Staking Their Claim on the Suburbs : Minorities: Blacks and Latinos flee the city, looking for what many whites already have--a kinder, gentler way of life. But some fear they are leaving their culture behind.

Ed Piert sat back in his easy chair, puffed contentedly on a cigar and smiled.

“I love it,” he said. “I swear I love it.”

What Piert has fallen in love with is the relaxed suburban lifestyle he found after moving from South-Central Los Angeles into a four-bedroom, Southwestern-style tract house in Palmdale a year ago. His wife now sometimes forgets to lock the front door, something Ella Piert never ignored in her old neighborhood, where gunshots often rang out in the night.

“The neighbors are real friendly,” Ed Piert said. “They’ll bring in your trash cans for you. They’ll pick up your newspapers for you on the weekend if you’re not here.”

The only flaw in this suburban idyll is the necessity of driving more than an hour to Inglewood to get his 13-year-old son a haircut. There are no barbers in their new community who know how to cut hair in the popular, shaved-on-the-side, full-on-top style many black teen-agers prefer.

The struggles and joys of the Pierts are becoming more common as an increasing number of black and Latino families relocate to overwhelmingly Anglo suburbs in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys to escape inner-city crime, traffic and housing prices. They take pride in meticulously kept lawns that line their quiet streets and they worry that growth will spoil the refuge they have discovered.

But these minority suburbanites often feel torn between two worlds. They fear the loss of values, styles, traditions and friendships that were formed in their old neighborhoods. Some are left wondering just who they are.

“Where is my identity?” James Logan, 46, asked. “I wear a paisley tie. I eat quiche.” Some black friends look at him strangely.

According to recently released census figures, the black population in the city of Palmdale, the state’s fastest-growing city, grew twice as fast as the city as a whole over the 10-year period ending in 1990. The Latino population--which the U.S. Census Bureau defines as people of Spanish and Latin American origin, regardless of race--increased three times as fast. Similar growth patterns were recorded by the minority communities in Lancaster and Santa Clarita.

This booming growth is part of a larger trend of urban decentralization that has been going on in this country for more than 100 years, said James P. Allen, professor of geography at Cal State Northridge, who is studying population trends. It is a trend that accelerated with the relatively inexpensive access to transportation that came with the automobile.

But until recently it was a trend reserved for Anglos. It is only in the past decade or two that blacks and Latinos have been able to participate in this migration, as economic gains allowed more of them to climb the ladder into the middle class.

“I would think that would be very hopeful for American society,” Allen said.

If Allen is right, the much-maligned suburb, filled with fast-food outlets and nail salons, may have nothing to do with race and everything to do with common desires for quiet order among families of every race.

“People want to get out of the city. People want to come here to raise their families,” said the Rev. Henry Hearns, who last April became the first black elected to the Lancaster City Council. Newer suburbs in the desert are more affordable for these minorities than the established suburbs in the western San Fernando Valley.

Many minority families moved into these suburban areas out of concern for their children. The Pierts sold their residence on 74th Street in South-Central Los Angeles, where they had lived for 12 years, and moved to Palmdale to keep their son away from gangs and drugs.

“My 13-year-old son, he was being confronted by the gangs. So he was afraid to start junior high school in that particular area,” Ella Piert, 50, said. “It was bothering me because it was bothering him. If not, I could have stayed there a little longer.”

But the crime in their neighborhood was a concern. “There were a lot of gunshots at night,” Ella Piert said. “I do feel safer here, I really do. I’m not afraid.”

Eduardo Luna, 34, who runs the Sierra Mexican Food bakery and restaurant in Palmdale, said the influx of Latinos into the Antelope Valley has occurred recently.

“There were almost no Hispanic people here before five years ago,” Luna said. “We used to be the only Mexican bakery in the area. Now there’s another Mexican bakery in Lancaster.”

But there are trade-offs as well. Despite the fact that the numbers of blacks and Latinos have grown exponentially in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys over the last 10 years, their numbers relative to the total population remain small. In Palmdale, for example, out of a total population of 68,842, 67% is Anglo, 22% is Hispanic and only 6% is black. In Lancaster, the ratio is similar, and in Santa Clarita, 81% of the population is Anglo, 13% is Latino and only 1% is black.

For some, the prospect of moving out of an area with other blacks or Latinos into a predominantly white neighborhood can be intimidating. This is especially true for black families who, according to Allen, have experienced higher levels of residential segregation than other minorities.

Logan admits to feeling uncomfortable when he married his wife, Barbara, who is white, and moved from Culver City to her condominium in Newhall.

“The only thing I had heard about Newhall is that they had burned a cross up on the hill, and that it was a very redneck area,” he said. His wife said he remained uncomfortable for the first few months.

“He didn’t want to go to any public places out here. Whenever we went out, we went down to L.A.,” Barbara Logan, 41, said.

But gradually, he said, he feels he has been accepted by his neighbors. He and his wife take frequent walks through the expensive housing tract up the hill.

“And the people nod, and smile, and wave and talk. It’s not as if they’re calling the cops because there’s some black guy walking through the neighborhood. You get a look once in a while, but then, people are so subtle with their prejudice that you don’t notice it,” he said.

But some minority academicians are concerned by the departure of people such as Logan from black communities. “I don’t see it as a positive thing,” Joseph E. Holloway, associate professor of Pan African Studies at Cal State Northridge, said of black flight.

The movement of blacks to the suburbs drains inner-city communities of positive role models and talent, he said. “I think it adds to the decay of an already decaying community.”

An additional problem is the suspicion and distrust that some new arrivals find among minority residents who have been in the suburbs longer. Logan said some blacks he has encountered in Newhall have been standoffish, unsure whether he was the type of person who would cause problems.

“Sometimes, the blacks are very reluctant to show any friendliness to you because they’re afraid you’re going to upset the apple cart,” he said.

“The Hispanic people who come here are good people, but they bring some gang and drug problems,” added Luna, who said these problems reflect on all Latinos in the community. The inability to speak English fluently only makes some Latinos feel more isolated.

The sense of isolation is only increased by the fact that there are few specialty businesses catering to the needs of minorities, as Piert found when he went looking for a barber. Movies at the local theater attract a predominantly white audience. “If I want to see a black film, I have to go to the Valley to see it, and that’s not good,” said Vivienne Daniels, 38, of Canyon Country. “There are a lot of other black people besides Martin Luther King who achieved things in this country, and white kids need to know this.”

Many black families maintain ties to their previous neighborhoods and friends by returning each week to attend church in Los Angeles. Hearns, who besides serving on the Lancaster City Council is pastor of the First Missionary Baptist Church in Littlerock, acknowledges that many blacks in the Antelope Valley still go to church in Los Angeles. But he said that will change as the quality of ministry in the valley improves.

He has seen his own congregation grow tremendously. Despite adding a second service on Sunday, “we don’t have enough room to put them up,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Pierts find themselves adopting some of the same attitudes of their suburban neighbors. They like the wide-open feeling of the Antelope Valley, and worry that many of the social problems they left behind will eventually catch up to them if growth continues unabated.

“I think the less people out here, the better,” Ella Piert said. “I’m a little scared, it’s getting crowded.”