Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 8

This week’s blog post will be a response to Peter Do’s Week 4 post on the O.C. Orange County! (Not the Horrible TV Show) I thought it was an interesting comment about how Orange County is actually much more diversified than what people perceive. I do agree with that on a certain level, but I would not go as far as to say that there is only a small percentage of Caucasians in Orange County. I think that the O.C. is starting to become a bit more diversified; however, it is still very segregated. Discrimination is still very prevalent in this area; especially towards the African American population who make up less than 2% of the O.C. population.

 

In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times titled “Blackfamily flees O.C. city after tires slashed, racial taunts”, it was reported that an African American family was victim of hate crime in Orange County that they had to flee the area and move elsewhere. This reinforces the ideas presented in Massey’s and Denton’s article “The Continuing Causes of Segregation” that the isolation of the African American community is achieved through racist attitudes, private behavior and institutional practices.

Some theories argue the reason for segregation is because of the economic disadvantages presented in the African American community; however, it seems that when there are people who want to move up their socioeconomic status by moving into better neighborhoods and integrate, there are actions to discourage that. In this case, a family, whose father works as a police officer in Inglewood and the mother works at the Los Angeles County Sherriff, was victim of racism and hate crimes after moving to the O.C. in 2011. Therefore, despite their ability to afford a life in Orange County, the neighborhood was not accepting of it through hostility. Furthermore, the Los Angeles Times article reports the Orange County Human Relations Commission indicating the African American population as frequent target of racial discrimination in the area. Situations like this also disprove the idea of self-segregation, which is a theory that blacks only live in neighborhoods that are largely blacks inducing high levels of segregation. Some may argue that this is an exception since there are not many similar news reports, however, I think the reason is due to safety reasons, which is why this family decline to state their identity.

It is surprising to learn that these issues still occur in the present day, decades after Massey’s and Denton’s analysis and theories. Even though many circumstances are better, I am still surprised that this type of hate crimes would still occur in such a diverse place like the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. California though known to be a more liberal state, Orange County is definitely an exception and like Massey and Denton mention in their article, “…large majorities of whites agree that people should be free to live wherever they want to regardless of skin color, most would not vote for a community law to implement this principle, and most would not want to live in a neighborhood where more than a small percentage of the families were black.” In other words, in theory people are accepting of diverse neighborhoods, but in practice their choices are much different. This is an issue society needs to improve on in order to move forward, because American cities cannot remain segregated, especially with the diverse cultures in this country. Therefore, although Orange County is becoming more culturally diverse, this diversification is not including a growing African American population.