They are the 2 percent.
As African Americans living in Orange County, Pierre Dotson and Shandell Maxwell know they are part of a tiny minority.
In the 2010 census, black people accounted for 1.5 percent of the county’s population. Historically, the group has rarely surpassed 2 percent.
Yet Dotson, who owns a thriving Orange County barbershop, and Maxwell, who last year produced the video “Black Behind the Orange Curtain,” want to see the proportion of blacks in the county grow.
Dotson believes Orange County is a land of business opportunity for African Americans, even though he says he’s endured racially charged slights and has had to visit school administrators after his children were called racist names.
“Being an African American in Orange County, you’ve already got the cards stacked against you,” says Dotson, 33, who in 2007 chose to buy and run a barbershop in Anaheim after eight years in the Navy.
“It’s just up to you as an individual to break through.”
But making African Americans feel welcome here remains a challenge.
Over the decades – even as immigration brought an influx of Latinos and as geopolitics later led to a wave of Asians – African Americans steered clear of a county many termed “the Mississippi of the West.”
The growth of Southern California has included waves of African Americans settling in Los Angeles and, later, inland, but never in Orange County. Academics who track social migration say that’s unlikely to change soon, citing reasons that include economics and demographics, as well as old-school racism.
“Those historical reasons are still with us,” says Charlene Riggins, a professor in Cal State Fullerton’s African American Studies department and a 38-year Orange County resident.
“This is what African Americans not only remember but still understand.”
HATE CRIMES
Orange County’s 2 percent threshold relates to another number – 13.
That’s how many hate crimes targeting African Americans in Orange County were reported in 2012, the most recent statistics.
Thirteen seems like a small number, but placed in context it’s glaring.
About 50,000 African Americans live in Orange County. If a similar ratio of hate crimes were committed against the county’s white population, the number would be about 470. (If Latinos of any race were targeted at the rate African Americans are targeted, the number would be 259; for Asians the number would be 138.)
What’s more, African Americans have been identified as the most targeted group in the county since the Orange County Human Relations Commission started tracking hate crimes in 1991.
Even commission members were shocked in 2012 when a black couple in Yorba Linda, both working in law enforcement, uprooted to Corona after a series of threatening incidents – rocks thrown at their windows at night, slashed car tires, racial epithets hurled at their children and acid pellets shot at their garage door.
Their departure prompted the commission to sponsor a series of “Listening Session” public meetings. Local African Americans shared some 300 unreported incidents of harassment and bigotry that involved police and schools, job and housing discrimination, and other experiences, the commission later reported.
Dotson wasn’t naive about where he was moving when he took over A-Unique Barbershop on at Lincoln and Dale avenues. Still, Anaheim – once notorious for electing Ku Klux Klan members as city fathers – struck him as a “positive, safe haven.”
“I knew (this community) was somewhere where I could be a pillar,” says the married father of four who lives in Garden Grove. He has prospered. Last year, Dotson opened a second shop in Norwalk, and he hopes to branch out in Orange County.
Dotson has built a multiracial customer base to add to the shop’s longtime black clientele by immersing himself in the community, passing out fliers, calling out to other black people he passed in his car and holding domino tournaments and Super Bowl parties.
On a recent Saturday afternoon a constant stream of men and boys climbed into the seven barber chairs at A-Unique as old-school soul music played, conversation flowed and two TV monitors showed Texas beating Kansas in college basketball.
“I just want Orange County to see that we are all equal,” Dotson says. “We have different food, a different way of saying things, a different way of doing things – but we are all equal.”
CULTURE IS KEY
The 2 percent threshold isn’t all about overt racism.
Many African Americans say there is no neighborhood or social hub in Orange County that could serve as a magnet.
And, sometimes, attempts to attract African Americans to the county can be tone deaf.
Thomas Parham, an African American who joined the UC Irvine faculty in 1985 and is now the school’s vice chancellor for student affairs, recalls a billboard in a section of Los Angeles where affluent African Americans live, urging residents to move to Irvine.
“On the billboard, there was nothing but white faces. Not that it was intentional, but they just don’t get it.”
Employment and local politics are other factors.
“There aren’t businesses that are doing any kind of outreach for African Americans to move into the county,” says Farrell J. Chiles, a member of the Greater Orange County chapter of Blacks In Government, a national organization that advocates on behalf of African Americans in civil service. “We’re on the short end of getting employed here.”
Chiles, 64, was chief of the human resources division for the Army Reserve Command at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos from 1998 to 2009, and that put him in a position to hire qualified African Americans.
Base closures have since diminished the military’s impact here.
“You don’t have (the military) bringing folks into Orange County anymore,” says Chiles, who is now retired but still attends the annual Black History Month parade here.
While working in Los Alamitos, Chiles commuted from his home in Pomona. He never considered moving to Orange County, and not just because of higher housing prices.
“Where? And for what? … I have a Democratic state senator. I’m a Democrat, so I live in a Democratic community, which works for me.”
SLOW PROGRESS
A course on the history of racism is part of Riggins’ class load at Cal State Fullerton. She also co-authored the 2009 oral history compilation “A Different Shade of Orange: Voices of Orange County, California, Black Pioneers.”
Riggins says attitudes must change before more African Americans will want to live here.
“It’s going to take a concerted effort to show that this dominant culture of Orange County is willing to understand, embrace and recognize the black culture. They have to recognize that all young black men aren’t thugs.
“They have to understand that all young black women don’t have baby daddies.”
That “dominant” culture referenced by Riggins isn’t necessarily white. Non-whites already make up a slim majority in Orange County, and, among people under 50, Asians and Latinos together significantly outnumber whites.
But changing demographics might not make Orange County more welcoming to African Americans.
Last year, an Asian fraternity at UC Irvine sparked a furor – and a campus initiative aimed at furthering cross-cultural understanding – after posting a dance video on YouTube in which one of its members wore blackface makeup.
University administrators dispatched teams of people to track down fraternity members and to let the Black Student Union know action was being taken. By the end of the day, the fraternity apologized.
“Where else in America, or anywhere, can you find an incident of racial insensitivity going on and within an hour and 20 minutes, the offending party is presenting themselves to say ‘I’m sorry’?” Parham says.
That kind of sensitivity still goes missing at many middle and elementary schools, another issue when African American families consider a move to Orange County, Parham says.
“What families want to see is that their children aren’t coming to schools where they are going to be real isolated. We’ve definitely got to make some progress on that front.”
NEED FOR HEALING
The recent racial incidents in Yorba Linda and at UCI prompted Maxwell to make her video.
With $700 raised online through a crowdsourcing website, Maxwell hired a videographer and interviewed several subjects, including Dotson, about their experiences in Orange County.
Maxwell, who works as a student adviser at a for-profit college, screened her video twice late last year at UCI. While the video’s low budget and her inexperience as a filmmaker didn’t result in the best production quality, she says the content still made an impact, particularly at a screening attended by what Maxwell describes as a racially mixed crowd.
“There was a feeling that we need to do something to help heal the black community in Orange County.”
Maxwell moved to Anaheim from Riverside as a teen and thrived at Western High, where she found a diverse student population. She was involved in student leadership and made friends easily.
Maxwell says she didn’t feel the isolation of the 2 percent threshold until she entered the county’s workforce about 15 years ago. She often was the only black person on staff as she took jobs in health care, financial services, human resources and higher education.
“I always felt like I was filling a need for diversity.”
Maxwell and her husband of 10 years are now renting in Tustin so they can be close to their jobs. They are a racially mixed couple.
If growth in the black population is not possible, Maxwell says the alternative is to encourage African Americans in Orange County to do more to connect with each other and be active in their communities.
“We can be invaluable even if we are a small number. It’s quality, not quantity.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com
