Little Arabia: A Southern California Ethnoanchor
Brookhurst Street begins at a barrier along the railroad tracks in the City of Fullerton and runs south through Anaheim, Garden Grove, Westminster, and Fountain Valley until reaching the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. Spanning 16.5 miles, the six-lane thoroughfare creates fifty-one intersections and crosses four freeways as it carves through a utilitarian landscape common to much of Southern California, comprised primarily of postwar housing tracts and retail strips. While at first glance banal, and indistinguishable from the dozens of other arterials that shape northern Orange County, a small portion of Brookhurst Street subtly boasts a unique identity (Figure 1). Along a 2.5 mile stretch between Crescent Street and Katella Avenue in the City of Anaheim is a scattered assortment of restaurants, markets, bakeries, halal butcher shops, hookah lounges, educational centers, hair salons, clothing stores, and health and professional services owned by, and catering to, groups who come from the Middle East and North Africa (Figure 2). Intermingled with gentlemen’s clubs, chain grocery stores, and fast food joints, this segment of Brookhurst, transformed over the last twenty-five years, is colloquially known as Little Arabia (Figure 3).
Figure 1. Looking south down Brookhurst Street at Cherrywood Lane in Little Arabia, 2019. Photograph by Noah Allison.
Figure 2. Stand-alone signage symbolizing Little Arabia, 2019. Photograph by Noah Allison.
As far as official boundaries go, Little Arabia does not have any. (Middle East and North African establishments are not even quite limited to the strip: a few other Arab and Islamic enterprises, mostly food businesses, mark the landscape in other parts of Anaheim as well as in the neighboring cities of Garden Grove and Stanton.) But Brookhurst, near the intersection with Ball Road, marks the heart of community. It is the node with Southern California’s highest density of Middle Eastern and North African businesses. From there, nearly six dozen enterprises, schools, and religious institutions unfurl for more than a mile in either direction (Figure 4). The presence of these groups in the generic postwar landscape is indicated by built forms and signage, and by aromas of roasted spiced meat and flavored tobacco.
“culturally specific networks of businesses can hold a community together just as a well—and perhaps better—than a more traditional center like a mosque, church, or urban enclave”
The number of Arab immigrants in Southern California, as elsewhere in the United States, is unknown, a result of the way in which the government collects population data. [1]. We do know, though, that while Dearborn, Michigan has the densest cluster of Arab groups in the United States, California has the largest number of Arab Americans. Approximately 324,609 lived in the state in 2013 according to the Arab American Institute, with around 40,000 in Orange County according to the Arab American Civic Council. Most are immigrants or refugees from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine. We also know that Anaheim, due to the presence of Little Arabia, is a major entry point for Arab people arriving in California.[2] But it is a new kind of gateway.
Figure 3. Commerce along Brookhurst Street not affiliated with Little Arabia identity, 2019. Photograph by Noah Allison.
Historically, most immigrants to the United States settled in urban areas, transforming city neighborhoods into ethnic enclaves, such as Chinatowns and Little Italys. Since the 1965 Hart Cellar Act relaxed restrictions on immigration, and in the wake of later processes of international geopolitical and economic restructuring, immigrants began settling, like other Americans, in the suburbs. By the 1980s, there emerged a type of settlement referred to by some geographers and urban planners as “ethnoburbs.” In contrast with inner-city enclaves, barrios, and ghettos, ethnoburbs were (and are) low-slung clusters of suburban tracts, retail strips, and shopping centers dominated by ethnic minorities with transnational identities—sometimes one, usually multiple. In ethnoburbs, ethnic minorities own a good portion of local businesses, and are actively involved in local politics.[3]
Figure 4. Illustrates the stretch of Brookhurst Street associated with Little Arabia’s businesses and institutions, 2019. Photograph by Noah Allison.
Little Arabia, however, represents something different: what I refer to as an “ethnoanchor.” Following more recent patterns of dispersed (rather than clustered) settlement, Arab Americans today live all over Southern California. Enticed by affordable housing and high-performing school districts, they are spread across scores of neighborhoods in San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties—hardly a “burb” let alone a “town.” Yet as anticipated by cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky in The Enigma of Ethnicity, this community remains cohesive. Not through community centers, not-for-profits, religious institutions, or local politics—but, rather, through commerce. Functioning as an ethnic “agglomeration economy,” Little Arabia’s cluster of restaurants and shops along Brookhurst Street anchors thousands of families scattered across Southern California’s vast landscape.
Figure 5. The ordinary buildings are the primary sites of Little Arabia’s commerce, 2019. Photograph by Noah Allison.
The Little Arabia ethnoanchor illustrates how culturally specific networks of businesses can hold a community together just as a well—and perhaps better—than a more traditional center like a mosque, church, or urban enclave might. As groups of Arab descent and Islamic faith make weekly, sometimes daily, sojourns to Little Arabia, [4] it has become an environment where people, objects, ideas, traditions, and feelings come together to offer a rich and meaningful sense of belonging. [5] For Middle East and North Africa residents of Southern California, it is not a single monument, institution, or site that creates a tangible, symbolic center, but the faint markings on an everyday, ordinary arterial of West Anaheim (Figure 5).
Author’s note: This essay is adapted from a chapter in a forthcoming volume on ethnoburbs in California edited by Margaret Crawford.
NOTES
[1] Federal census surveys do not ask whether a person is of Arab descent. According to Rashad Al-Dabbagh, founder of the Arab American Civic Council, unless Arab-Americans self-ascribe as “Arab” on the census surveys, they often self-identify on the surveys as “White.”
[2] Author interview with Rashad Al-Dabbagh, February 27, 2019.
[3] See Shuguang Wang and Jason Zhong, “Delineating Ethnoburbs in Metropolitan Toronto,” CERIS Working Paper No. 100, April 2013.
[4] Survey undertaken by author inquiring where Little Arabia’s proprietors, workers and patrons reside. February 25-27, 2019.
[5] Author Interview with Nadia at Jenny’s Place, February 27, 2019.
