By Anna Daniels
The San Diego Free Press editorial board invites you to participate in our examination of race and racism throughout the week of February 16. This past year has revealed how deeply fraught and painful our national conversation on that topic has become.
In May of 2014, months before the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, before the choke-hold death of Eric Garner and the shooting death of twelve year old Tamir Rice, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote “The Case for Reparations” which appeared in the The Atlantic.
He observes that Americans talk about “race” but not “racism” and makes the case that “Whiteness and blackness are not a fact of providence, but of policy—of slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, redlining, GI Bills, housing covenants, New Deals, and mass incarcerations.”
A discussion of race and racism in San Diego requires a broad lens, given our history as well as current events. The first European colonizers began a history of displacement with the Native Americans in the region. Residents of Japanese heritage in San Diego were interned during World War II; Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated to Mexico during the Depression. We watched anti-immigrant sentiment over-run the town of Murrieta and send ripples into Escondido this past summer and fall and infect the efforts to pass Propositions B & C in Barrio Logan. The issues of police brutality and racial profiling in San Diego continue to engender anger, anguish and protest within the African-American and Latino community.
Beyond those obvious examples, there is our legacy of segregation enacted through racially restrictive covenants in property deeds in the early to mid-twentieth century. Black, Mexican and Jewish residents were perceived as a threat to property values and they were precluded from owning or being a tenant. These covenants were enacted from La Jolla to Mission Hills to City Heights.
Urban Renewal in the 60’s brought federally founded highway construction that in many ways reinforced those covenants even after they were found illegal. Highways 94, 8 and 5 have created profound demarcations beyond their sheer physical presence. Low income minority communities have historically been and still remain concentrated south of Interstate 8.
Dustin Cable, at the University of Virginia, compiled a map based on population distribution along racial and ethnic lines based on the 2010 Census. He was asked what conclusions could be drawn from this map.
One of the concerns scholars have about residential segregation is whether or not it is indicative of (or the cause of) differences in economic opportunity, educational attainment, social mobility, and overall well-being, Cable said in an email to Al Jazeera.
For example, does a school system in a predominately African-American neighborhood provide the same quality of education and opportunities as a nearby district with predominately white residents? Because poverty is more prevalent among minority groups, do concentrations of poverty in segregated urban areas lead to dilapidated housing, health hazards, violence, or other ill-effects? Or, rather, does segregation cause the poverty in the first place? These are important questions to ask on this subject.
Cable’s response raises issues of structural inequalities and equal access to resources and institutions. Attention and resources are being focused on low income minority communities in San Diego. Mayor Faulconer has initiated a “One San Diego,” a nonprofit that will focus on poor areas south of Interstate 8. CivicSD is poised to develop areas of City Heights and Encanto. What is not clear is the degree to which either nonprofit will address structural inequalities and equal access to resources and institutions.
Is addressing the issue of poverty, without a deeper recognition and a much broader discussion of how race and racism has impacted whole communities in San Diego, enough to bridge a widening divide between those neighborhoods which are prospering and those which are not?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic. Articles, videos and poetry can be sent to contact@sandiegofreepress.org
Anna Daniels
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Anna, I don’t see how I-5 is a demarcation between wealthy and impoverished areas. There are wealthy areas west of I-5 for sure: La Jolla, Del Mar, Encinitas, but there are also wealthy areas east of I-5 – La Jolla, Del Mar, Encinitas, Chula Vista.
Your observation is correct about I-5 in the northern part of the city of San Diego, but as you go south, the division is quite different. The construction of I-5 isolated Barrio Logan from the much larger area known as Greater Logan Heights. Greater Logan Heights was historically Mexican-American and also African-American because of the racial convents. This area, east of I-5 and south of I-8 remains largely low-income minority. San Ysidro also is relevant to this discussion although it is not completely east of 5.
I’m pretty excited to read this next week’s set of articles on racism. I myself have so many research questions I wish I could pursue.
Where do I find the documentation about the anti-semitism that once existed in La Jolla? (Apparently, Jews were once unable to buy property there.)
I am also looking for personal histories and more documents in San Diego about how many Mexican families were affected by the deportations in the 1930’s and the “Operation Wetback” deportations in the 1950’s.
Interestingly, we in the South Bay (that is, most neighborhoods south of the I-8) are often asked if we live in Mexico. People from North County don’t say it as though it’s a compliment.
In the South Bay, living in National City and San Ysidro have different socio-economic and demographic connotations than living in Otay Mesa, Eastlake or along Seacoast Drive in IB.
Then, of course, there is the U.S.-Mexico border that — for some reason — looks so very different from the U.S.-Canadian border.
San Diego State’s library, and UCSD’s, the San Diego County Historical Society. Look up the Lemon Grove Incident (children of MexAm parents were routed away from the elementary school they were attending to a separate one, and the parents objected, successfully). You might check into a Synagogue for private holdings and letters, and names of families that broke through the real estate barriers. See Salk Institute, as well. Check out Negro music clubs that were tightly policed after the Copley’s came to town, especially a great jazz venue called The Crossroads, on Market Street, so-named because folks could always go there until the police and the city, under the mayoralties of either Wilson or Golding, began warning Whites they were in the wrong neighborhood.
Barbara, the La Jolla Historical Society may have archives of realtor advertisements or articles about the racial covenants. It is my understanding that the construction of UCSD and the desire to attract world class scholars to teach there put pressure on the continued application of those covenants. World class scholars, which included world class Jewish scholars, needed housing in the area.
Maria Garcia wrote about the Mexican Repatriation which includes a first person account and links to other documents and information. There was an attempt around 2003 to provide reparations to Mexican Americans who were repatriated. The issue was taken up in the California State Legislature but died. The testimony of affected individuals is part of the record.
As a visual artist, I love the different look of all people. My genre of racism pertains to the amazing beautiful variations in human faces that are so much appreciated by any artist.
My heart is sadden by the fears that people are obliged to live with, oppressed by one group or another for some reason or another, including women, are we a race? Women are half the human race, are we shooting each other? cutting off heads, choking each other to death?or even throwing stones? “racism” seems like a lot of trumped up grudges by men…
Anna, I appreciate the frankness of your article. I have a problem with the concept of ONE SAN Diego coming from a Mayor that has failed to appoint people that look like me to his various commissions and committee. We should look at San Diego not as one but as a mix like a salad every item (person) contributes to the flavor and none of the flavors should over power the others.
Anna, a great beginning for the week. As it’s the responsibility of the progressive media to continue to show and report on the racial, ethnic and national inequalities of San Diego and beyond. There’s a new civil rights movement afoot and that movement in San Diego needs progressive media.