Fear of Differences Is Just Another Way We’re All Alike

When you look at me, assumptions may enter your head. Perhaps you make judgments. It is only natural to do so.

Can you think of a time when you looked at someone and made an assumption that turned out to be way wrong? As our community changes, our perceptions and assumptions need to change as well.

I would like to share some of the astounding statistics that illustrate the change that is going on in our community and ask you: What do you see?

Orange County is one of the fastest-changing and most diverse places in history. Over the last decade what was a sleepy, white, middle-class, conservative suburb has become a diverse urban community of more than 2.7 million people.

In 1977, whites made up 81% of Orange County’s kindergarten-through-12th-grade school population. By 1996, whites had dropped to 45% with a kindergarten class that was only 39% white.

During the 1990s, Orange County’s population has added about 18,000 new immigrants each year. About one of every four Orange County residents is foreign-born. That is about equal to the foreign-born population of New York City.

Ninety-three out of every 100 babies born in the world today are born in Asia, Latin America or Africa. It takes 2.1 babies from each couple to maintain a population and every ethnic group in the United States is surpassing that number except whites.

When I give these dramatic statistics which document the rapid change in our county, does it raise concerns? Do you wonder how your life will change? What will happen to the traditions that you hold dear?

Will your faith community fade out in this changing world? What will happen to your neighborhood? What will happen to your children’s schools? Will your children lose some opportunities that you had hoped they could have? What will happen at work; will you be displaced by newcomers? Are you able to communicate with the changing clientele?

Our diversity can be viewed as a tremendous source of apprehension, tension, misunderstanding, conflict and problems. One of the most troubling reactions to our emerging diversity is hate crime. Hate crime is defined as a crime motivated all or in part by the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability.

I was honored to participate in a historic event last Nov. 10, the White House Conference on Hate Crime. President Clinton placed the entire force of his administration behind this initiative, calling together law enforcement officials, hate-crime victims and community leaders from throughout the United States to join the president, vice president, attorney general and the entire Cabinet.

In Orange County, we documented 183 hate crimes and incidents in 1996. The most frequent target of those incidents were one of our smallest minorities, African Americans, who were victimized 53 times. Jews were targets 31 times, Latinos 22, Asians 19, gays and lesbians 15 and multiple groups and others the remainder.

When two white supremacist males brutally murdered a young Vietnamese American man who was roller-blading in Tustin, what did they see--a dehumanized image of an enemy? When white supremacist skinheads stabbed a Latino in the back as he was fishing off the pier in Newport Beach, what did they see--an alien invasion? When a Native American teenager was stabbed nearly to death by a couple of white-supremacist skinheads in Huntington Beach, what did they see--violation of their territory by someone different? When a gay man was attacked, beaten, choked and cut because the perpetrators didn’t like the fact that he was homosexual, what did they see--an abomination against God?

I am pleased to report that good people from throughout the nation have joined arms to support hate-crime victims, catch and prosecute perpetrators of hate violence, document and report on the level of hate crime, and promote programs aimed at preventing prejudice and hate from taking seed and growing.

This is so that our young people will see people, not stereotypes, and make judgments based on the quality of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. So that all people can live free from the threat of violence.

Let’s all take a step closer and notice that the closer you get the more you see. Maybe we’re not so different after all.