Asian Immigrants, Rejecting Assimilation, Created US 'Ethnoburb'

2025-02-14 03:18:58

(MENAFN- Asia Times) This article is adapted from UNASSIMILABLE: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the 21st Century by Bianca Mabute-Louie (HarperCollins, January 2025).

I grew up in San Gabriel Valley - also referred to as SGV or the 626. SGV is an ethnoburb - an ethnic enclave - that grew out of the 1970s, with its own economy and ecosystem that includes banks, grocery stores, hair salons and restaurants.

Since many early Asian immigrants to this country were barred from accessing white institutions, working together to build and protect this ethnic ecosystem was a matter of survival and necessity.

Wei Li, a Chinese American geographer, first proposed the term “ethnoburb” to describe the hybridity of ethnic enclaves and middle-class suburbs: suburban ethnic clusters of people and businesses.

The ethnoburb demonstrates that we can create our own power and belonging - without learning English, without participating in white institutions, and Americanizing. It is a communal endeavour, one that requires everybody's imagination and care.

The 'Chinese Beverly Hills'

Fueled by foreign capital, ethnoburb immigrants redefined the entire landscape of the suburb and instigated an economic boom. The growth of Chinese American banking institutions, along with the political and economic factors that prompted the migration of wealthy ethnic Chinese from Taiwan and Hong Kong, played an important role in facilitating the Chinese economic growth in Monterey Park, a city in San Gabriel Valley.

With their resources, Chinese immigrants bought homes and started businesses with distinct Chinese and Vietnamese language signs to cater to fellow Asian transplants. Valley Boulevard, which runs through 10 cities in San Gabriel Valley, became home to Asian-owned malls, commercial plazas, office complexes, shops, hotels and industrial plants, often with trilingual signage in Chinese, Vietnamese and English.

Monterey Park back when it was making its name as an Asian American enclove. Photo: KCET

Asian immigrants transformed neglected strip malls into prosperous Asian marketplaces and forged a sense of permanence and community. Monterey Park, and eventually the rest of San Gabriel valley, began to be referred to as“Little Taipei” or the“Chinese Beverly Hills” by journalists and Chinese diasporic media.

By the 1980s, Monterey Park was known as “the first suburban Chinatown,” converting San Gabriel Valley from predominantly white suburbs into an Asian-majority ecosystem with a conspicuous and diverse first-generation, unassimilated immigrant presence.

Bypassing urban Chinatowns for the suburbs

The ethnoburb doesn't fit the American stereotype of the suburbs as static sites of whiteness and socioeconomic mobility.

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