Its status as the 31st of 50 states in the union notwithstanding, California has cast a shadow of uniqueness, notable since the dawn of the 20th century with advancements in politics, social mobility, and technology. For Los Angeles this is even more true, as its reputation for glitz and glamour has been buttressed by lucrative possibilities in agriculture, entertainment, tourism, and so on.
The lure of prosperity in the Great Depression drew hordes of indigent White people from the Dust Belt, pejoratively called “Okies” drawn to the mythology of a land where ripened fruit could be plucked from the trees. A short time later in the wake of the Second World War, disaffected African-Americans were drawn to the coast by the booming defense industry initiated by the war’s military buildup and sustained by the Cold War requirements that followed, echoing an earlier, prewar migration of six million Blacks (according to the national archives) from 1890 to 1910 to escape the inhuman bigotry of the post Civil War south.
The unglamourous but decent paying blue collar jobs that attracted them deserted the southland, evidenced by the closing of Firestone Tire Company in 1970 and General Motors in 1992. Their disappearance was replaced by jobs in the food and hospitality industry, a staple of the millennium.
The Search for Utopia: it’s not always greener in the west
“We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar. It’s business.“
—spoken-word artist, rock star, and activist Henry Rollins.
Upon their arrival these transplants found that the path to the good life was hampered by an oppressive civic infrastructure manifested by abusive law enforcement, and insidious real estate restrictions and covenants meant to exclude groups of potential homeowners from specific areas. This was especially true in Los Angeles County’s South Bay during the middle 20th century.
Over the span of a half century, Compton has morphed from an integration resistant White suburb, to a comfortable middle class Black enclave, then an (inter)nationally significant symbol associated with crime and gang activity. As the barriers of segregation came down in the “Hub City, inner city strife brought with it a curious spin on White flight, this time by the Black middle class. They left behind a crime ridden metropolis that has become a cultural touchstone for the thug life. How much of this is real or exaggerated hype by the media is up for grabs. Statistical analysis suggests that the Latino community is now a majority, as the US Census shows Latino people represented 71.3 percent of Compton’s 90,986 inhabitants in 2020. That said, they have not yet become sophisticated politically to assert themselves significantly.
Just to the north, Inglewood experienced its own racial metamorphosis from 1960, when less than 50 residents lived within its borders. Fast forward a few decades and the city has darkened to the point where it became known as “IngleWatts.” Like Compton, it endured an influx of crack cocaine and warring street gangs, along with immigrants fleeing from political instability in Mexico and Central America.
As it stands, Inglewood in some respects remains the center of Black Los Angeles, a legacy inherited from Watts and Compton, although Latino people are establishing roots there as well.
View from the top: how to beat the high cost of living.
“Soon job demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don’t think people have that in their mental model.”
— Bill Gates interviewed in 2023
Perhaps no other neighborhood epitomized the sepia version of the American Dream than the upscale trifecta of Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, and View Park, collectively known as the “Black Beverly Hills.”
A life long Angelano, Leon Brooks prospered by pluck and entry into the sales department of a major technology corporation. His good fortune enabled him to purchase a home in the hills some 50 years ago. Middle age saw him feather his nest with a fair portfolio of income and rental property, enabling him to view his surroundings with a degree of detachment, although he does have relatives who are homeless.
Mushrooming housing prices along the coast and the west side have influenced White professionals to consider the current neighborhoods of upper class Black America. This in turn has brought them into considering Baldwin Hills, where the neighborhood consists of predominantly Black homeowners.
“Most people dream of owning a home, but now they can’t even buy a condo,” he notes about the plight of aspiring home buyers of color.
Those that are able fit a specific demographic: four out five are young White couples with young kids, rarely teenagers.
Adult African Americans who grew up and inherited property from their parents opt to sell their family homes and move, possibly to Arizona or Las Vegas, he speculates.
“Young people today don’t think there’ll be anything left for them,” he says, referencing the quote made by micro computing tycoon Bill Gates.
Latino people are able to circumvent these dire situations by pooling their money and living together to buy in the future, as Brooks observes in the example of his handyman. He has noticed them utilizing Costco and other wholesale outlets en masse, buying in bulk with large wads of cash to economize. He said that several work together to rent an apartment and sleep in shifts, while their roommates toil at fast food and other service jobs to save money..
How we were, how we are, how we will be
“When America catches a cold, Black people get pneumonia.”
—old adage within the African American community of indeterminate origin.
Absent from this narrative is the growth of the Asian population. This demographic often benefits from migrating into the State, county, and city with substantial education or technical skills, compared to their counterparts of other ethnicities. From an estimated 364,850 people identifying as Asian in the city of Los Angeles in 2000, that same demographic grew to 504,261 by 2020.
In comparison, the Latino percentage of Los Angeles’ population grew from 40 percent in 2000, to 47 percent of the city’s populace in 2020, or 1.8 out of 4,804,793 total people. In 2020 360,000 Blacks lived in the city (or 8.27 percent), opposed to just over 400,000 in 2000.
Los Angeles’ total population in 2000 was 3,694,820, by 2020 it swelled to 3,900,000 or just under four million people of all races. Numbers collected by census and statistical entities may be taken with a grain of salt, leaving out the undocumented, those claiming multiple ethnicities, or those not giving factual information or those not taking part at all.
The bottom line is that with the dawn of the millennium Los Angeles and California ceased to be White majority political divisions, and as both have been trendsetters for the rest of the country, a similar breakdown is possibly on the horizon for the United States in its entirety. As for its historically Black populace, a reverse migration of its more financially able to a more hospitable southeastern region of their origins is already in place, and the future is up in the air for those who remain.