Monterey Park’s Mix Lures Researchers : UCLA Sociologist Leads Project Examining ‘Very Rapid Change’ in Ethnically Rich City

UCLA sociologist John Horton’s introduction to conflict and cooperation, Monterey Park-style, came with the 1987 Fourth of July community picnic.

A low-level debate surrounded what kind of food would be served, he says. Should it be hot dogs only? Or tacos and egg rolls too, as was served in 1986? The picnic’s leaders finally decided that hot dogs would be the main fare.

The issue fascinates Horton, who with four UCLA graduate students is studying the ethnically diverse community, which the professor describes as “an extreme example of very rapid social change.”

“Is the Fourth of July a celebration of certain food, a certain America?” Horton asks. “What is American food? What does it mean to be an American? That is all being contested in Monterey Park.”

However, the struggle, Horton says, goes beyond picnic food to the larger issue of how the host of newly arrived immigrants relate to one another as well as longtime residents. Those relationships, for example, shape who is elected to the City Council and influence attitudes about what percentage of a commercial sign’s language can be foreign.

City Transformed

As much as in any community in the nation, Horton says, forces have come together in the last decade to transform Monterey Park, making the suburb ripe for scrutiny. More than half of the 62,000 Monterey Park residents are of Asian ancestry; another third are of Latino heritage. Many, especially those who came from China, arrived in Monterey Park within the last decade.

What Horton hopes to discover is how residents are responding to the changes in their city.

“What’s interesting is how people are living the changes,” Horton said. “The changes are so rapid that data collection can’t keep up.”

Neither the census results of 1980, he said, nor the eagerly awaited figures for 1990 can “predict how people behave.”

Since February, when the project began, the researchers have attended City Council meetings, talked with Little League mothers and PTA members, interviewed politicians and participated in festivals and picnics. One watched the City Council election returns last April at a candidate’s home. So far, much of the work, funded through at least next fall by UCLA’s Institute of American Cultures, has centered on the April election.

Not enough research has been done to draw firm conclusions, Horton said, and it may be more than a year before results are revealed. But researchers, working in conjunction with the Asian Pacific American Voter Registration Project, did conclude from voter exit-polling in April that no one ethnic group can ensure a candidate’s success with its support.

It’s unclear why voters choose a particular candidate, Horton said, but the exit survey of 1,354 of 8,285 voters showed that new council members Judy Chu and Betty Couch won because they had support from all ethnic groups.

Horton hopes the project will help determine the ethnic breakdown of voter registration. Preliminary estimates, he said, are that one-third of Monterey Park’s registered voters are of Asian ancestry.

Distinguishing Elements

Horton cites Monterey Park’s distinguishing elements, which foreshadow events in other cities throughout the country:

A slow-growth movement in a strongly ethnic community, which once was principally white.

A city of minorities who have become the majority and are seeking more political representation.

The urbanization of a suburb. Apartments, condominiums and traffic-congested streets characterize the city now, instead of the quiet bedroom community of single-family houses that were dominant after World War II.

The debate over immigration-related issues and whether English should be adopted as the nation’s official language. Perhaps in no other community in the country, Horton says, has this proposal been debated as vigorously.

Another key aspect of the study, Horton says, is that researchers will track how several ethnic groups in one community relate to one another.

Watts Street Life

Fifty-six-year-old Horton, who studied street-corner life in Watts in the 1960s and wrote his UCLA dissertation on voter attitudes toward school bond referendums in two Upstate New York communities, notes that sociologists normally study one group. But, Horton says, the research will explore “the layers and layers of social structure, ethnicity and politics.”

Four UCLA students are gathering and analyzing information, and another four graduate students who are Horton’s primary research assistants have already have helped him interview 100 people.

Mary Pardo, who teaches Chicano studies at UC Northridge, and Jose Calderon are focusing on the city’s Latino politics. Leland Saito of Montebello and Yen-Fen Tseng, a student from Taiwan who lives in Arcadia, are specializing in the Asian groups, including those of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese backgrounds.

Community leaders’ reactions range from skepticism to welcoming optimism regarding the study--entitled “Grass-Roots Politics in a Changing Community.”

In recent years not only sociologists and students but journalists from the national media, including Atlantic Magazine, The Washington Post and “The MacNeil/Leherer News Hour” have reported on Monterey Park. Residents are savvy about interlopers.

“We’re engaged in a big process of trying to pull our community together. It’s a day-to-day process of reweaving the fabric,” said Councilman Christopher F. Houseman. “I hope these researchers will allow us a chance to do that, without any excess scrutiny and microscopic dissection.”

Liberal ‘Bias’

Mayor Barry L. Hatch questioned the need for such a study, saying he suspects the researchers are political liberals and this will skew their results. “We know what’s happening in Monterey Park,” the new mayor said. “We know the reasons behind the changes. We know what needs to be done.”

Hatch also questioned involvement of Calderon, a Monterey Park resident who at council meetings has criticized Hatch’s complaints about laxness in U.S. enforcement of immigration laws. Calderon, president of the San Gabriel chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens and a former intern in the city manager’s office, said he sees no problem.

“Participatory observation,” Calderon said, is a legitimate sociological tool.

Joseph Rubin, president of the Residents Assn. of Monterey Park homeowners group, praised Horton for his unobtrusive research methods.

“I’m puzzled weekly by what happens in Monterey Park,” Rubin said. “You find labels are worth almost nothing--whether someone is called a liberal or a conservative. I’d welcome any sort of learned input . . . even if I don’t agree with (the sociologists’) opinions.”

Council members Chu and Couch, both of whom let Horton accompany them during door-to-door campaigning in April, said they hoped the study’s findings could benefit the community. That people are cautious, Horton said, is understandable. “People want their story told but they are afraid you’re going to distort it,” he said.

Community Forums

As part of the project, Horton hopes to hold a series of community forums to talk about the findings, which may eventually be published in a non-academic version. Earlier this week over breakfast at a Monterey Park institution, the Paris Restaurant, Horton and Pardo talked about their project. From his vantage point in one of the padded booths, Horton described how the Paris symbolizes some of the changes. As the gathering place for the community’s white power structure, the Paris was once like an annex of the nearby City Hall.

Two years ago the restaurant changed hands. The new owners, who are of Chinese ancestry, retained the same hometown atmosphere and food. The restaurant still attracts community leaders, but no longer is English the only language spoken.

The reactions and underlying reasons for changes, Pardo said, “are not neat and clean. You can’t put it in a headline. Sorting it out is the trick for us.”

The researchers, Horton said, will try to penetrate stereotypes by talking to second- and third-generation Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans who come from diverse areas and speak the different dialects of Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.

“You have to hang around a lot and see whether people are putting you on,” Horton said, “or whether they’re saying what they feel.” Formally, he said, someone may express tolerance. Informally, he said, they may say: “Oh, that (Chinese) food stinks. It creates so much grease.”

He realized one danger of stereotypes, Horton said, when he conducted exit polls during the April election. He was talking with three residents, Anglos of different cultural backgrounds. He was surprised to find they represented the full range of opinion on the issue of the Chinese characters that are prevalent on business signs.

Monterey Park represents such a new type of community, Pardo said, that standard theories may not apply. She is concentrating on Latinas, who she said are “traditionally viewed as passive, docile and non-participatory.” But she said she is finding that the women involved in Little League, church groups and PTAs constitute a network usually seen as part of a family network but one that often translates into a political one.

What amazes him, Horton said, is that all the change is occurring in a suburban town that “looks like middle America.” A pleasing discovery, Horton said, is that conflicts rarely become physical, even though there have been demonstrations with racial overtones, and some City Council meetings have turned rowdy.

“People can find a common ground and that’s an important part of the story,” said Horton, citing a recent effort by an ethnically diverse group of residents who persuaded state officials to move a parole office from a residential neighborhood.

“That’s what is positive about Monterey Park,” he said. “It isn’t just armed camps organized on racial grounds. There aren’t cross burnings. People aren’t shooting each other. A lot of people live next door to people from other cultures and they are having to work that out. That’s the day-to-day reality. Just people living their lives.”