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In this Census Feature: Around America: Rise in Minority Numbers California: Diverse, but Still Segregated San Francisco: Major Trends Daly City: Finding Comfort Milpitas: Living Near Tech Central Monterey Park: Ground Zero in API Growth Boom

California Segregated Despite Growing Diversity

By Justin Pritchard/AP

A surge in Asian American and Latino populations may make California more diverse on paper, but it appears the state’s cities are increasingly segregated.

The trend emerges even as upwardly mobile minorities have spilled into once-white suburbs. As those waves ripple out from urban cores, immigrants from Asia and Latin America are taking their place — and because these newer arrivals tend to pool together, some researchers say cities are becoming more divided along racial lines.

While residential segregation is decreasing in metropolitan areas among whites and blacks, on average it is increasing among Asian Americans and Latinos, UCLA demographer Paul Ong concluded after analyzing recent population numbers from the Census Bureau.

Judging by history, such clustering is human nature. But California is already less segregated than other major states, and its population will not likely continue to live apart, said William Frey of the Milken Institute in Santa Monica.

The state will reserve its current trend and integrate more as upwardly mobile immigrants catch the fever native-born Americans have for settling the state’s remaining open spaces, Frey predicted.

“The second and third generations will go to these other areas,” said Frey. “Whatever increase we see in segregation here is just the introduction to a full-length motion picture, at the end of which we’ll see less segregation.”

Indeed, segregation is not increasing in every part of the state. When Ong measured “racial isolation” among California’s 33.9 million residents, he found that while Latinos became increasingly insulated, Asians tended to integrate slightly more, while both whites and blacks mixed with other races at notably greater rates during the 1990s.

Segregation is increasing, in part because poorer immigrants tend to cluster in areas that were once majority black, UCLA’s Ong said.

That trend accelerated over the last decade, as residents who identified as at least part Asian surged 61 percent and the state’s Hispanic population jumped 43 percent, according to Census data.

A classic example is Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood synonymous with black urban discontent during the 1960s.

A majority of Watts residents are now Hispanic, according to Census data. Meanwhile, the black population has dispersed south toward Carson and Long Beach and west toward Crenshaw, an analysis by University of Southern California historian Philip Ethington shows.

Blacks are jumping even greater distances from San Francisco Bay Area cities such as Oakland and Richmond east toward the Central Valley and Sacramento Delta.

Both cities drew blacks from the South, often as laborers in the shipyards bustling with activity during and after World War II. Two generations later, blacks who can afford to move from their compact, deteriorating houses are heading for the relatively open, safe spaces and better schools.

During the 1990s, Richmond’s black population dropped slightly — but because the city gained thousands of Asians and Hispanics, blacks fell from 43 percent to 37 percent of the population. Oakland’s population grew from 389,000 to 417,000 in the 1990s, but blacks fell from 41 percent to 35 percent of the population. The trends date back to the 1980s.

Meanwhile, during the last decade, outer suburbs east of the two cities gained thousands of black families, an analysis of Census data by the Associated Press shows. Eastern Contra Costa County, for example, grew 88 percent to 74,000 people — but saw its black population increase 640 percent to 3,300 people. Only 61 people identified as black for the 1980 Census.

The black population in the corridor between the Bay Area and Sacramento also continued to surge. The inland area around Fairfield and Suisun City grew 15 percent, to 127,000 people — meanwhile, the black population grew 58 percent. Blacks now make up 17 percent of the area’s population.

“Black, white, anyone else who was economically able to take flight did so,” said Herman Blackmon, a businessman who moved from Richmond to Oakland to the relatively affluent city of Hercules, about 10 miles northeast of Richmond. “Many of them cashed out and bought twice as much housing for the same price.”

In both cities, Latino and Asian American immigrants have turned what were ethnic islands a generation ago into bustling communities.

Chaosarn Chao arrived in Richmond with 10 family members in 1978 as one of the city’s first refugees from Laos, where he helped the CIA fight communist rebels during the Vietnam war era.

“When I moved in, I saw only one Asian, a Japanese,” said Chao, 50, now executive director of the nonprofit Lao Family Community Development Inc.

An avuncular figure and community leader, Chao helped anchor a remarkable growth in Richmond’s Asian American population, which was negligible in 1980 — by 1990 it was nearly 10,000 people. It grew another 4,000 during the last decade.

One major reason was that it became known as a center where immigrants from Southeast Asia could find familiar food, language and friends. Many were settled by volunteer sponsors in other parts of the United States, but took little time to pack for Richmond.

“Some people went to Alabama for just a week,” Chao said. “The sponsor found a house, the sponsor hooked up the phone. And they call us. We tell them what it’s like. Three days later, we meet them at the Greyhound stop.”