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Synopsis: The history of postwar Oakland is often reduced to a tale of inevitable urban decline or black political radicalism—interpretations that parallel national narratives but neglect many of the unique complexities of Oakland. Robert Self expands beyond this conventional view by demonstrating how the political culture and urban space of Oakland were strategically impacted by a spectrum of historical actors. American Babylon specifically describes the rise of urban black power politics and white homeowner conservatism from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978. These two political movements grew out of the same racial inequalities that manifested in debates over the distribution of metropolitan benefits in the 1940s and 1950s and metropolitan costs in the 1960s and 1970s. American Babylon refutes the urban-suburban binary and complicates the decline of Oakland from a prospective “industrial garden” to an “exploited colony” strangled by the “white noose” of suburbanization. Just as the greatness of Babylon was blemished by corruption, so also the idyllic vision of Oakland was poisoned by spatial processes that favored capital over liberalism.
Oakland’s postwar leaders initially attempted to develop an “industrial garden” in which industrial development would complement suburban residentials. Boosters attracted both white and black laborers to the city to reap the benefits of New Deal liberalism. Oakland suburban property-owners, in turn, attempted to entice businesses by lowering taxes, enforcing racial restrictions, and transferring the costs of development to the city. Federal lending policies, local zoning laws, and private protective associations intentionally displaced working-class communities, limited progressive policies, and disenfranchised African American labor in the name of urban renewal. The construction of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, port facilities, and interstate highways further exacerbated the urban crisis. According to Self, segregation was not the result of a reactive “white flight” but it was deliberately inscribed into the Oakland landscape. Many African Americans were relegated to impoverished civic spaces, who responded by cultivating their own political culture. Self provides a nuanced account of black power politics that acknowledges a diversity of advocates and distances black power activism from the Southern Civil Rights Movement. The black power movement was “a creative outgrowth of earlier efforts, not a radical and failed break from them” (Self 218). The failure of the War on Poverty to address structural barriers such as employment discrimination caused many African Americans to abandon the “industrial garden” vision and recharacterize Oakland as an “urban plantation.” African Americans finally took control of City Hall when Lionel Wilson became the first black mayor of Oakland in 1977 but the city was on the brink of a fiscal crisis. Corporations increasingly resisted or struggled to share the burden of taxes. As a result, although suburban homeowners were one of the most heavily government-subsidized groups, white property-owners initiated a tax revolt that resulted in the passage of Proposition 13—the nation’s first property tax limitation measure. Property, as the ultimate embodiment of capital, was synonymous with power and its possession thus justified denying African Americans freedom. Although a tragedy, American Babylon moves beyond the trope of the black ghetto by illustrating how African American communities were shaped by and responded to white conservativism.
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