Being Black Remains an Issue in Orange County

The strangest things have happened to me since I moved to Orange County from Los Angeles in January.

I’ve seen clerks and shoppers do double takes as I walked down the aisle of a Costa Mesa grocery store. I’ve been tailed by a police car--lights off--as I walked at night outside my Newport Beach apartment. And in stores throughout the county, in my gym and at movie theaters, I’ve been stared at when I wanted no attention or service, and ignored when I did.

I am not a criminal or a freak show. I am a black woman living in a county where 2% of the population is black.

Before I moved here, I heard stories from my brother, who spent a summer in Irvine, and from friends of several races about some white Orange Countians reacting to black people with looks, body language, comments and actions they felt were racist. I heard about other black reporters who felt unwelcome or uncomfortable here and moved away because of it.

When I learned I would be living in Newport Beach for five months as a reporter trainee for The Times, I hoped what I’d heard was untrue. Yes, I’ve been in the minority most of my life, but in places like New York City, Washington, D.C., and Northeastern suburbs with a higher percentage of blacks.

What I found was troubling.

I have had no problems with most of the people I’ve met and worked with in Orange County. Nevertheless, this was the first time my brown skin and braided hair have elicited reactions that made me feel so alien.

About six weeks ago, a neighbor who joined me in my apartment’s sauna began a conversation by saying, “I’m glad I’m not black.” I moved to an adjoining sauna; a security guard apologized for my having to listen to him.

A few months earlier, I was covering an event in an Orange County public school when a cafeteria worker--without introducing herself--came within half an inch of my face, asked if she could touch my hair and immediately reached to fondle my braids. I told her “no,” taking giant steps backward. But she pursued me until I was almost pinned to a wall, then wanted to know, “Are they real?”

Another time a chiropractor in South County, standing behind me doing an adjustment, picked up a braid and marveled, “Ooh, did you do this yourself?” When I told her I did not want her to touch my hair, she said, disappointed, “Why?”

Why? Because such treatment makes me feel like an object, a mannequin or statue, rather than someone with feelings and a need for her personal space to be respected.

It strikes me as rude, just as it would be to ask a stranger with dark roots and a bright yellow ponytail, “Is your hair bleached?”

Then there was the incident when police followed me as I walked from my apartment to a nearby store--I still don’t know why. It was about 9 o’clock on a Sunday night, and there were no other people walking. There were few cars on the street, no accidents, no commotion. As I walked to the convenience store, the police car crept passed me with its lights off, drove to a corner, turned around and drove slowly by me again. Leaving the store, I saw the same police car waiting at a nearby intersection.

A black male co-worker has had similar experiences: He says Newport Beach police have stopped him twice since January to ask what he was doing. And when he goes to grocery stores, he hears audible clicks--the sound of car doors locking just before he gets too close.

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Do ordinary people, and the police, instinctively suspect that blacks here are prone to crime?

A news story last month is the kind of event that causes me to wonder. City of Orange police handcuffed and detained a black couple for more than three hours because they mistook them for suspects in a robbery. The suspects had been described as two men in a green car, and this couple was a man and a woman in a white car who had proof of being elsewhere when the robbery occurred.

Since then, the woman, Armenia Guice, 35, says she has had trouble coping. She said she quit her job because she cannot bear to drive past the place where she was detained. Her boyfriend can’t sleep at night, she says.

“I felt just like someone had raped me,” said Guice, who has lived in Santa Ana just over a year. “I know I didn’t do anything, but still I felt humiliated. Every time I see a police car, I freak.”

An Orange police official said at the time that the couple “were basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. We determined they weren’t involved; they were released, and our apologies were given. It’s just part of the job.”

Although nothing so extreme has happened to me, I know how she feels. While any one incident I’ve experienced could be considered a fluke, the layering of incident upon incident horrifies me. There are times now when I’m wary about leaving my apartment, simply because I don’t know how others are going to react to me. I say to myself, “Can I combine two outings in one so that if I encounter offensive behavior, at least I will have gotten more than one thing done?”

I shouldn’t have to worry like that. I should be able to walk freely, without fear that others will shut me out just because I do not look like them. I should not be treated like a suspect because I am black, nor as an object without human feelings.

I should be treated the way everyone wants to be treated, with common courtesy and respect.