trying to find a place, but he had family and ministry obligations, and we just couldn’t
find anywhere to stay. He put me up in a motel for a week or two, but I didn’t want to
become his problem. I didn’t want to be a burden on him and his family. So, I just stopped
communicating with everybody, and I became homeless for like a year and a half. I was
working for Hollister and living under a slide in Palos Verdes. I was a kid trying to survive
on my own. Then, I sought out transitional living, because I had resources under the
program my aunt used to foster us.
This program placed me in transitional living in Gardena, and I had a house job and
also worked for a restaurant at the time. The program was set up to where you pay like
$200 a month and at the end of the program, like 2 or 3 years, you get a percentage of that

88
moneyback to jumpstart your life. Four or five months into the program, one of the
coordinators in charge thought I was using the program because I wasn’t the “stereotype.” I
didn’t speak, I didn’t look, I didn’t dress a certain type of way. They thought I was trying to
take advantage of the system, but I was just trying to be better. So, I was kicked out of the
program simply for being me and wanting to develop. That was the hardest thing to face. I
was like, ‘man, I can’t catch a break.’
I had to go in front of this board or whatever, like a group of people, and defend
myself. I was like, “I can’t tell you that I do have resources because I don’t. I wouldn’t be
here if I did. It’s not my fault that I speak like this. You haven’t given me concrete evidence
that prove I have other resources. You going off a hunch because I don’t fit the stereotype. I
don’t fit the mold you are looking for.”
Like, two weeks prior to having to move out, I was searching for other transitional
housing programs. At that point, I was just so embarrassed to stay in L.A., or even
California. I wanted to move to another city. I was interested in fashion, so I’m like, ‘New
York. I’m going to New York, the leading force in fashion.’ So, I reached out to a transitional
program under Covenant House and got some information. So, when I received my money
back from the previous program, I paid a few bills, then booked a one-way ticket to New
York. That was a long time ago, but after a couple of years, I found my way back to Los
Angeles.
Martina Giles
My dad was big on proving people wrong. How peopled viewed people from
Compton was personal for him. He was like:
‘Yeah, I’m from Compton AND I am confident. Yeah, I’m from Compton, AND work
in computer engineering and computer programing. Yeah, I’m from Compton, AND
I work for Boeing. I’m confident AND I get paid.’ All these things that weren’t
necessarily associated with living in the city of Compton.
So, when I think about Compton, I think about resilience. Resilience, I would say, is
defined as crawling out and through whatever doors to be successful in your own way.

89
That’s how I define resilience. And we can define whatever those doors are, and whatever
success is; I think that is open-ended, you know? We go through these different steps where
we aren’t given chances. We’re knocking on doors, knocking on doors, and then we get tired
of knocking. And it’s like, ‘I’m bout push these walls out.’ Or we’re about to make something
new.
People assume when you are from a certain place you will automatically going to be
this outcome. But Black people absolutely desire the ability to stand up and say ‘look at this.
Look at what I did in the midst of this. What I just did, through my resilience, is prove you
wrong. You said I was this, this, this, and that. But I’m not, and I just proved it.’ There is a
beauty in resilience in the Black community that is different from any other. I tear up
whenever I see Black people winning because I know they had to be resilient. I know that
they had to deal with what the world thinks of them because of the color of their skin, and
because of where they came from.

Martina brings forth resilience as a trauma imaginary, as she defines it as crawling
out and through whatever doors to be successful in your own way. Living in Compton is to
be boxed in by systemic circumstances that induce trauma. Resilience is the means by which
we make something new. Resilience reveals that the box, the constraints placed on us have
nothing to do with our being or ability and everything to do with the systems of power that
create a differential hierarchy. Resilience creates something otherwise that “ruptures the
white spatial imaginary” (Bates et al., 2018). In this way, resilience points to the communal
trauma of being boxed in not only by differentiated places but by policies and programs
meant to be helpful.
Richard’s ability to transition from being a gangster to corporate America has all the
ingredients of a “rags to riches” story; the stuff American Dream narratives are made of. Yet
it also highlights the communal trauma differentiated places, as he had to get out of the
inner-city environment to succeed. While Richard’s bio raises questions about why the
inner-city does not have spaces for transition and healing, David’s bio expresses the need to

90
take space even in white places. The need to take space to be unapologetically Black indicates
how spatial processes, specifically the creation of white place, threaten collective Black well-
being. As belonging is a central human need (Price, 2013), David argues that Black people
must take space wherever they go. In doing so, they don’t depend on others to get them out
of the box; instead, they create a space that is otherwise.
Charles and LaRae’s stories both point to the need for resilience when resisting itself
leads to more communal trauma. In Charles's narrative, we see him moving from survival to
resistance by seeking transitional housing. However, he is punished for trying to resist the
box placed upon him. He expresses how he was met with suspicion and discrimination
because he didn’t look, speak, or dress a certain type of way. His story reveals how the box
is made to reify and push you back into survival mode. Despite this pressure to stay in the
box, Charles finds a way to overcome the box.
LaRae explicitly cares for spaces of healing as a form of resilience. The need for
healing comes from not only the communal trauma of being boxed in, but also the
communal trauma induced when seeking spaces of survival or resistance. Social services
programs induced communal trauma because they harm those seeking help in ways that:
1. Disrupt conceptions of time and place (don’t make us tell this most
horrendous story),
2. Destroy relationships to place challenging identity and causing psycho-
somatic reactions (don’t make us try to modify stuff to fit into your program
and service),
3. and the spatial processes that accompany receiving care threaten well-being
(put these hours in her, put these hours in there if you want to stay in low
income housing).

Under the façade of caring, capitalism thrives (make money of yo Black ass), and like
in the case of Charles, you are forced to stay in survival mode. LaRae communicates how
people already struggling in and with the box are punished for wanting more.
LaRae evokes the trauma imaginary of resilience through advocating for those whom
the system has bullied. In this way, resilience and activism are tied. If activism dismantles
the box, resilience creates something new or otherwise to take the box’s place. In LaRae’s
case, resilience dreams of a holistic process that honors humanity to replace the

91
dehumanizing box. She argues that healing should be incentivized but designed in
meaningful ways. In other words, healing must be seen as a process beyond traditional
mental health services. There needs to be space for people to design and participate in
creating healing spaces that lead to something otherwise.
CONCLUSION

A design where I am thought of. ME! Not my problems. But when the essence of who
I am went into the design, I belong. If planners and policymakers what to make places of
belonging, the people need to be a part of the design. - LaRae Cantley

LaRae’s advice to planners and policymakers reject processes of rationalization and
objectivity that prevent planners from operating on the interpersonal level. Planners
typically plan for the community rather than the individual. But often, the community is
faceless, abstract, and in the white spatial imaginary often blighted, blank, or wild (Razack,
2018). Perhaps this is why planning keeps failing, especially in Black communities (Thomas,
1998a). This chapter ties individual spatial consciousness to collective experiences in ways
that shape and produce place. Through placed biographies, I have demonstrated that trauma
imaginaries exist in SCLA in the dominant forms of survival, resistance, activism, and
resilience.
In closing, I challenge planners to humanize the communities they work in by
understanding how trauma imaginaries may be at work in the everyday lives of people.
Placed biographies offer a tool to understand the Black spatial imaginaries unique to specific
places and histories. Understanding the community in this way, honoring different ways of
knowing, and co-producing interventions can help planners avoid planning for problems
and start planning with people to make places of belonging and healing for those historically
targeted.

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CHAPTER 3: “LOADED BASES, THAT’S MY MOTIVATION”:
HOW TRAUMA IMAGINARIES IMPACT THE CRENSHAW/ LAX
RAIL LINE

“Listen to my ambition,
'cause I'm on one/

Swingin' for the fences,
for the home run/

Even further beyond
into the universe/

But I got to make it to
first first/

It feels like every
second's being stolen/

I risked it for every
ticket we sold them/

You got the ball, I'ma
take it home/

Bottom line, I'm
gon' make it home/”

Nipsey Hussle,
“Loaded
Bases “

93
“You know this ain’t for us, right?” Shanice said as we sat in traffic on Crenshaw
Boulevard with a construction barrack to our left and a construction fence to our right.
Vibrant and bubbly, she freely volunteered her commentary on the Crenshaw line as it was
the very thing holding us up from our destination. “I don’t believe any of it; I’ll wait until I
see the trains running and see who’s riding them,” she continued, “They have never invested
in this community, so why now? And I know it’s not for us because we only get to ride buses,
them broken down trifling buses.”
Fascinated by her commentary, I asked, “why do you think it isn’t real? I’m actually
an urban planner studying the rail line and am interested in your perspective.” She
responded, “They make it seem like this is for us, and it isn’t. They never do nothing for us.”
“I don’t think it’s real because it isn’t going to benefit us—all of this is about White people
taking back this community. Where will that leave us? I don’t trust it.” As we pulled up to
Shanice’s destination, I wished for more time to unpack this loaded conversation.

Despite the premature end to my conversation with Shanice, I couldn’t help but think
about how similar her sentiments were to those in the West Jackson Planning Process
(discussed in Chapter 1), a completely different project, in a completely different context. In
2009, the Los Angeles County Transportation Authority (Metro) announced the
construction of the Crenshaw/LAX Line (the K Line), a light rail transit line that would run
mostly at grade down Crenshaw Boulevard to connect the Expo Line to the Green Line and
ambitiously to the airport. Over $2 Billion from local, state, and federal resources funded the
line, and Metro officially broke ground in 2014 and was expected to open in 2022.
10

Since arriving in Los Angeles (L.A.) in 2017, the Crenshaw Rail Line has provoked
visceral reactions in my everyday conversations with Black Angelenos. Many residents,
stakeholders, and community leaders questioned the ability to benefit from the rail line. Like
Shanice, they contextualized this announcement in a long history of disinvestment and

10
The opening has been delayed.

94
erasure, concluding that the K Line was a threat to the “heart of the Black community of Los
Angeles.” The Crenshaw Corridor is deeply placed in Black culture and internationally
known as a Black spatial imaginary because of cultural production. For many, running the
line at grade threatened this Black space.
11
This threat was solidified when Metro initially
decided to omit a station at Leimert Park Village, an iconic geography of afro-culture. These
visceral reactions to the K Line led me to explore the relationship between Metro’s planning
and construction of the Crenshaw Line and communal trauma. So, I situate my third
question in the K-Line project and ask: If trauma imaginaries exist in South Central Los
Angeles (SCLA), do they impact planning and development processes?
In Chapter 2, I examine the presence of trauma imaginaries in SCLA and found that
they exist predominately as resistance, activism, survival, and resilience. In this chapter, I
explore how these four trauma imaginaries impact the planning and development of the K
Line. I found that trauma imaginaries do impact planning and development processes.
Metro’s decision-making processes induced communal trauma, and the resulting trauma
imaginaries changed outcomes and revealed a politics of care framework relevant to
planning practice.
MAKING OF ‘THA SHAW’
Crenshaw Boulevard is named after George Lafayette Crenshaw, a prominent real
estate developer who developed properties in the area as early as 1904. Developers,
planners, and the elite imagined and materialized Los Angeles as a “decentralized,
deconcentrated urbanism,” drawing from Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, a white spatial
imaginary (Axelrod, 2007, p. 13). Thus, planned communities for White, moderate-income
families emerged along the Crenshaw Corridor (Chapple, 2010). Although many African
Americans migrated to California to escape the oppressive nature of the Jim Crow South,
they still contended with the spatial processes of segregation as they were confined to the
Historic South Central Avenue District. Despite achieving economic mobility, Black

11
While crenshaw is a multicultural community and diverse number of subcommunities and neighborhoods
this work focuses on Black resistance.

95
Angelenos were “hemmed in [and] penned up in racial ghettos—those sprawling Black belts
lying in the residentially least desirable heartlands of America’s great cities” (Miller, 1967).
Boundaries of exclusion were developed and maintained through policies such as zoning,
restrictive covenants, and redlining (Redford, 2017).
When wealthy Black populations usurped these spatial conditions and began buying
homes in West Adams in the Sugar Hill neighborhood, White residents sought the courts to
help them. And in 1948, the Supreme Court case Shelly v. Kramer voted that restrictive
covenants were unconstitutional and could not be enforced through legal means. The Los
Angeles Sentinel, LA’s most prominent Black newspaper, boasted that “California Negroes
Can Now Live Anywhere!” However, integration did not come easy. Even though, in many
cases, local authorities refused to comply with federal ruling and violence maintained spatial
control, Black Angelenos eventually moved West into communities like Baldwin Hills and
Leimert Park, located along Crenshaw Boulevard.
In just six years, between 1950 and 1956, 125,000 Whites fled what was then
considered the Westside (Sandoval, 1974). As Whites fled the southwest quadrant of Los
Angeles, Blacks moved west. By the late 1950s, Crenshaw seemed to have successfully
integrated as communities of color (mainly Japanese and African Americans) coexisted with
lingering White liberals (Kurashige, 2008). While the Black wealthy were first to move
West, social networks and economic differentiation required other economic statuses to
follow. Black populations of all classes filled vacancies left by white flight. In a few years, the
community designed by and for Whites became a community of color with economically
heterogeneous spaces (Robison, 2010).
Despite the multicultural demographics, by the 1960s, the white spatial imaginary
produced Crenshaw as an “inner-city” ghetto (Kurashige, 2008). The Watts Uprising and
the new forms of revolutionary resistance stretching across the Black community not only
exacerbated these claims but also exposed how spatial containment processes morphed to
accommodate Black growth into White areas. Policing became the primary tool to maintain
spatial order through surveillance and violence (Felker-Kantor, 2018). In response to this

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mobility, City leaders, real estate and economic developers, and planners moved resources,
jobs, and investments to newly formed white suburbs (Redford, 2017; Wiggins, 2016).
Eventually, “discourse of whiteness demonized Crenshaw as a place subsumed by the
‘ghetto,’” other people of color moved out as well, and by the 1970s, the area south of I-10
materialized fully as a “Black space” (Kurashige, 2008). Crenshaw became synonymous with
Black identity, power, and resistance (Chapple, 2010). Crenshaw also became the center of
Black political life. Tom Bradley, the first African American Mayor and Civil Rights Activist,
claimed it as home (Schlitt, 2021). And eventually, Crenshaw Boulevard became the new
Central Avenue, as the Black central business district moved west (Chapple, 2010).
Black cultural production cemented Crenshaw Boulevard as a culturally Black space.
Movies like Boyz n the Hood highlighted Black life in SCLA. The emergence of gangsta rap
in the late 1980s and early 1990s portrayed “hood life,” as it explicitly displayed police
violence, gang culture, drugs and crime, and more structural issues like ghettoization,
confinement, and differentiated distribution of resources. Crenshaw was indicted in these
narratives as rappers like Ice- T and Ice Cube repped Crenshaw as home. Fifteen years later,
rappers like Nipsey Hustle still solidify Crenshaw as a Black space, even though
demographically and culturally, the corridor as a space of blackness is under threat.
The changing demographics have raised concerns about Crenshaw’s ability to remain
a Black cultural enclave. High development pressure, the volatile market, and the structural
processes and practices threaten the last standing Black cultural hub in the City of Los
Angeles. From 2010 to 2018, market rent jumped from $1,750 a month to $2,400,
according to Zillow--an increase of more than 37%. Meanwhile, the median income in the
area increased only 2.7%, from $37,301 to $38,323. This income-to-rent ratio is not
sustainable, leaving residents fearful of displacement and stressed about housing security
(Affordable South Los Angeles, 2020). The announcement of the rail line exacerbated this
threat as recent research reveals high displacement numbers along the Expo Line, according

97
to the “Urban Displacement Project.”
12
The rail line brings with it new transit-oriented
development through private-public partnerships that change the community's landscape.
Transportation authorities have long histories of decimating Black communities in the name
of mobility and economic development (Fullilove, 2016; Robinson, 2010). Thus, Crenshaw
residents, stakeholders, and activists fight to stay in place and ensure that Crenshaw can
thrive as a space and place for unapologetic Blackness.
METHODS
I use mixed qualitative methods to explore how trauma imaginaries impact the K
Line Project. I gathered data from participant observations and sometimes as observing
participant as I lived in the Crenshaw neighborhood from April 2019 until August 2020. My
proximity to Crenshaw Boulevard afforded opportunities to make formal and informal
observations and participate in impromptu street interviews while carrying out my day-to-
day activities such as walking, shopping, dining, and meeting up with friends. A few times,
street interviews tuned into formal interviews, as people gracious dedicated time to talk
more in-depth about issues surrounding the Crenshaw Line.
To externally validate my observations, I collected material data related to the K Line.
Because spatial imaginaries are often communicated via news media (Davoudi et al., 2018),
this data primarily included articles from the Los Angeles Sentinel, the most prominent
Black newspaper in Los Angeles County that prides itself on representing Black voices and
the “official distributor of news” between Metro and the community.
13
Employing the
keywords “Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line” and “Destination Crenshaw” to give the broadest
possible output, I gathered 159 articles from the ProQuest online archives dating from
January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2021. I also gathered articles using the same keywords
from Our Weekly, another Black news source for Los Angeles County. Because the fieldwork
revealed that Streetsblog LA and Curbed LA were essential ways of knowing, I applied these
keywords to their websites to yield another 32 and 150 articles, respectively. I also included

12
https://www.urbandisplacement.org/
13
See https://lasentinel.net/

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articles that were embedded links in the text of the original sample, which yielded another
43 articles from diverse places. These articles often pointed to social media posts, blogs, and
documents from Metro, allowing for the inclusion of a larger dataset beyond the news
archive.

I analyzed this dataset through a non-linear, reflective process in which each phase
informs the other. I started with open coding, manually coding everything in the NVivo
Software program. Second, I read through the data without coding and wrote notes,
separating myself and my experiences from the data, then intertwining them again. During
this phase, I invited conversations from the community about what I saw in the data. Then,
I engaged in thematic analysis, searching for, reviewing, naming, and describing themes,
especially regarding trauma. The second round of reflective writing ensued as I
Figure 21: Diagram of Dataset
Figure 22: Diagram of Analysis Process

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contemplated the themes and previous rounds of coding. Finally, I used comparative
analysis, not comparing the places (West Jackson to SCLA) but rather comparing my
findings to the definitions of communal trauma and trauma imaginaries developed in the
previous work. I found that the trauma imaginaries of resistance, activism, survival, and
resilience impacted the planning processes in SCLA and created spaces and places that
otherwise would not be produced.
COMMUNAL TRAUMA & THE CRENSHAW/LAX LINE CASE
“Very rarely is the Los Angeles Black community in complete agreement. Take
a picture of this moment … it will last longer. The church community (all
denominations), the civil rights community (which hasn’t been in total
agreement since the 1964 Civil Rights Act was signed), community
nonprofits, business associations, activists’ groups (and individuals), elected
officials, and the community itself, all showed up to support the Ridley
Thomas motion to build a light rail stop at Leimert Park Village and an
underground tunnel for the Park Mesa segment of the Crenshaw Rail line.” -
Anthony Asadullah Samad (2011)

In 2011, over 600 community members showed up at the Metro’s Board meeting to
oppose the K Line. The problem was not the K Line, per se. As one resident said, “For a lot of
people, it couldn’t get here fast enough.” Political leaders and transportation planners held
the Crenshaw Line as a long-awaited investment in a “historically disinvested area” (Metro,
2011). According to former political leader Mark Ridley Thomas, Tom Bradley, the first
African American Mayor of Los Angeles, dreamed of bringing transportation options to
communities of color in South Central Los Angeles. The announcement of the K Line
brought Bradley’s dream to fruition. With the expressed goal of providing “jobs and
community revitalization opportunities in a historically underserved portion of Los Angeles
County (Metro, 2011),” the Crenshaw Line seemingly would bring much-needed investment
that would benefit the community.
However, Metro made two critical planning decisions that raised the alarm among
residents. First, they planned to run the rail at grade on Crenshaw Boulevard, the “heart of
the Black community.” Second, they omitted a stop at Leimert Park Village, the Black
cultural center of Los Angeles. These decisions led to that intense 2011 board meeting. This

100
meeting was just one of many efforts to express and resist the ongoing and impending harm
the K Line would bring to Crenshaw’s Black Communities. These decisions induce
communal trauma as residents believe these decisions threatened the legacy and life of
Crenshaw Boulevard. Since 2011, residents, stakeholders, and activists have contended with
this communal trauma
through the trauma
imaginaries of resistance,
activism, survival, and
resilience.
Trauma
imaginaries express and
respond to a communal
trauma in ways that shape
place and are produced by
planning practices and
spatial processes. To
analogize, when the body
feels threatened, perceived
or real, or experiences a
wound, the brain reacts by
sending a signal that the
body is under attack. This
signal invites the body to
express the danger and
respond to a threat. Likewise, when a community experience a targeted racialized threat,
communal trauma signals that the community is under attack. Trauma imaginaries express
and respond to the threat. In response, the body often seeks to protect itself; trauma
imaginaries also often operate as modes of protection or resistance. In the case of the
Figure 23: Metro’s Map of the Crenshaw Line

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Crenshaw/LAX Line, the trauma imaginaries of resistance, activism, survival, and resilience
articulate and respond to the communal trauma induced by the decisions made in the
planning and development of the K Line.
In Chapter 1, I defined communal trauma as a harm and wrong committed against
targeted racialized groups so horrendous that it induces a traumatic condition in which one
or more of the following processes occur:
(1) It disrupts conceptions of time and place.
(2) The destruction of (the relationship to) place challenges identity, causing psycho-
somatic reactions.
(3) Targeted groups perceive spatial processes (planning and development) as
threats to collective well-being.

This definition applies in the Crenshaw/LAX Line Case, as Metro’s planning decisions
resulted in targeted, racialized harms and wrongs that triggered the traumatic conditions
associated with communal trauma. Residents described an intentional process of exclusion
that felt targeted and racialized. This exclusion induces communal trauma because it is an
act of nonrecognition that “can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning
someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (Taylor, 2021). The problem was
not community engagement; as Al Alim, a community resident, proclaimed, “We’ve been
asked enough. It’s just that our voices have not been incorporated into the plan.” Others
argue that Metro would have never “contemplated bypassing other cultural markers,
regardless of the costs.” Echoing this sentiment in a statement of support, Bishop Blake
contended that “our community certainly needs every convenience that every other
community also has.” Community members express these decisions as targeted racialized
harms and wrongs as they assert that Black communities don’t get “the same considerations
[other] that are west of the 10, white, or more affluent” get (Kaplan, 2013).
Ultimately, the Black community was, in the words of one activist, “under attack,” and
residents had to “wage war” or face inevitable destruction. Given Metro’s history, this
destruction would come in the form of abandonment and erasure. Dr. Anthony Asadullah

102
Samad (2011), a scholar and community member, sums the meaning of these two
possibilities up in his editorial on the Crenshaw Line:
1. “Some people don’t see our community as part of the future of this city”
(erasure).
2. “If some had their way, our community would continue to be significantly
undeveloped and underserved” (abandonment).

The Crenshaw line sits in this tension as community members ask if the rail line will
move people through the neighborhood or/and remove people from the neighborhood?
Metro’s decision to run the train at grade and omit the Leimert Park Stop induces communal
trauma, and over the course of this 11+ year project, trauma imaginaries of resistance,
activism, survival, and resilience emerge as community members make meaning of
communal trauma and shape place through these trauma imaginaries.
Resistance
“Under no circumstances can our community allow this project to continue as
it's now presented to us. I pledge to use all my power and influence to rally the
community to stop this construction if Leimert Park does not get a station,
and if the light rail does not continue underground down Crenshaw to the
point where it turns west.” - Danny J. Bakewell, Sr (in Simmonds, 2011)

The trauma imaginary of resistance emerged in the planning and development
process as community members refused to accept the box. In the case of the K Line, the
“box” or the act of being “boxed in” was the planning decision that would threaten
community well-being if the train were allowed to run at grade without a stop at Leimert
Park. The community outrage around these decisions was visceral, as Metro’s decisions
insulted the Black community and contradicted the expressed goals to bring economic
development to a “long underserved community.” Community leaders quickly organized
editorials, social media campaigns, news articles, and door-to-door canvassing to incite
people to act and resist Metro’s plans that would ultimately threaten the ability of Black
people to stay and thrive in Crenshaw. Resistance is necessary for a community that has
been historically neglected. Despite Metro’s commitment to serve the community, past
experiences were evoked to make meaning of present-day decision-making. In this way, the
trauma imaginary of resistance pointed to communal trauma as conceptions of time and

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space were disrupted. In an article for Streetsblog LA article (Newton, 2012), Damien
Newton points to the histories of communal trauma:
“There is an unfortunate history of transportation projects devastating
communities, particularly local Black communities. It is what led to the federal
environmental justice laws and the protected status of minority and low-
income communities. Just within our coalition, there are people who were
displaced by freeway construction and had their communities cut in half with
the Blue and Expo lines. MTA has always had a choice to either return a little
bit more of our tax dollars to make these projects the true asset and catalyst
they can be for our community and region or continue that ugly history.
Unfortunately, they’ve chosen the latter.”

This unfortunate history reverberated through the planning and construction of the K
Line. Narratives presented in media and interviews rarely discussed the K Line without
discussing a history of disinvestment, containment, and removal. Histories of as far back as
interstate highway system construction and urban renewal were brought forth and
contextualized in the present-day rail line project. For example, James, a young man who
lived along Crenshaw Boulevard, shared, “The line ain’t nothing new. They have been doing
this shit for always. People think it’s different now in 2018, but it’s Sugar Hill all over again.”
Sugar Hill was
brought forth in the
discourse around the K Line,
revealing the condition of
communal trauma that
“disrupts time and place.”
Eisenhower’s interstate
highway system erased
thousands of thriving
communities of color and facilitated the creation of the white suburb, making white flight
possible at the expense of communities of color (Avila, 2014). In L.A., the transportation
authority planned and executed the Interstate 10 highway on top of the thriving community
of Sugar Hill, one of several Black neighborhoods dissected by the Freeway. At the time,
Sugar Hill, also known as West Adams Heights, was the center of Black elitism and cultural
Figure 24: Construction of I-10 Freeway
Photo From W Los Angeles Examiner Collection, USC Libraries.

104
production in Los Angeles. Residents organized into the Adams-Washington Freeway
Committee to protect their neighborhood. The Committee believed the route could have
been racially motivated as residents had just won access to the neighborhood through a
desegregation order (Chapple, 2010). Although residents advocated for a different route, city
leaders refused to consider other sites, effectively erasing much of the Sugar Hill
neighborhood by 1960. Because this trauma had never been redressed, residents saw the K
Line as the I-10, Crenshaw as Sugar Hill.
The evocation of Sugar Hill revealed that the decision to run the train at grade was a
communal trauma as it disrupted time and place. General narratives of the rail line started
or ended with contextualizing Metro’s present-day decisions in histories of disinvestment
and erasures. These histories signal communal trauma as they revealed that spatial
processes driven by the Nation-State and its private partners have never been good for
racialized communities. These spatial processes happen in the context of systems of power,
processes of othering, hierarchies of difference, and histories of violence that depend on the
oppression of one to secure the well-being of the other. Thus, this history is brought forth
with the K Line project as whiteness reifies, assuming and imagining an empty, blank space
(or a blighted space) on top of thriving and surviving communities to create spaces and
places that serve whiteness (Razack, 2017). As a result, resistance shaped space by rejecting
the narrative provided by Metro.
Activism
“A subway tunnel from 48th Street to 60th Street would address both the
issue of economic viability and public safety. One thing is clear, it is
imperative that the community position be heard and supported. Failure to do
so could cause commercial investment and economic development to move
past our community as quickly as the train line they intend to build. We can't
let that happen, so we must let our voices be heard this week.

Now, if you look at community cultural centers all over the city, public rail
transit stops there. People would have to walk four or five blocks to get to
Leimert Park, when a redesign would let them off one half block from the
village. The community wants the Leimert Park stop, and they should have it.”
- Anthony Asadullah Samad (2011)

105
As resistance mobilized people, activism materialized in the trauma imaginaries in
the planning processes associated with the rail line. As activism works to dismantle the box,
we see activists’ efforts to change Metro’s plan. Residents “demanded that the train proceed
underground for its initial stops along Crenshaw Boulevard and that a station be added at
Leimert Park Village, which has long been an important cultural center for Black residents of
Los Angeles” (Chiland, 2017). Echoing Dr. Samad, former Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas
(2011) describes this scale in his editorial in the L.A. Sentinel:
“Rarely, since I entered public service, have I seen such widespread unity and
commitment to a cause. However, that the Crenshaw line should have a stop
in the heart of the African-American arts and business district is obvious to all
of us who work, live, worship in the area or simply come to enjoy the village's
cultural offerings. Also, that the train would be safer underground then
running down the middle of the street, from 48th to 49th streets, is equally
apparent. That's why more than 600 people attended the Metro Board
meeting last week, filling both the hearing room and overflow rooms.
Thousands more signed petitions, and every elected official representing the
area urged Metro to do the right thing.”

Activism, as a trauma imaginary, expresses and responds to a communal trauma that
not only triggers the trauma condition that challenges identity but also threatens community
well-being. These decisions communicated that Metro did not care about the existing
community. They didn’t care that the train would bisect Crenshaw, forever changing the
landscape of the corridor. Metro didn’t care about how at-grade construction would disrupt
access to local Black businesses. They didn’t care about Mary, one of many community
members, who regularly crossed back and forth on Crenshaw to buy goods and services.
Destruction seemed imminent, and residents grappled with what that meant for the identity
of Black Los Angeles.
Where there is loss, the natural psychosomatic reaction is grief (Marris, 2014).
Residents collectively face the anxiety and stress of a changing neighborhood brought forth
by a communal trauma. As community members make meaning of this change, they much
examine their loss in relation to their identity. Cultural identity is often interwoven with
place; as Hall (2017) notes, “place is one of those strong representational coordinates of
cultural identity” (p. 106). Crenshaw has shaped Black Angelenos' identity for so long, even

106
as that identity is diverse and fluid. However, as recent changes bring bereavement
processes (Marris, 2014), the Crenshaw Line induces a traumatic condition as residents
wrestle with potential destruction.
“I think what frustrated me about the train line was I just knew it wasn't going
to be for us. I mean, anytime they made public transportation more efficient
and never benefits us. You know, and that, ultimately, they were going to start
to try to push people out.” – David Turner, Community Activist

Given Metro’s track record with the Black communities in Los Angeles, three
significant concerns dominated discourses about the K Line. First, running the train at -
grade would initiate the spatial processes of erasure. In 2011, Damien and Crenshaw
Subway Coalition members argued that lengthy construction would devastate legacy Black
businesses that have experienced years of disinvestment (Kaplan, 2013). By 2014, when
construction began, residents began seeing their community change as barricades went up,
parking became scarce, disruptive noises plagued the neighborhood, and streets began to
close. Businesses were impacted. For example, the one business owner discussed how she
was experiencing a high volume of canceled appointments due to “the streets being blocked
and taking away parking.” Like many others, she was concerned about her business's ability
to thrive during construction. As the last standing Black business corridor, residents feared
Figure 25: Construction of Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line
Photo From Metro

107
Crenshaw would no longer be Crenshaw if legacy businesses were dismantled by
construction.
Second, history has also shown that infrastructure investments were subpar when it
comes to Black places (Soja, 2013). Thus, residents feared that Metro’s at-grade
construction would trigger the spatial ghettoization process threatening the community's
well-being. The Blue Line, which opened in 1990 to provide rail services from downtown to
Long Beach, had proved the dangers of at-grade rail lines. Multiple injuries and death have
been reported, most occurring at the grade-level portion of the train. According to
transportation activist Damian Goodmon, at-grade proved to be more dangerous, even
though it is less costly, as it crosses with other modes of transportation, including
pedestrians. For many, the Crenshaw line induced safety, environmental, and public health
concerns, as they did not trust Metro to provide care equal to Westside communities (Ridley
Thomas, 2011).
Third, Metro’s decision to omit the stop at Leimert Park Village was seen as an act to
disinvest from the existing community that had made Leimert Park the center of Black
culture and art for the county. While Metro approved the stop in 2011, they did not provide
funding for it. Residents understand the lack of funding effort as a lack of concern for the
small district. All of the benefits of transit-oriented development would skip over one of
Crenshaw's most prominent tourist and cultural destinations.
Thus, as scholar and community member Anthony Asadullah Samad suggests, these
decisions would lead to abandonment of the Black community. That is, the Black
communities of Crenshaw would not be able to benefit from the massive investments and
developments that could generate economic well-being if Metro was allowed to move
forward with its plans. Proclaiming “What we cannot allow is the underdevelopment of
mass transit that tends to ghettoize urban communities,” he argues that ghettoization would
bring erasure, and Crenshaw’s identity as a Black place would vanish along with the Black
population (Samad, 2011). In his trauma imaginary, Metro’s plans for the rail line would
create a wasteland, creating a blank space for others to enjoy the community without

108
thinking about what came before. Crenshaw had already been ghettoized in the 1960s as
discourses of whiteness, accompanied by the removal of investment and resources from the
city to the suburbs, made it so. Dr. Samad argued that if the community allowed Metro to
follow the historic patterns, the K Line would fundamentally change the area. The
consequences would be the loss of Crenshaw, the loss of the heart of the Black community.
Metro claimed that running the train at grade and omitting the Leimert Park stop
were financially feasible and responsible decisions; however, residents viewed these
decisions as a targeted and racialized harm. Many argued that Metro would not dare run a
train through the other cultural centers in Los Angeles, nor would they pass by any other
cultural district without strategically designing a stop to bring commerce to the district.
Metro undervalued the Black life of Crenshaw and Black cultural productions and thus did
not care if their decision-making would ultimately destroy the community and challenge
Crenshaw’s identity as a Black place. In articulating this communal trauma through trauma
imaginaries of activism, Crenshaw communities demand to be valued, aligning with Damien
Goodmon’s call to action (Newton, 2012):
“The plight of the Crenshaw business community should concern us all. Our
region should no more welcome the destruction of the Crenshaw business
community than it should Little Tokyo or Chinatown. Crenshaw is as much a
part of our unique identity as a multicultural city, as any other ethnic center.
We must both preserve it and enhance it with the Crenshaw-LAX Light Rail
Line.”

In 2011, activism also materialized a community benefits package that would require
Metro to make a strategic investment to fight ghettoization. A motion presented to in Metro
Board meeting by Mark Ridley-Thomas asked Metro to produce a street safety and traffic
mitigation plan for the at-grade portion of the rail line to guard against subpar infrastructure
development. Despite efforts to ground the line from Expo until the rail line “turned west,”
the portion of rail between 48th Street and 59th Street would remain at grade. Additionally,
the motion held Metro accountable to the community by requiring a sidewalk, streetscape,
and local business improvement plan for the areas along the rail line. Finally, Metro was
asked to compensate businesses for losses during construction. Many felt this was

109
reasonable given Metro’s history and commitment to investing in South Los Angeles. This
community benefits package would not only help protect legacy businesses, but it would also
communicate to the community that Metro values preserving Black Crenshaw.
Metro approved the motion and partnered with community institutions, such as
Urban League, Black Workers Center, local CDCs, and the L.A. Sentinel, to implement
several programs to aid businesses affected by construction. In a speech given to a group of
stakeholders, Ridley- Thomas explained: “These programs will be critical elements to help
businesses thrive. I look forward to continuing to work with all of you to make sure that the
Crenshaw Line construction moves forward safely and in a productive manner that puts the
community first."
As a result of stakeholders’ advocacy, Metro sponsored the Business Solutions
Center, which opened in 2014, as an open resource where business owners could receive
advice, case management, technical assistance, and other resources that could aid in
addressing the needs of local businesses. This center is also the mechanism for accessing the
Business Interruption Fund, Metro’s pilot program with $10 million annual funding that
offers grants to businesses affected by rail line construction. By 2017, 150 businesses along
Crenshaw Boulevard had reportedly accessed $6.2 million in grants to thrive during
construction (Washington, 2017). The Business Solutions Center seemed a promising
solution to address the needs of a community. Thus, the trauma imaginary of activism not
only expressed a communal trauma by also shaped place, as it disrupted Metro’s plans,
replacing them with plans that would help the community not only stay in place but thrive.
This approach also yielded a redistribution of resources as Metro invested more than $10
million of funding to ensure the survival of Black legacy businesses.
Trauma imaginaries of activism communicated communal trauma and shaped place
by forcing Metro to approve the Leimert Park Station. While obtaining approval was easy,
securing funding proved more difficult as Metro would not commit funds. However, the
community’s relentlessness pushed them to realize the station. Community leader Mark
Ridley Thomas encouraged residents:

110
“We can and must distinguish great investments from great costs. Finding money is
always a challenge, but funding challenges must not shrink our ambitions. The need
for a Leimert Park Village Station is obvious-a Crenshaw Corridor rail line must
include the most prominent cultural center on its route.”

In 2013, current City Council President Herb Wesson stood in front of a crowd of
community members in the Leimert Village Park and proclaimed, “You united, you
organized, you demanded, and the voice of government heard you.” Two years of public
meetings, two years of protest, two years of editorials, and two years of activism yielded
“$120 million in funding for the station: $40 million from the Los Angeles City Council and
$80 million from Metro, marking what some called a dramatic reversal from their reluctance
to fund the station two years ago (Nelson, 2013).”
Survival
“Changes are coming. But are these new developments by and for us? And if
we are forced to move out to places like Lancaster, because we’ve been priced
out of our community, how are we to enjoy and benefit from them? This is a
serious threat to Los Angeles’ Black and Brown communities. We are staring
down the potential of mass displacement and need to rise up against it.” -
Larry Aubry, Black Community Clergy & Labor Alliance Co-Chair

Paster Kevil Saults closed the celebration at the Leimert Park Station celebration with
a benediction: “oh neighbor, get ready, there is a train a comin’.” Even with the win of the
Leimert Park Station, a train was still “a comin’,” and Saults’ commentary carried more
gravity for the members of the Crenshaw Community. Changes are coming, and the Leimert
Park stop alone would not guarantee that the Black community would benefit from those
changes. Furthermore, the train running at grade through 48
th
to 59
th
would tremendously
change the neighborhood. For Larry Aubry and other residents, the changes brought by the
Crenshaw Line and its associated development propose “a serious threat” that raises the
question: Will we benefit from the Crenshaw Line?
Survival emerged as a trauma imaginary as residents prepared for the K Line.
Survival as a trauma imaginary performs to keep the Black communities alive in the box (the
K Line and its associated development). Many feared that the rail line would multiply the
gentrification efforts already happening in L.A., causing displacement of long-time and

111
vulnerable residents. Eventually, displacement would leave no remanent of the community
that once was. South Central L.A. native Raven Lawson speaks to this spatial process,
saying, “a lot of the area is being gentrified, and a lot of the history and culture that I grew up
is slowly disappearing.”
For City Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson and other activists, survival
manifested as launching a radical planning process counter to Metro’s approach:
“When I heard there was going to be a metro-line running at street level right
through our district, I knew we had to create a unified front to push back against the
threat of displacement for our community spaces, local businesses and loved ones. I,
along with dozens of other local advocates, spent the last three years meeting with
thousands of residents, community leaders, and organizations to envision how we
could protect our culture and history against the threat of gentrification.”

Harris-Dawson leveraged his political power and partnered with others to put the
community “in the driver’s seat and capitalize” along the at-grade portion of the K-Line.
Community leaders did not come in with a plan or proposal to combat the impact of the rail
line. Instead, they spent months organizing and listening to residents’ present concerns, past
stories, and future visions around Crenshaw. Focused on face-to-face engagement and
centering the community, the press was excluded, allowing residents to be the first to hear
about the evolution of the conversations and to control the narratives of the process.
Ultimately, the goal was to produce something wholly created by the community and for the
community. To
do so, leaders
also reached out
to populations
typically left out
of the planning
processes. For
example, Nipsey
Hustle, a famous
rapper and
Figure 26: Tweet from Councilmember Harris-Dawson picturing
Nipsey Hussle and youth at a Destination Crenshaw Meeting

112
community builder associated with the gang the Rolling Sixties Crips, became a leading
partner who could not only rally gang members about but also the youth. Meetings were
held exclusively for young people so their voices and agency could be heard and included in
the planning process.
This radical planning process communicated the communal trauma of erasure, as
materialized to combat the spatial process that threatened the ability of Black people to stay
and thrive in Crenshaw. After years of disinvestment, the public and private market has
flooded South Central Los Angeles with capital, creating a volatile market that overwhelms
residents that have been locked-in to the community (Stein, 2019; Roithmayr, 2004). For
example, Kahlid Al-aim, president of the Park Mesa Heights community council, noted that
even though the median income for the Park Mesa community is $35,000, homes are selling
for $575,000. He asks, “who can afford that home?” (Chiland, 2017). Redfin calculated that
the median home price increased drastically between 2009 ($250,000) and 2016
($503,750). Likewise, Zillow reports that market-rate rent escalated from $1,750 monthly
to $2,400. The people who have weathered the years of ghettoization and continuous
disinvestment, those who have resisted with uprising and survived the violence, and those
who have engaged in place-making despite spatial oppression, would not be able to benefit
from new development (Chiland, 2017).
Spatial processes have threatened the well-being of the Black communities along the
Crenshaw corridor for years. Harsh policing and surveillance, along with gang violence and
crumbling economic and educational infrastructures, have pushed people out of the City of
Los Angeles for years (see Chapter 3). However, the Crenshaw Line brings new
development through public-private partnerships that exacerbate market pressures. While
this growth seems promising, especially for an underserved community, it threats collective
well-being as residents struggle with the ability to stay in place. As Jerome Wiley expressed,
“there is nothing wrong with market-rate rent, [but] I want to make sure that growth is
equitable and that it benefits people who are currently in the community” (Flores, 2019).

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Recurring in the narratives around the Crenshaw line was the fear that the
community's well-being would be threatened by erasure. This fear was solidified as Metro
imagined a post-K Line Crenshaw as a “white mecca” (Sulaiman, 2017). Renderings are
planning tools that illustrate an intervention on top of an image of an existing place.
Planners use them in planning processes to communicate a future. They are also tools of
power that can realize a different place- physically, visually, or culturally- altogether. While
erasure happens over time, decisions made in the planning and development phase
(communicated through renderings) initiate the process. So, when Metro released (and later
deleted) a rendering of the Crenshaw Station and associated development that displayed the
white spatial imaginary, visceral reaction from residents ensued.
The rendering in and of itself was not bad. However, the stark contrast between what
is and what will be signaled that Crenshaw would undergo erasure. Journalist Sahra
Sulaiman (2017) captured this contrast in her blog:
White people stroll, white people bike, white people regale each other with
fascinating tales as they cross the street with fashionable purses, white people gaze at
the tracks in deep thought and talk on the phone, and white people keep their
Figure 27: Rendering of Crenshaw Metro Stop and Development Released
by Metro

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distance from the lone Black person wearing what appear to be cargo shorts across
the way.
Which raises the question: where is the actual community that lives there now?

“Where is the actual community that lives there now? Where are the impeccably
dressed churchgoers? Where are the Black families? Where are the elders? Where are
the Black and Latino students, artists, and entrepreneurs? Where are the low-riders,
area fixie riders, and folks biking out of necessity? Where are the Black and Latino
workers and job seekers? Where are the vendors? And where is that gentleman from
the Nation of Islam that sells bean pies near Rodeo?”

This erasure threatens collective well-being because it results in root shock.
Fullilove’s concept of root shock originates from an urban renewal study and describes “the
traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystem”
(Fullilove, 2016, p. 28). When a person’s harmony between them and the work is disrupted,
they experience a shock similar to the shock a body goes through when it experiences
trauma. A primary need for humanity is place—to be placed—and "place attachments
deepen and strengthen as experience accumulates" (Price 2013, p. 125). Thus, in an
interview with KCRW, Fullilove argues, “when you lose a home, it’s not just your own
house. The house is set in a place” (Szewczyk, 2017). This experience of loss induces
emotional states that threaten well-being. Fullilove states, “anxiety and depression and
anger [are] attached to a story of leaving a home” (Szewczyk, 2017). The spatial process of
erasure produces root shock that threatens the Crenshaw community's collective well-being
and impacts the health and wellness of residents who must navigate these community
changes.
Survival, as a trauma imaginary, not only communicated this threat of erasure as a
communal trauma but also responded to it with Destination Crenshaw, a 1.3-mile-long
open-air people’s museum running between 48th Street and 60th Street parallel to the
Crenshaw Line. After months of organizing and planning to counter Metro’s neglect of
community needs and desires, community members identified a means to survival, that is,
to stay alive within the box by making a space that was unapologetically Black. In doing so,
they counter the white spatial imaginary imposed upon Crenshaw by dominant planning
powers. Thus, Destination Crenshaw materialized into "a reparative development project

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that addresses the disinvestment that the Crenshaw community has had over the years."
(Easter, 2019).

Resilience
“It's about thriving not just surviving.” - Jason Foster, President & COO of
Destination Crenshaw

Destination Crenshaw, scheduled to open Fall 2022, became a means to solidify and
affirm Black life, Black culture, and Black place. Capturing this imaginary in a stakeholders’
meeting, Harris-Dawson proclaims: “We say to the world, ‘If you’re going to run a train at-
grade through our neighborhood, nobody’s going to be able to get through without seeing
and hearing and feeling and sharing our story!'” The open-air people’s museum expresses
the need for Blackness to be seen after years of neglect and mistreatment. In efforts to assert
Figure 28: Rendering of Proposed Destination Crenshaw Wall Released by Destination
Crenshaw

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Blackness, the trauma imaginary of resilience emanates from survival, as Destination tries to
break out of the box.
In a Stakeholder meeting, Ron Finley describes the project as a place that will be
unapologetically Black: “I mean Black for real, for real, like, skillet Black. Like, Blackity-
Black, Black. Like, you-can’t-see-your-hand-in-the-dark Black.” To accomplish this Black
space, Finley suggests that this project “leads with culture,” in contrast to Metro’s omission
of culture. In doing so, the project, as Tafari Bayne puts it, “honors what Blackness has
always been: adaptable to the world; changing; self-determining; and [transcending] the
conditions we’ve had to deal with over and over.” Bayne, advisory council member and Chief
Strategist with CicLAvia, acknowledges that Blackness is fluid, flexible, and ever-evolving:
“There is not one Black L.A. story. A lot of this project is about creating
programmable space where the Blackness can be layered on in a
contemporary way that represents what Blackness is now. Or tomorrow. Or
100 years from now. We’re setting the stage for Black people to take it into the
future.” (Sulaiman, 2019).

In asserting that "this project is about place keeping and place recognition,” Harris-
Dawson sees the project as establishing Crenshaw as a cultural enclave just as crucial to the
City of Los Angeles as Chinatown, Little Tokyo, or Boyle Heights (Easter, 2019). It's also
Figure 29: Proposed Design for Sankofa Park Released by Destination Crenshaw

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declaring and asserting a future." The plans include community spaces and urban canopies
designed by Black architects and filled with pieces by Black artists that tell the story of Black
Los Angeles. For example, the design of social spaces reflects African Giant Star Grass, used
as bedding during the Atlantic slave trade. Designers believe that translating this grass into
architectural form communicates the resilience embedded in the African American
community. Sankofa Park is another example of how will signal Blackness through Urban
design. The park is shaped like the mythical bird, which symbolizes the Ghanian work that
the “go back to the past and bring forward that which is useful” (Flores, 2020).
Resilience not only shapes the urban design of Destination Crenshaw. It also shapes
economic modes of resilience as well. While trauma imaginaries are collective spatial
consciousness, that does not always mean that conflicting trauma imaginaries do not exist.
In this case, other emerging trauma imaginaries resisted Destination Crenshaw as a solution
to erasure and a project of resilience because it did not do enough to secure vulnerable
communities in place.

“The unfortunate history of massive outdoor art projects like this, as perhaps
most well illustrated with the High Line in New York City, is that they end up
fueling the housing price increases that push out and price out the residents of
color that they say they’re going to serve. To date, no conversation around
Destination Crenshaw has focused on this real possibility. And frankly, if
$100 million is going to be invested on Crenshaw Boulevard, I think the
community would rather it go toward purchasing the properties along the
boulevard to be put into a community land trust to ensure that Black people
will be in Crenshaw’s future. Not simply a memorial project to our past.” -
Damien Goodmon, Crenshaw Subway Coalition

“We see that a lot more could be done so folks started raising these questions
and concerns about whether the economic piece to Destination Crenshaw
would benefit the residents…We need more than just a graveyard mural.
Dawson has the power of the city council to make sure our communities are
not gentrified. If we want to stop gentrification, we have to have our roots in
commercial and residential buildings. This project actually invites
gentrification.” Harris- Jabari Jumaane, Executive Director of AFIBA

“Its almost like a time capsule about people who used to be there and what
they used to do and what used to happen, because that's kind of what Harlem
is becoming," - Marcus Hunter, resident

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Harris-Dawson has been responsive to these criticisms, arguing that “There isn’t so
much people feeling like Destination Crenshaw shouldn’t happen. They feel like it should be
the companion of many other important things.” Destination Crenshaw launched DC
Thrive, an initiative to address some of these “other important things” to fight erasure and
displacement. According to the website,
14
the organization has committed funds to a façade
improvement plan for existing businesses, developed resource programs and entrepreneur
education to support existing businesses, and provided economic opportunity with a
commitment to 70% local hire for the construction of the open-air museum. The goal is to
ensure that the existing community thrives after the rail line. While the success of
Destination Crenshaw is still to be determined, the example illustrates the controversies of
public art projects and the difficulties of radical planning processes.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PLANNERS: POLITICS OF CARE
In Chapter 1, I argue that a theory of communal trauma reveals how past histories
impact present-day spatial processes and the role of planning in inducing communal
trauma. The Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line case strengthens this argument as it illustrates how
planning processes produce communal trauma. It also raises an important question asked
by community member David Turner: What does it mean to care for the community that is
already there and has been there, has made their home there, and has made their place
there?
I answer this question by politicizing placed-based ethics of care, a concept developed
by Till (2012) based on Tronto’s (1993) four types of care. Care is “a type of engagement in
the world (Till 2012, p. 11)” that involves sustaining and repairing it “so that we can live in it
as well as possible” (Tronto 1993, p. 103). In practicality, care engages Sandercock’s
therapeutic planning; however, this care must be deeply politicized to address the root
causes of communal trauma: white supremacy (see Williams, 2020). Trauma imaginaries

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www.destinationcrenshaw.com

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not only aim to resist and protect but also produce care as a politic of recognition. Care is
produced to protect the targeted racialized group’s humanity. The burden of care happens
within the community, among the members, and involves those committed to place.
Because the burden is itself a product of the “Black sense of place” that requires mindfulness
of struggle (McKittrick, 2017), a “double consciousness” (Dubois and Gates, 2007), and a
“being for other” (Fanon, 2008), it continues to induce communal trauma, as Black
communities must fight for recognition.
For planners to engage in ethical, reparative, and reflective planning, as called for in
chapter 1, they must understand how the politics of care are operationalized in their
communities. For planners to address communal trauma, they must recognize these acts as
legitimate acts of planning and place-making and use their power, resources, and expertise
to support community care. By providing this analysis of care, I aim to help planners
understand reparative work as care support.
Attentiveness as Care
The first type of care is “caring about’ which involves an “attentiveness” to place
shared among a group of people (Till, 2012). Attentiveness is the act of recognition. One of
the ways ‘caring about’ is demonstrated in the case is in the ways community leaders
listened to the community, gathered their stories, and heard their experiences of place. This
listening happened in the context of state-sanctioned planners inducing trauma by
nonrecognition (Taylor, 2021). For Crenshaw, ‘caring about’ is recognizing the link between
identity and place, the need to solidify Crenshaw as a Black place, and the effects of the
racialized trauma embedded in place. This recognition, in essence, is saying to a group of
people that have been historically erased, dispossessed, and ignored, I see you. I see how you
are living, interacting, and experiencing place. I see how your identity and place are co-
constructive, and your psycho-socio-cultural parts are impacted.
To engage in reflective planning, planners must support recognition as care. To do so,
planners must acknowledge the impact of their own nonrecognition and embrace what
Mustafa Dikec (2017) identifies as rage, the sense of being in anger in ways that bring about

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an awareness of work and the reality of humanity. For so long, planners have rejected
emotions and subjectivity in efforts to defend “science rationalities” to shape the city (Hoch,
2006). However, rationalities prove to be subjective as they are invented in the context of
coloniality, white supremacy, and racial capitalism (Mignolo, 2011; Harris, 1993; Robinson,
2020). This context generated and reified the communal trauma that shaped the K Line
case. Rationalities also absolve planners of their role in inducing communal trauma. To
support care work, planners must disengage from rationalities and engage in what
Sandercock (2004) calls social learning but do so in the context of the Black sense of place
(McKittrick, 2017). That is, planners must extend resources to support spaces of recognition
and learn from recognition work happening in communities.
Action as Care
The second type of care is ‘taking care of,’ which requires responsive action as an
organic result of ‘caring about’ a place (Till, 2012). Attentiveness requires responsive action
for recognition to be complete. The ‘caring about’ cannot exist without the ‘taking care of.’ In
K Line case, months of listening (attentiveness) yielded Destination Crenshaw (action), a
celebration of Blackness and Black contribution to the world. Destination Crenshaw was
described as a “reparative development project” and demanded recognition with a sense of
urgency, as residents believe nonrecognition would lead to erasure (see Taylor, 2021). To
resist communal trauma, Black communities partake in acts of recognition made aware
through rage. Rage made the Crenshaw community aware of the work of securing a Leimert
Park Stop. To ‘take care of’ Crenshaw was to know you need a stop in Leimert Park to
survive. To take care of place is to do the work—protesting, advocating, fighting—to realize
the stop.
Due to the lack of care by state-sanctioned planners, Black communities have raised
insurgent planners that intrinsically practice ‘caring about’ and ‘taking care of’ place. They
are disproportionally burdened with the work of care and taking care of places that planners
intentionally and unintentionally hurt. Thus, to engage in ethical planning, planners need to
acknowledge their role in creating this care burden and remedy it by providing material

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support to ongoing ‘taking care of’ efforts. Schweitzer (2016) contextualizes Sandercock’s
therapeutic planning imagination in political theory to interrogate the role of ethics in social
learning and healing. She argues that healing the relationship between planners and
racialized communities must lead to transformation. Hence, identifying injury is only the
first step of healing; planners have an ethical obligation to “remedy what harm they can as
well as make a credible commitment to reform” (Schweitzer, 2016, p. 131).
Ability as Care
The third type of care is ‘giving care. ‘According to Till (2012), the act of ‘giving care’
involves doing the work of care in ways that build competency or ability to care well
throughout time. If ‘taking care of’ deals with repairing past and present harms, ‘giving care’
deals with creating the ability to care in ways that protect from future harm. In the case of
the K Line, ‘giving care’ manifested in the ways in which the community moves from the
immediate care that produces the Leimert Park stop to future care that legitimatizes
Crenshaw as the Black cultural center of Los Angeles through Destination Crenshaw.
Furthermore, Destination Crenshaw builds competency by launching DC Thrive, the
program that aims to provide ongoing protection and care for the community long-term. In
the Black sense of place, ‘giving care’ is survival. It is the act of demanding recognition in
ways that ensure future existence.
‘Caring about’ places and ‘taking care of’ places are the beginning steps in ‘giving
care.’ However, giving care involves present and future reflective processes that raise
questions about how present-day planning continues to inflict harm. To’ give care,’
communities wrestle with white supremacy, coloniality, and racial capitalism as they aim to
preserve communities that have been long oppressed. In the K Line case, ‘giving care’
produced community planners facilitating radical planning processes to disrupt the existing
power structures that make communal trauma possible. Radical planning is a community-
driven action (Osborne et al. 2017; Purcell, 2009) that must “disrupt the attempts of
neoliberal governance to stabilize oppressive relationships through inclusion” (Miraftab
2009, p. 41).

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To engage in reparative planning, planners must support communities that give
care through radical planning. Providing support requires planners to use their resources
and expertise to support the agency of communities. Planners might occasionally have to
challenge their power structures, as they too are influenced and subject to the Nation-State.
Accountability as Care
The fourth type of caring is ‘receiving care,’ which “makes sure the care work has
been done and it has made things better” (Till 2012, p. 11). ‘Receiving care’ involves
accountability. It acknowledges that care work cannot be done by one group; rather, it is a
collective phenomenon. It is the practice of responsiveness, allowing others to partner with
you to achieve the care work in ways that sustain and repair the community (Tronto, 1993).
As communities care for place, they hold agencies, planners, and policymakers accountable.
In the K Line case, the Crenshaw community practiced ‘receiving care’ by holding Metro
accountable and demanding Metro invest in the community. Another example is how they
practiced ‘receiving care,’ as they invited the community to take collective ownership of the
planning process to produce Destination Crenshaw. ‘Receiving care’ also operationalizes the
politics of recognition as it demands powerful agencies to “see” and “do right” by the
community.
For planners to engage in reparative planning, they must participate in the act of
‘receiving care’ by listening and responding to accountability demands. In doing so, planners
shift power and decenter the planner as the primary knowledge producer. Often planners
induce more harm by engaging in racial justice and equity work because the white-savior
complex leads to paternalistic endeavors, or there is no genuine desire to yield or share
power. In responding to ‘receiving care,’ planners acknowledge that communities have
agency, approaches, and interventions necessary to care for places in healthy and sustaining
ways. Yet the burden of caring cannot be carried by residents alone. Instead, planners can
support care by lending resources, expertise, and funding to meet the community's goals.

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CONCLUSION
As we work to ensure that the contractor meets their obligations, our focus is
on getting this project completed and one that everyone can be riding on next
year. Crenshaw is our first mega project. We've learned a lot working with
communities that we can now incorporate in our future mega-projects that
we're working on in other parts of the county. - CEO Stephanie Wiggins
(Jackson-Fossett, 2021)

Despite experiencing the suffocating communal trauma induced by the planning and
development of the Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line, the community’s trauma imaginaries resisted
such trauma and changed the planning process. In doing so, the community engaged in a
politic of care that can inform an emerging framework for reparative praxis. Their work not
only yielded outcomes that benefited the community but also influenced Metro’s approach to
working with communities, and as the CEO states, they provided a template that can be
incorporated in future projects. Like Metro, planners can learn from the K Line case and
implement reparative praxis in their work.
In examining the presence of trauma imaginaries SCLA, I have established that
trauma imaginaries of resistance, activism, survival and resilience manifested, revealing
communal trauma and impacted the planning and development process. Planners can shift
the burden of repair work from the communities while honoring communities as primary
knowledge-producing by supporting the politics of care. I end this chapter with a call for
planners to reflect on their practices, processes, approaches, values, visions, and missions to
learn from this work and integrate some of the principles presented meaningfully.

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CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A REPARATIVE PRAXIS

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In this study, I have identified trauma imaginaries and defined communal trauma
Based on my experience as a practicing planner in Jackson, MS. Then, using placed
biographies, I have tested the validity of this concept in South Central Los Angeles, a place
radically different from Jackson, MS. Finally, I have examined the impact of trauma
imaginaries on planning and development processes in South Central Los Angeles. I
conclude that communal trauma is embedded in place, and trauma imaginaries impact how
places are understood, inhibited, and produced.
In building a theory of communal trauma, the aim is not only to identify a
phenomenon happening in place, but also to develop trauma-remediation practices and
processes that can help planners achieve their goal: “to maximize the health, safety, and
economic well-being of all people living in our communities” (American Planning
Association, n.d.). Planners cannot maximize health and well-being if trauma remains
embedded in place. Planners also have an ethical obligation to “seek social justice by
working to expand choice and opportunity for all persons, recognizing a special
responsibility to plan for the needs of the disadvantaged and to promote racial and economic
integration” (American Planning Association, 2016). In 1998, a leading scholar in Black
Communities, June Thomas, reflected on how these goals have not been achieved in Black
communities across the U. S. landscape. This observation still resonates in 2021 as,
statistically, Black populations have significantly lower health, safety, and economic well-
being outcomes than their white counterparts (Kendi & Blain, 2021).
These statistics reveal that many professional planners have not been able to achieve
their goal of well-being for all, nor have they met their ethical obligation to seek social
justice. But not because of lack of effort. Since the social movements of the 1960s, planning
theorists and practitioners have sought approaches to address social justice and equity
issues plaguing the United States. Most notably, advocacy and equity planning emerged as a
theory and approach to free America from comprehensive/rational planning, now
understood as racial planning (Krumholz & Forrester, 1990). In this theory, planning should
create more equitable places by redistributing resources, power, and participation to the

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marginalized populations (Davidoff, 1965). Relatedly, communicative and collaborative
planning approaches focus on the community's involvement in the production of public
space (Huxley, 2000). Specifically, this approach promotes an inclusive, community-based,
and participatory democracy when it comes to making planning decisions.
Radical planning—deeply intertwined with insurgent planning—pulses through
Global South literature but has little presence in the U. S. (Miraftab, 2009). Radical planning
differs from communicative planning in that it promotes community-driven interventions
rather than community-involvement processes (Osborne et al., 2017; Purcell, 2009). In this
approach, planning must “disrupt the attempts of neoliberal governance to stabilize
oppressive relationships through inclusion” (Miraftab 2009, p. 41). Thus, radical planning
must be insurgent for social transformation to materialize (Watson, 2013). Jacobs (2019)
coupled radical planning with liberatory Black feminism theory revealing the need for
various planning approaches to be understood through a critical race lens. Others apply
abolitionist frameworks as a means to address systemic oppression and the process of
consolidating "power through white supremacy, misogyny, nationalism, xenophobia,
corporatism, and militarism" (Abott et al., 2018).
While these approaches move the needle towards more just and equitable practices
and places, they can be filled with contradiction (Huxley, 2010) and often lack the
transformative power needed if they do not directly acknowledge and engage with how
planning, as a professional practice, has been constructed in systems of power that produces
hierarchies of difference, processes of othering, and histories of violence. To acknowledge
this role of planning is to acknowledge planning’s role in inducing communal trauma.
Because planning induces communal trauma, it has an ethical obligation to redress it. Thus,
a theory of communal trauma not only exposes a psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon
happening in place but also requires reparative actions.
TOWARDS A REPARATIVE PRAXIS
Using Sandercock’s (2004) therapeutic planning, Schweitzer (2016) begins to
address this ethical obligation for planners to redress communal trauma through restorative

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ethics. Schweitzer aims to advance Sandercock’s therapeutic planning by defining the role
planning must play in social learning and healing for places to “rebuild from harm” (p. 130).
To do so, Schweitzer moves the language from therapeutic to restorative to address the
issues with the “counselor-patient model” that ignores planning’s role in inducing trauma.
Can the inflictor of harm be the counselor? Schweitzer (2016) argues that “planners have
contributed to harm and their obligations as professionals thus differ from those of a
counselor” (p. 131). Planners are not counselors, and communities are not patients that
need fixing. By nature, therapeutic planning insinuates a paternalistic approach to "fixing" a
community and implies the racialized pathologies perpetuating oppression. In Erfan’s
(2017) application of therapeutic planning, planners are "community healers" (p. 42).
However, planning’s entanglement with the Nation-State situates planners as offenders—the
doers of harm—and corrupts the ability of planners to be healers. Essentially, the idea that a
planner comes into a community to heal positions the planning profession as, perhaps
narcissistically, the answer to community problems. The stories of West Jackson, South
Central Los Angeles, and Crenshaw reveal that planners coming into racialized communities
have done tremendous harm, inducing community trauma. For planners to turn around and
ask Black communities to trust them as healers is wrong.
Yet planners do have an ethical obligation to address communal trauma. Schweitzer
(2016) offers restorative ethics, using political theory to argue that identifying harm is only
one phase in restoring relationships. Planners have a responsibility to "remedy what harm
they can as well as make a credible commitment to reform” through ordinary justice (p.
131). While restorative ethics addresses the issues with therapeutic discourse, it necessitates
an entirely new question asked by one of the community members: “What exactly are you
restoring?” Restoring implies there was harmony before, that there was health before, and
that there was equality before. However, contextualizing Schweitzer’s argument in Critical
and Black Geographies literature and the evidence provided in previous chapters, we find
that planning associated with the Nation-State has never benefited Black communities. In
West Jackson, trauma imaginaries declare present-day planning as plantation logics,

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pointing to the trauma of displacement and dispossession that began a violent history for
Black Americans and, in many ways, is ongoing. In South Central, trauma imaginaries
reveal the constant struggle in the Black sense of place that resists domination and racial
encounters (McKittrick, 2011). In Crenshaw, trauma imaginaries reveal the fight for
recognition and the desire to belong and make place, not in relation to the white man
(Fanon, 2008).
Given this contextualization in critical and black geographies studies, I advance
Schweitzer’s argument using reparative praxis. Reparative praxis originates in the reparation
literature that involves a process of acknowledgment, atonement, and action to ensure harm
is not repeated in the present (Ogletree Jr., 2002). Similar to Schweitzer’s (2016) restorative
ethics, it demands that a victim’s condition prior to an injustice be restored—or what would
have been possible had it not occurred—and calls for continual work so that conditions do
not shift back in the future (Darity & Mullins, 2020). Reparations require direct payment to
racialized populations harmed by the hands of the State. In applying this theory to planning,
I am not suggesting that planning is solely responsible for reparations for all harms and
wrongs committed against a racialized group. Planners are only one role, and planning is
only one tool operating in an interdisciplinary set of activities that produce place. Often
planning is constrained by the power matrix.
However, planners still have an ethical obligation to remedy, and learning from
reparations literature is one way to achieve such remedy. Thus, I draw from Táíwò’s (2022)
constructive view of reparations, which positions reparations as a just, worldmaking project.
Thus, reparations are about “building just distribution” (Táíwò, 2022, p. 11). For planners, a
reparative praxis framework seeks to create places where reparations can thrive and have a
long-lasting impact. It is not the act of economic reparations; instead, it is a set of tools,
approaches, and processes that change how professions, explicitly planning, contribute to
communal trauma. Thus, reparative planning, as a process of transitional justice, seeks to
honor community agency (acknowledgment), redress past harms (atonement), and attack
dominant power structures (action). Essentially, reparative praxis is the mechanism by

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which planners can engage in social learning and heal through compensation (Sandercock,
2004; Schweitzer, 2016).
In this work, reparative praxis and communal trauma are two sides of the same coin,
to use Mignolo’s (2011) metaphor. Communal trauma and reparative praxis are intertwined
as residents respond with trauma imaginaries that provoke modes of resistance and
protection. Trauma imaginaries can help planners understand and learn how to engage in
reparative praxis. I conclude this work with three observations that emerged in each case of
trauma imaginaries presented in this dissertation. I challenge planners to integrate these
actions into their daily practices and processes to achieve a reparative end.
1. Contextualize present-day decision-making in past histories
The nature of communal trauma to disrupt time and place coordinates produces
trauma imaginaries that contextualize present-day circumstances in past histories. In West
Jackson, Michelle asserting “ain’t nobody ever planned for us” expresses how past planning
decisions have been detrimental to Black communities. Because these histories of spatial
abuse have never been addressed, Michelle has no reason to believe future planning will be
different. Her assessment of the planning field uncovers how communities hurt because of
past histories. LaRae, a South Central Los Angeles native, echoes Michelle’s actions as she
contextualized her father’s decision to join a gang in the national policies and practices that
created the circumstances of place in which her father was forced to make that decision. In
her placed biography, LaRae’s agency and fight shine through, but she understands her life
circumstances are shaped by a nation-state designed to oppress her. Community activists
fighting the Crenshaw/LAX Line contextualized Metro’s planning decisions in its histories,
as Metro’s has a record of discriminating against people of color. In doing so, they could
recognize the potentially devastating effects of the decisions as these histories showed a
future of disinvestment and erasure.
One of the four major characteristics of communal trauma is contextualizing current
events in past histories. As such, it is also necessary to build a reparative praxis. Honoring

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community agency requires acknowledging how communities hurt. This hurt is
communicated in the act of contextualizing past histories. Agency is an articulation of power
that involves the consideration of community legacies and voice. Thus, to acknowledge
community agency is to acknowledge community histories and how planning has and
continues to inflict harm. Contextualizing also reveals why places hurt and what past harms
need to be redressed. Before redressing can take place, planners, community members, and
policymakers need to understand past histories. These histories also point to the action of
redressing as it details that the reparative action must address. Finally, contextualizing offers
a comprehensive understanding of power dynamics and provides content for power
mapping that can result in effective attacks on power structures.
2. Reject Whiteness
Trauma imaginaries emerge as modes of resistance that help protect communities
from the assaults of whiteness. Whiteness is the systems, practices, and processes of racial
injustice to secure and maintain white advantage through exclusion, value assessment,
invisibility, and durability (Goetz et al., 2020; also see Bonilla-Silva, 2012; Harris, 1993;
Lipsitz, 2006). Thus, rejecting whiteness is practicing inclusion, reassessing value, making
whiteness visible, and undermining its durability. Reparative praxis, then, must reject
whiteness. Whiteness oppresses community agency, gaslights memories of past harms, and
reinforces dominant power structures. It is antithetical to reparative praxis. Yet, whiteness is
pervasive in planning. To reject whiteness is to be aware of how it penetrates every aspect of
the planning profession.
In West Jackson, the ‘whose yo’ massa’?” flier serves as a function of resistance that
reject the West Jackson Master Planning Project as a continuation of plantation logic that
serves whiteness. Similarly, Charles eventually rejects the box placed upon him by whiteness
as he refuses to be stereotyped by the powers that be. Community members in South Central
Los Angeles reject the white spatial imaginary projected on the community presented by the
planning department. Instead, they create a place of unapologetically Blackness.

131
Planners can pull from precolonial and resistance planning approaches to examine
how whiteness is present in their practices. Sandercock (1998), one among other scholars,
highlight these divergent modes of planning throughout history, showing how the practice
of planning has always existed outside of the State. Since settler colonialism, oppressed
communities have wielded their power to keep, maintain, and produce their own places,
within and outside the constraints of oppressive power structures. For example, a long and
ongoing history of people's movements has demonstrated how to reject whiteness, and as a
result, they transform places through resistance (Hunter & Robinson, 2018; Robinson,
2010; Muñoz, 1999). As planners aim to reject whiteness in their practices, processes, and
projects, they can study these subversive histories.
3. Seek Remedy
As trauma imaginaries express and respond to communal trauma, they instinctively
look for ways to address trauma. In the West Jackson Planning Process, Bertha’s office visit
was an attempt to seek remedy as she expressed her connection to the neighborhood. She
came to the office to not only defend her actions but to seek a common understanding that
would remedy the loss experienced by Quick-Take. In the Placed Biographies, trauma
imaginaries seek remedy by pointing to a need for healing. LaRae advocates for healing. The
ability to move forward to experience communal well-being and healthy growth is directly
tied to the ability to “sit back and heal.” LaRae points to a need for policymakers and
planners to partake in this healing as they are complicit in creating harm and wrong that
individuals and communities must navigate in their everyday experiences. In the
Crenshaw/LAX Line Case, community members seek remedy through a community
benefits agreement that would protect legacy businesses from the damage construction
brought. The development of the Business Improvement Fund and the Business Solution
Center redistributed Metro funds to compensate businesses for losses due to the planning
and construction of the K Line.

132
A reparative praxis requires planners to understand and remedy physical, economic,
social, and cultural devastation in communities. Seeking remedy is not only providing
compensation for past communal trauma but also an act of attacking power structures to
ensure that harm is not continued. Remedy must atone for the past while ensuring more
equitable futures. For communities that have been ignored and neglected since the founding
of this nation, planners must honor their agency. This honoring should not produce a
burden on the community. Rather, it should respect community legacies and voices in ways
that share power and support communal ways of knowing.
In closing, I engage in radical imagination as a means of resistance (Kelly, 2002). In
building a theory of communal trauma in ways that lead to reparative praxis, my aim is to
create planning otherwise. A planning field that shapes and co-produces places of well-
being: places of mobility, where people have the ability to move through and to spaces and
places freely without fear; places of life, where people can access opportunities to thrive and
realize aspirations, dreams, and purpose without structural barriers; places of breath, where
people inhabit a quality air, water, and land that promotes the fullness of breath without
toxicity; and places of dignity, in which people live in a physical, political, social, and cultural
environment that promotes life-affirming dignity without discrimination.

133
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract While planning theory has long acknowledged the profession's role in producing racialized spatial realities, few have explored how place-based trauma shapes places, spatial processes, and lived experiences. To fill this gap, I develop communal trauma as an analytical planning concept by examining trauma imaginaries through a three-part research approach. First, I employ my experience as a practicing planner working primarily in Black communities in Mississippi, where I observed a psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon happening in a place. Through autoethnography methods, I analyze this phenomenon as trauma imaginaries, the intersection of spatial imaginaries and communal trauma. Then, based on these findings and informed by an interdisciplinary survey of the literature, I conceptualize communal trauma theory.
Second, I assess the validity of this theory by exploring these concepts in South Central Los Angeles (SCLA), a place radically different from Mississippi. In this phase, I cultivate a method for exploring spatial consciousness and spatial imaginaries. These placed biographies methodology involves an intensive place-based journaling process, including a cognitive mapping process and photographic field interviews in places meaningful to participants. In applying a transdisciplinary methodological approach, I gain a rich data set that reveals new insight into the relationship between place, race, and planning.
Third, I ask how trauma imaginaries impact planning processes in SCLA? Situating this question in the case of Crenshaw/LAX Rail Line, I use mixed qualitative methods to analyze how trauma imaginaries impact planning and development processes and community health. This work seeks to help planners better understand how racialized communities hurt and equip planners to redress this hurt through reparative praxis. I argue that planners cannot achieve their goals of maximizing communities' health, safety, and economic well-being without addressing communal trauma.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Poe, Jocelyn (author)

Core Title On planning, place, and race: how trauma imaginaries reveal communal trauma and impact collective well-being

School School of Policy, Planning and Development

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Urban Planning and Development

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/22/2022

Defense Date 05/11/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,planning,qualitative methods,Race,spatial imaginaries,trauma

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sloane, David (committee chair)

Creator Email jocelyn.poe@gmail.com,jsp293@cornell.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111373696

Unique identifier UC111373696

Legacy Identifier etd-PoeJocelyn-10897

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Poe, Jocelyn

Type texts

Source 20220722-usctheses-batch-959 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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