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A Race to the Future

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In 1979, attorney Elizabeth Riggs became the first African-American woman appointed to the San Diego Municipal Court bench—a promising sign that race no longer stood in the way of minorities seeking positions of respect and power. Or so she thought. When Judge Riggs went inside to deposit her judicial paycheck at her East County bank branch, the teller—a young white woman—studied the county-issued check, then asked, “How did you get them to give you so much?” Flustered, Riggs tried to explain that it was her biweekly salary. “Oh,” the teller finally said, “I didn’t think you looked like our average welfare recipient.”

For Riggs, now a Superior Court judge assigned to the juvenile department, the banking incident illustrates the frustrating complexity of improving San Diego’s race and ethnic relations. A person of color may be elevated to a position of power and prestige, yet still endure humiliation and stereotyping.

In the two decades since then, Riggs has seen African-Americans, Latinos and other San Diegans of color fighting against discrimination, struggling to improve their educational, job and housing prospects. Meanwhile, a generation of San Diego civil rights activists has moved from the fiery street protest of youth to gray-haired maturity, able to reflect on some progress without being able to declare victory.

On nearly every front, San Diegans of color can point to some successes in race relations—and many lingering challenges:

In education, school systems have launched charter schools and programs to improve learning and keep young people in high school. Still, the four-year dropout rate for Latino students in San Diego City Schools is nearly 23 percent; for African-Americans, 18 percent. By comparison, the rate is 9.3 percent for whites, 8.5 percent for Indochinese, 8.2 percent for Filipinos and 6.3 percent for students of Japanese, Chinese or Korean descent.

The booming economy of the late 1990s benefited people of all ethnic backgrounds, although not necessarily equally. Community leaders say many of the city’s nonwhite workers still are trapped in low-paying jobs, facing barriers that keep them from moving up the promotional ladder.

A survey commissioned by San Diego Magazine shows 72.6 percent of respondents believe race relations are not a major problem in San Diego. But among the 27 percent who believe they are a major problem, 54 percent are African-American and 41 percent are Latino.

Despite an overall optimistic picture, voices of hate and occasional acts of racial violence still burst from the sociopathic fringe. According to available statistics from police and regional agencies, reported hate crime has tailed off slightly but is still a significant problem.

Terry Johnson recently was elected the first African-American mayor of Oceanside, a city where people of color make up nearly half the population. His honeymoon was brief. When Johnson complained at a Catfish Club meeting that nonwhites were underrepresented on the Oceanside police force and that the department was rife with racism and sexism, the police union protested and demanded an apology.

Issues of racial harmony—merely a rumble now —will become increasingly important as San Diego grows steadily more diverse, community leaders say. The white population in San Diego County, more than 65 percent as recently as 1990, is expected to drop below 50 percent by 2018, when minority ethnic and racial groups collectively become the majority. In fact, for all of California, the white population dipped below 50 percent at the end of the 1990s.

The region’s fast-increasing Latino population will grow from 25 percent at the start of the millennium to 33 percent in 2020, according to estimates from the San Diego Association of Governments. African-Americans, currently 6 percent of the county, will drop slightly to 5 percent in two decades, SANDAG projects. But Asian and other ethnic groups will increase from 10 percent to 12 percent.

Nonwhites will become a majority in the city of San Diego years earlier than in the county. The city’s white population—54 percent of the 1.28 million at the start of the millennium—will drop to 50 percent by 2005 and 47 percent by 2010, according to SANDAG. During the same decade, the percentage of Hispanics and Asians will increase slightly (4 and 2 percent, respectively), while the number of Africans-Americans will drop by 1 percent.