O.C.’s View of Race Relations Is Rosier, Poll Says

Orange County residents overall are taking a rosier view of ethnic diversity and race relations than they did several years ago, according to a poll released Saturday that may run counter to the county’s image.

The Chapman University Poll, which compared attitudes today with those seven years ago, found that residents think the different ethnic groups are getting along better and that the county’s increasing diversity is good for the economy and the quality of life.

Fred Smoller, chairman of the political science department at Chapman and director of the poll for the Ludie and David C. Henley Social Science Research Laboratory, saw the poll as evidence that Orange County is far more tolerant than outsiders believe.

“The myth of Orange County and the reality of Orange County are at odds with each other, the myth being that this is a right-wing, conservative community,” Smoller said. “I think that we are more cosmopolitan, more diverse and more tolerant than our reputation might suggest.”

However, Smoller acknowledges that it is impossible to draw conclusions about the poll findings, since he had not analyzed how the different ethnic groups see the issue. For example, the more positive findings about diversity could be a reflection of the county’s changing demographics, he said, rather than county residents changing their minds about diversity.

“I thought I would release this now to get a dialogue going,” he said. “The question remains: Are we seeing these changes because the dominant group has changed its view or because the composition of Orange County’s population has changed?”

Also still to be released is information on whether length of residence in the county or other demographic factors such as age or education have an impact on attitudes.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, echoed Smoller’s views and optimism.

“Our image historically has been one of ultra-conservative type of politics and lots of bigotry and racism,” said Kennedy, whose civil rights organization was created to fight prejudice and discrimination. “Obviously, in this poll you see a dramatic shift in the way Orange County residents are looking at and perceiving diversity.”

The telephone poll of 1,040 residents was conducted April 16 through May 1 in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, the county’s three major languages. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The survey was patterned after UC Irvine’s Annual Survey of Orange County in 1994 by Mark Baldassare, now a pollster at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank in San Francisco.

He could not be reached for comment on the new poll. The UC Irvine poll, which posed the same questions about diversity to the same number of people, found that many residents saw conflicts along racial lines and feared that the local economy and quality of life would suffer.

In the new poll, 56% of residents believe that ethnic groups are getting along well, up from 33% in Baldassare’s study. And nearly half those surveyed believe relations will improve in the next five to 10 years, up from 28% in the earlier survey.

Other shifts were not as dramatic. For example, 58% of residents believe ethnic diversity has improved the quality of life and the economy. In 1994, a minority of residents--45%--expressed such opinions.

Smoller cautioned that some of the yawning gaps in attitudes might not be as drastic as the results suggest, noting that the earlier poll was conducted about two years after the Los Angeles riots over the Rodney King verdict and that bad feelings might have lingered. (All four LAPD officers charged with beating King, a black motorist, were acquitted in April, 1992.)

The portion of Orange County’s population that is white dropped 6% from 1990 to 2000, according to the latest census figures. But that small drop, combined with big increases in the numbers of Latinos and Asians, has stirred the region’s cultural mix. Whites represent at least 51.3% of the county’s population, Latinos 28% and Asians 14%. But some researchers suggest that no single race or ethnic group will constitute a majority by early next year.

Kennedy will join Smoller in a discussion about the poll Tuesday at Chapman University.

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Racial and Ethnic Diversity

The Chapman Poll was conducted April 16 through May 1.