Study Says Economic Gap Cuts Across Ethnic Lines

Southern California’s emergence as the nation’s principal magnet for new immigrants and as a low-wage center has led some commentators to an ominous conclusion: This is a region polarized between a small, largely white elite and an isolated underclass of Third World immigrants and African Americans.

A new, UCLA-sponsored study--billed as the most extensive look ever at ethnic Los Angeles--challenges that conventional wisdom, finding that the growing gap between rich and poor here cuts a broad swath across ethnic and racial lines.

For example, well-educated blacks are today far more distant economically from poor blacks than they were in 1970. Meantime, U.S.-born Mexican Americans tend to be doing considerably better than Mexican immigrants, who are often confined to the bottom tiers of the economy.

And, in a phenomenon that the authors call unprecedented in U.S. history, many educated newcomers from Asia and the Middle East are moving quickly into coveted positions in medicine, dentistry and technology--even as certain refugee populations from Southeast Asia continue to struggle.

The conclusions are among many outlined in a new book, “Ethnic Los Angeles,” written by 21 scholars affiliated with UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research. The book is a 496-page snapshot of the nation’s second most populous metropolitan area (after New York) as it approaches the turn of the century.

Using data from the last three censuses, the study looks at ethnic groups in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties.

Like the complex region itself, the findings are often multilayered and seemingly contradictory, disquieting on the one hand and upbeat on the other, alternatively shattering stereotypes and buttressing the arguments of those alarmed about what some call impending social balkanization.

In one finding, the study disputes often-voiced fears that the English language is in danger of being displaced. At another point, researchers call the Eastside and neighboring East Los Angeles a “mega-barrio” that is the region’s most segregated community.

“This is an incredibly complex ethnic kaleidoscope,” Roger Waldinger, a co-editor of the book and director of UCLA’s Lewis School of Public Policy and Research, said after a news conference Monday unveiling the results.

The study is less about proposing remedies than presenting findings for policymakers to contemplate. But a hope, Waldinger said, is that lawmakers will consider the essential importance of taking steps like raising the minimum wage, encouraging union organization and investing in public education.

“The wisest immigration policy involves an investment in the young immigrant children and adolescents who will remake Los Angles in the years to come,” said Waldinger, who describes himself as a liberal Democrat, though he called the study nonpartisan.

Twenty years ago, Waldinger said, the very idea of a book on ethnic Los Angeles would have been irrelevant. But recent mass immigration, write Waldinger and co-editor Mehdi Bozorgmehr of City University of New York, has triggered “L.A.’s transformation from Iowa-on-the-Pacific to a multicultural metropolis.”

The editors call their analysis non-ideological, but several findings are provocative and are already generating controversy.

For instance, the book concludes that immigration has increased unemployment among African Americans--an assertion heatedly disputed by many--as newcomers from Mexico and Central America have taken over the entry-level jobs once filled by less-educated black residents.

Driving this phenomenon, the study states, are employers’ desire for cheap, flexible labor, and the emergence of strong ethnic job networks tied to certain occupations, such as factory work, hotel and restaurant employment and janitorial jobs. Racism is also a factor, the study found.

“This is not merely an immigration-related problem, but is symptomatic of an increasingly unequal and discriminatory labor market,” said Paul Ong and Abel Valenzuela, both affiliated with UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning.

The study paints a generally gloomy portrait of the fate of recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, the principal homelands of foreign-born Southern Californians. Many are in dead-end jobs in highly competitive industries, such as clothing and furniture manufacturing, where the large labor supply has suppressed wages, the study said.

“Clearly, the traditional ethnic saga of hard labor followed by rewards does not apply to Latino immigrants,” said UCLA sociologist Vilma Ortiz.

Disputing that assessment of Latino immigrants was Gregory Rodriguez, a research fellow at the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy, who wrote a recent report showing that Latinos are increasingly moving into the region’s middle class and contributing significantly to the area’s prosperity.

The UCLA analysis, Rodriguez said, put too much emphasis on individual wages and not enough on family pooling of resources and growing levels of Latino home ownership.

“What this study and others essentially argue,” Rodriguez said, “is that we should close the borders because these people are incapable of making their way in the United States.”

Waldinger denied that characterization, though he acknowledged his belief that entry levels of unskilled immigrants should be reduced. “We have a convergence of people who have very low skills,” Waldinger said, “and that means they’re competing ferociously for a limited number of jobs.”

The UCLA study is published by the Russell Sage Foundation, a New York-based group that backs economic and social research.

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L.A.’s Ethnic Shift

Los Angeles County has been undergoing dramatic demographic changes, illustrated by shifts from 1980 to 1990 in its racial and ethnic composition.

1980

White: 54%

Latino: 28%

Black: 12%

Asian: 6%

1990

White: 41%

Latino: 38%

Black: 11%

Asian: 10%

Source: U.S. Census