SEGREGATION—Ethnic, Class Segregation Rising in L.A.

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To the casual observer, Los Angeles County may appear to be an extremely diverse place. But a new USC study paints a picture of a community sharply divided by race, with ethnic and class groups clustered within their own homogenous pockets throughout the region.

Further, the increasing isolation of blue-collar minority workers in central L.A., with affluent whites living on the periphery, could have devastating consequences for the local business climate.

L.A. has the largest Mexican, Salvadoran and Korean communities outside those countries. Yet according to the study, the likelihood of running into a white person in a Latino neighborhood has diminished rapidly over the years.

In 1960, for example, Latinos living in Central L.A. would have had a 38 percent chance of living and interacting in the same neighborhood with whites, but by the 1990s that had fallen to an 8 percent chance. By the same token, a black person living in the San Fernando Valley now has a 13 percent probability of living and interacting in the same neighborhood with a white person, compared to a 65 percent chance in 1960.

“What is troubling is that the divide is getting worse,” said Philip Ethington, the study’s author and an urban and political historian at USC. “This suggests that this is not a temporary stage where immigrant groups cluster in one community before moving upward on the social ladder.”

The pattern that has emerged in L.A. County is one of a homogeneous, Latino core in the inner city, a transitional, mixed-race zone between the urban core and the periphery, and homogeneous white enclaves on the Westside, in the western San Fernando Valley, and in the beach cities in the South Bay.

Moreover, the study shows that, with the exception of the San Gabriel Valley, there is a persistent correlation between high property values and white majorities in L.A. County, as a result of white blue-collar workers leaving the urban core, where home values are traditionally lowest.

In the San Gabriel Valley, the study found no systematic correlation between white neighborhoods and property values, making it the most racially egalitarian region of the county.

One highly troubling result of the segregation of L.A. into a wealthy white periphery and a poor minority core with neither side interacting much with one another is that it fuels secession movements, such as the one in the San Fernando Valley, in which wealthier whites seek to break free of the burdensome core to preserve their quality of life.

“The secession movements could shrink the city of Los Angeles to a non-white core,” said Ethington. “That would be disastrous for the city because it would lead to a situation like that in Detroit, where a poor, non-white population is left to support the city.”

Although the San Fernando Valley, if it were to secede and become an independent city, would contain large minority populations, its departure might trigger similar moves that would leave a city of L.A. where the vast majority of residents would be low-income minorities.

These people would have to provide the money for the city services needed to keep a huge metropolis running, and failure to do so might have serious consequences for the local business climate.

L.A.’s ability to attract and retain businesses depends on such amenities as a well-maintained infrastructure, a reliable police force, and an efficient bureaucracy, among others. All of these could be undermined if the city does not have adequate cash flow.

But even if L.A. were to split into two or more municipalities, some local observers are reluctant to see a possible abandonment of the urban core by the wealthy periphery as an unmitigated disaster.

“No doubt the devolution of the community through the secession movement has the potential to isolate poor people without sufficient funds to support themselves,” said Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. “At the same time, we’re seeing minorities seeking greater local power, for example in the school district, and a new confidence they can run the system themselves without depending on others.”

Rodriguez points to municipalities such as Inglewood and Huntington Park as examples of communities where non-white majorities have had success in creating a viable business climate and providing adequate city services.

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