{"id":7001,"date":"2017-12-03T12:12:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T20:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=7001"},"modified":"2017-12-03T12:12:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T20:12:30","slug":"race-matter-americas-diverse-zip-codes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/12\/03\/race-matter-americas-diverse-zip-codes\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Race Matter in America\u2019s Most Diverse ZIP Codes like Vallejo, CA?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Darryl Johnson, center, and his wife, Marissa Johnson, with their daughter Sienna at their restaurant in Vallejo, Calif. The city is one of the most racially balanced in the United States.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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By\u00a0John Eligon<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

VALLEJO, Calif. \u2014 Beyond the burgers and fries coming from the kitchen and the oldies blaring from the radio, the scene playing out daily at the Original Red Onion might appear unfamiliar to much of the country.<\/p>\n

The restaurant\u2019s married owners \u2014 Marissa Johnson, a Filipino-American, and Darryl Johnson, an African-American \u2014 work alongside Jahira Fragozo, who is of Miskito and Yaqui Indian descent. Ms. Johnson bonds with a customer, Hillory Robinson, who is black, over the challenges of motivating their children in the winter. \u201cThey need something to do,\u201d Ms. Robinson says.<\/p>\n

Ms. Johnson gushes a short time later when a regular, Dylan Habegger, who is white, decides to tackle the restaurant\u2019s new, spicy creation with a name that describes its effect. \u201cUh oh,\u201d Ms. Johnson tells him, \u201cyou\u2019re trying the Burner today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Original Red Onion sits in one of the country\u2019s most racially diverse ZIP codes: 94591, in\u00a0Vallejo, Calif<\/a>. About 30 miles north of Oakland, it is the rare place in the United States where black, white, Asian and Hispanic people not only coexist in nearly equal numbers, but actually connect.<\/p>\n

At a time when race often still defines where people live and attend school, and the battles between alt-right and Antifa, nativist and immigrant, continue to rage, this Bay Area suburb of 120,000 can seem like a respite from the divided nation. Pick any two people out of this ZIP code, and there is a 76 percent chance they are a different race or ethnicity \u2014 and odds are they\u2019ll be comfortable talking to each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gift about being in close proximity is that you\u2019re desensitized to seeing a different culture and judging it right away,\u201d said Lena Yee-Ross, a 17-year-old high school senior whose mother is Chinese-American and father is black.<\/p>\n

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Lena Yee-Ross, center, with her classmates Arabella Compton, left, and Christian Bustos at Jesse Bethel High School in Vallejo.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Living next to one another for generations, since a major naval yard drew large numbers to the town with the promise of jobs, has mitigated much of the tension found in more segregated communities. People of all stripes sing arm in arm during Thursday night karaoke at Gentleman Jim\u2019s bar, where on a recent evening a white man with a cowboy hat sat next to a Filipino man in a biker vest, and the songs ranged from Neil Diamond\u2019s \u201cSweet Caroline\u201d to the Fugees\u2019 \u201cKilling Me Softly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students of different races study side by side at one local high school, and their shades of skin color span such a spectrum that it is difficult to tell what races or ethnicities they are when they congregate for lunch.<\/p>\n

Still, Vallejo (pronounced va-LAY-oh) is no promised land.<\/p>\n

Stubborn racial divisions remain. The typical black family has a household income that is three-fourths of the city\u2019s median. Nearly three out of every four members of the Police Department are white, and all of the City Council members are either Filipino or white.<\/p>\n

Academic performance is improving in schools, but achievement gaps remain: Of the 11th graders at Jesse Bethel High School, which is in the 94591 ZIP code, 42 percent of black students and 51 percent of Hispanic ones tested proficient in English this year, compared with 63 percent of white students and 77 percent of Filipino ones.<\/p>\n

Spencer Lane, a 17-year-old white senior at a high school where whites are in the minority, said classmates had told him that he looked as if he could shoot up a school. Ms. Yee-Ross said her mother once heard a news account of a robbery and insisted that the perpetrator had to be black. And the Johnsons have battled racial tension in their family and their business.<\/p>\n

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A white customer who had been a regular at the restaurant once asked the woman taking his order to make sure that a young black employee did not cook his food, Ms. Johnson said. When she heard commotion at the front of the restaurant, she said, she confronted the customer, who told her: \u201cHow can you have people like that working here? His pants are sagging.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Johnsons met in Vallejo in 2003, introduced by mutual friends. He liked her toothy smile, she liked his respect, but each harbored racial stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Mr. Johnson, 33, assumed that she would be a devoted homemaker who would cook and clean for him. Ms. Johnson, 31, said she was impressed that he did not wear baggy pants and that \u201che doesn\u2019t talk ghetto.\u201d<\/p>\n

As diverse as Vallejo is, Ms. Johnson said she grew up hanging out mostly with Filipinos, a clustering that many local residents of different races said is natural. Immigrants from Mexico or the Philippines may want the company of people who can help them navigate a new country.<\/p>\n

But within these groups, stereotypes can fester.<\/p>\n

When Mr. Johnson\u2019s mother, Tanja Mayo-Pittman, found out he was dating Ms. Johnson, she thought of the time she worked at Home Depot. She was the only non-Filipino on her team, and felt ostracized in part because her co-workers spoke Tagalog and joked with one another, leaving her to wonder if they were teasing her.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil I met them, I couldn\u2019t imagine that they just had open arms toward my child,\u201d she said of her son\u2019s future in-laws.<\/p>\n

But those fears and barriers have dropped. \u201cI stopped feeling judged or left out,\u201d she said. \u201cI stopped seeing them as Filipino. I started just seeing them as people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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East Vallejo is within the third most diverse ZIP code in the country, 94591.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Photographs by Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ms. Mayo-Pittman, 52, also had to contend with her own formative years in nearby Pinole, when, as a fair-skinned woman, she had trouble fitting in \u2014 not black enough for the black people, or white enough to be white.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest with you, I never wanted my kids to be light-complected because I didn\u2019t want them to have an identity crisis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Johnsons have four daughters together, from age 3 to 11, each with tawny brown skin.<\/p>\n

As the girls lounged on the carpet of Ms. Johnson\u2019s grandparents\u2019 ranch-style home one evening, after a dinner of lumpia and white rice, Ms. Johnson joked about some of the questions that had come from her husband\u2019s side of the family: Do you work at a nail salon? How do you speak such good English?<\/p>\n

Ms. Johnson\u2019s father, Al Remorin, 51, grew up in nearby Richmond, where most of his friends were black. He moved to Vallejo in 1979, when he was 13. That\u2019s when he came to know a lot of other Filipinos. He was surprised, he said, to hear some of their racism. People asked him why he talked as if he were black.<\/p>\n

Mr. Remorin quickly bonded with Mr. Johnson, often discussing sports. So Ms. Johnson said she was caught off guard by her father\u2019s reaction when she became pregnant.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can you?\u201d Ms. Johnson said her father asked. As in: How could she think it was O.K. to have biracial children?<\/p>\n

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Tanja Mayo-Pittman with her granddaughter Serenity Johnson.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mr. Remorin said he did not recall saying that. He never had an issue with his daughter having biracial children, he said. Back in his day, he rarely saw \u201chalf-Filipinos and half-blacks, or half-this and half-that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard enough as it is being nonwhite, and you imagine when they\u2019re half-this and half-that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things are different today. In the Vallejo-Fairfield metropolitan area, 22 percent of marriages from 2011 to 2015 were interracial, more than double the national rate in the same period, according to\u00a0a Pew Research survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even in 2001,\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0was reporting that Vallejo was one of the most racially balanced cities in the country. Then, as now, racial and ethnic groups often stuck with their own.<\/p>\n

Back then, there were also concerns about the racial makeup of the police, with no African-Americans above the rank of sergeant. Today, the longest-serving member in the history of the department is black and currently a lieutenant, but there are no other African-Americans above the rank of sergeant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not really the interaction in the way we would like,\u201d Liat Meitzenheimer, who is black and Japanese, said in 2001. \u201cKids in the neighborhoods play with each other, but by and large, people stay to themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade and a half later, Ms. Meitzenheimer still lives in Vallejo and she says those divisions still exist.<\/p>\n

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Al Remorin with his granddaughters Cheyenne and Serenity Johnson.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Jim Wilson\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFor somebody who has lived here for 32 years now, it really hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d she said in a recent interview. \u201cThere are people actively trying to find ways to bring people together so that we participate from different communities together on single issues, whether it be sports or some artistic endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vallejo is even more racially balanced now, with the white population dropping and other racial and ethnic groups growing. Hispanic and white residents each make up about 25 percent of the population. A little more than 23 percent of the city is Asian and nearly 21 percent black.<\/p>\n

The 94591 ZIP code \u2014 where the Johnsons live, own their business and send their children to school \u2014 is a sprawling swath of the city known as East Vallejo. Among ZIP codes with at least 50,000 residents, it is the third most diverse in the country, according to a Times analysis of census data.<\/p>\n

Vallejo\u2019s diversity stems from the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which for nearly a century and a half attracted families with the promise of stable jobs. The yard closed in 1996, and with it went much of this town\u2019s fortunes; the city declared bankruptcy in 2008. It remains a largely working-class bedroom community, though some fear that the relatively affordable housing could lure more affluent Bay Area residents, displacing low-income residents.<\/p>\n

Past restrictions that kept people of color confined to certain neighborhoods have largely fallen, but glaring disparities endure. Black households rank lowest in median income, at $42,000. Residents have complained of brutality by the police force against black and brown people, and the seven-member City Council currently does not have a black or Hispanic member.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s part of that racial divide, where Filipinos want to have Filipino leadership or African-Americans want to have an African-American leader or whites want to have a white leader, so they specifically target an individual for election,\u201d said Bob Sampayan, who was elected the city\u2019s first Filipino-American mayor last year.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Sampayan and other local residents see promising signs of integration, like the diverse neighborhood watch patrols that sprang up after cuts to the Police Department and the diverse group involved in the city\u2019s participatory budgeting process.<\/p>\n

The Vallejo Chamber of Commerce, once a mostly white organization, now has its first Latina chairwoman, and nearly half of its board members are people of color. Different ethnic chambers of commerce \u2014 Filipino, Hispanic and African-American \u2014 work more closely with the city chamber under a group called the Vallejo Business Alliance.<\/p>\n

Then there are the day-to-day interactions that blur conventions of race and culture.<\/p>\n

Christopher Morales, 17, said his black friends were not offended when he, a Mexican-American, used an anti-black slur because their relationships transcended race. It is an attitude, he conceded, that puts Vallejo in something of a diversity bubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really offend us,\u201d he said, \u201cuntil someone from, like, an outside town comes over here.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting from New York. Susan Beachy contributed research from New York.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow John Eligon on Twitter @jeligon<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ImageDarryl Johnson, center, and his wife, Marissa Johnson, with their daughter Sienna at their restaurant in Vallejo, Calif. The city is one of the most racially balanced in the United States.CreditJim Wilson\/The New York Times By\u00a0John Eligon Nov. 24, 2017\u00a0(NYTimes.com) VALLEJO, Calif. \u2014 Beyond the burgers and fries coming from… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7001"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7003,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7001\/revisions\/7003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}