In “Cities,” the author reflects on the intri­cate his­to­ry and racial dynam­ics of Los Ange­les, their birth­place, reveal­ing how the city has evolved through var­i­ous cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal land­scapes. The nar­ra­tive begins by detail­ing the geog­ra­phy of Los Angeles—a coastal plain influ­enced by the Tong­va peo­ple and shaped by Span­ish and Mex­i­can rule before being annexed by the U.S. This his­to­ry intro­duces the racial clas­si­fi­ca­tions that have influ­enced the city from its incep­tion, high­light­ing how the ini­tial set­tlers’ identities—like “mula­to,” “mes­ti­zo,” and “indio”—evolved through gen­er­a­tions into a new iden­ti­ty termed “Cal­i­fornio.”

A key fig­ure in this trans­for­ma­tion is Pío Pico, an Afro-Español politi­cian who exem­pli­fied the strug­gle for accep­tance and evo­lu­tion beyond racial labels. Despite his sta­tus in pre‑U.S. con­quest Cal­i­for­nia, the arrival of white set­tlers imposed new racial cat­e­go­riza­tions that mar­gin­al­ized the Cal­i­fornios and rede­fined their iden­ti­ties as “Mex­i­can.” The nar­ra­tive con­tin­ues to jux­ta­pose the sys­temic racism of the past with the expe­ri­ences of the author’s par­ents in the 20th cen­tu­ry, illus­trat­ing how they were racial­ly cat­e­go­rized as “Cau­casian,” despite their mixed her­itage.

The chap­ter also explores the emo­tion­al weight of racial cat­e­go­riza­tions and the effects of seg­re­ga­tion, reveal­ing how these iden­ti­ties shape per­son­al expe­ri­ences. The author recounts a moment wit­ness­ing a child’s inno­cent assump­tion of their role in a com­plex racial nar­ra­tive at a soc­cer game, under­scor­ing the learned racial hier­ar­chies preva­lent in soci­ety.

The text cri­tiques the long-stand­ing insti­tu­tion­al efforts—exemplified by dis­crim­i­na­to­ry map­ping prac­tices in the 1939 Fed­er­al Home Loan Bank map—that have shaped the racial land­scape of cities. This seg­re­ga­tion and the trau­ma asso­ci­at­ed with it man­i­fest in the iden­ti­ties of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in “bar­rios” and among peo­ple of col­or, envelop­ing them in a cycle of vio­lence and resis­tance.

Ulti­mate­ly, the chap­ter speaks to the beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty of hybrid iden­ti­ties with­in mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, illus­trat­ing moments of cul­tur­al pride amidst sys­temic oppres­sion. The author empha­sizes the need for recog­ni­tion of these inter­twined his­to­ries to under­stand the broad­er nar­ra­tive of race and iden­ti­ty in urban Amer­i­ca.