Commentary : County Goal: Ethnic Integration

Orange County has an opportunity to accomplish something that few, if any, urban areas in the entire nation have been able to achieve--a form of ethnic integration.

The county’s ethnic mix is changing faster than ever before. The population was once nearly totally Anglo, but today the numbers of Latino and Southeast Asian people are growing faster than the white population.

As Orange County has matured, its growth has come increasingly from births outpacing deaths rather than from the migration of people into the area.

Although net migration--more people moving in than moving out--as a percentage of growth was as high as 90% in the mid- and late-’50s, it has continued to decline to where today’s percentage is nearing single digits.

Conversely, natural growth has continued to increase. It now accounts for nearly 90% of the county’s growth.

As can be expected, the source of this natural growth, recorded as the number of births over deaths per thousand people, is far greater where ethnic groups tend to reside. As was once the case with the Anglo population, large families are still a part of most ethnic cultures.

For example, while cities such as Anaheim, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Tustin and Stanton have from 18 to 31 births over deaths per thousand population, cities such as Villa Park, Newport Beach, Seal Beach, Fountain Valley and Laguna Beach have from 4.8 to 11 births.

Orange County had an 86% Anglo population at the time of the 1980 census, but that number will be far lower by the 1990 census and still considerably lower by the year 2000.

What does this mean for Orange County?

The answer, if we were to look at what has happened in most other urban areas around the nation, would be most disturbing: white flight. Anglos tend to move away, leaving heavy pockets of minorities.

In the Los Angeles area, for example, the Eastside is predominantly Latino and the Southside heavily black, while whites make up the bulk of the population on the Westside and to the north.

A futurist might forecast that Orange County’s white population will relocate in time to the coastal, southern and far northern regions, leaving the central and western sections to become almost entirely Latino and Southeast Asian enclaves. (The black population in Orange County is just over 1%, so it is not yet a factor.)

But Orange County has an unusual opportunity to break the pattern and become a far more integrated urban area than most.

What has been considered somewhat of a negative factor for Orange County--that it’s made up of 26 small-to-medium-size cities without a large, central metropolis--may work to its advantage.

While having so many independent jurisdictions has made it difficult at times for the county to pull together in one direction, these cities also act as 26 individual “pegs.” Each city has, or is developing, a job base. Industrial, high-technology and service jobs are growing in nearly all of the county’s cities. As a result, not only new research and development facilities are being formed, but also new office buildings, shopping centers and even hotels.

The effect of this development could be to retain a sizable Anglo population within each city, co-existing with the ethnic minorities even as they become ethnic majorities.

While we do not look for an actual integration of neighborhoods, we can anticipate that the cities, and Orange County as a whole, will remain integrated.

That is certainly a goal toward which we can look forward.

If it can be achieved, Orange County will become a national leader on still another front.