LA’s diversity rhetoric overlooks reality


People often point to Los Angeles as one of the most diverse counties in the world. With the largest Hispanic, Asian and Native American populations in the nation, it isn’t hard to see the plurality of nationalities like those in the honorary capital of Southern California as an easy case study for those touting America as a melting pot of races and ethnicities.

With recent research highlighting a new pattern of segregation among the city’s ethnic populations, that may well be changing. Previously inclusive neighborhoods such as Covina, Norwalk and Cerritos have gone from relatively diverse to overwhelmingly populated by Latino and Asian immigrants. On the flip side, coastal areas such as Rancho Palos Verdes and Pacific Palisades are overwhelmingly white; a recent map produced by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia shows Los Angeles as a strikingly segregated area, one in which four races — Asian, black, Latino and white — are sequestered into highly concentrated ethnic neighborhoods. The increasing racial segregation in Los Angeles points toward a disingenuity in political discourse regarding the city’s diversity.

Ethnic enclaves are integral in providing familiar communities and economies for first-generation immigrants, but the recent white flight out of ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles is contrary to the purpose of tight-knit ethnic communities. Especially in the past 30 years, white residents have chosen same-race neighborhoods with alarming frequency; in a survey of Chicago residents conducted by Michael Bader, assistant professor of sociology at the American University in Washington, D.C., white residents were more than “2 to 6 times less likely than Latinos to even know about majority Latino neighborhoods.” The results reported suggest real effects; studies show that ethnicity is strongly correlated to levels of public health and education in communities split by color. Real estate in communities of color often drops in value as white residents move out, and governments tend to invest less in community resources. After all, the remarkably low rates of life expectancy, average incomes and educational achievement of neighborhoods like South Los Angeles and Watts highlights this glaring discrepancy.

Segregation in Los Angeles means that the city feels the brunt of unequal resource distribution across different neighborhoods. California’s black and Latino students often attend schools with markedly lower academic performance, and according to The Atlantic, 85 percent of black and 96 percent of Latino students in Los Angeles attend schools where a majority of their peers are poor. Majority-white schools, in contrast, have disproportionately higher resources due to higher property tax incomes from correspondingly wealthier neighborhoods, a valuable resource rarely afforded by black and Latino students. Similarly, a recent LAUSD proposal to create a colocation — and thus the sharing of equipment, rooms, and resources — between Castelar Elementary (an overwhelmingly Asian local elementary school) and Metro Charter School highlights a pressure on ethnic schools which more affluent ones rarely face.

In the face of glaring inequities between immigrant neighborhoods, it isn’t hard to balk at discourse over the city’s multiculturalism. In an interview during his first year of office, Mayor Eric Garcetti describes the city as the “most diverse collection of human beings ever assembled in a single place in human history.” Similarly, tourism pamphlets consistently extol the city as a cultural mecca and the home of considerable multiethnic populations. Though having different perspectives represented is important in any group setting, these shallow interpretations of diversity as a quota of people fail to ignore very tangible needs across the city.

It’s clear that increased investment in Los Angeles’ communities of color is integral in the city’s path to development. The recent move by the Department of Housing that requires grant applicants to prove how their initiatives encourage integration is a step in the right direction. A tax structure that does not correlate the values of residents’ homes with the quality of their children’s education may be another. President Barack Obama’s proposal to further affirmative housing policies highlights yet another positive advancement, but a fundamental shift in ideology must occur for those living in better neighborhoods to understand gaps in opportunity for others.

For students at USC, “diversity” is often a household term. The University consistently boasts of its own status as a global university with one of the largest international student populations, and pamphlets to prospective students assure that students don’t forget. But inclusion must go further in protecting a community, rather than building a desired demographic. The recently passed campus climate resolution provides real opportunities toward creating tangible benefits for students of color. But even so, real power lies with administrative decisions toward increasing spaces for cultural centers, investing more in surrounding neighborhoods and facilitating more discussion over diversity at the University. As a truly global school situated in a truly global city, USC could learn the lesson of the meaning of diversity, just as local policymakers should.

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