Compelling State Interest will reveal a variety of statistics on the dramatic change in the socio-economic status of African-Americans in California. The presentation will be Oct. 26, 2007 at UCLA in the Economic Opportunity in California symposium.
African-American population in California dropped nine percent from 2000 to 2006, according to Census estimates reported in the presentation “Compelling State Interest: California A Contra-History Without Prop. 209.”
“This is a scale not seen since the Exodus of 1858, when blacks left San Francisco for British Columbia due to the Fugitive Slave Act,” said historian John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4.
The 2006 estimate from the American Community Survey is 2.26 million African-Americans. The 2000 Census reported 2.476 million, an increase of 11 percent from the 1990 total of 2,198 million.
Most of the larger counties in the state report declines. The report will be presented Friday, Oct. 26 at Economic Opportunity in California: the Employment and Social Impact of Prop. 209 at UCLA. For more info, call 415-240-3537.
County declines were: Ventura 11.2; Santa Clara 16.8; Santa Barbara 27.0; San Mateo 21.3; San Francisco 24.5; San Diego 20.4; Orange 7.6; Monterey 27.3; Los Angeles 10.5; Fresno 6.4; Contra Costa 3.4; Alameda 18.1 percent.
Gainers were San Joaquin 13.4, San Bernardino 6.8 and Sacramento 0.6 percent.
The Exodus of 1858 involved the migration of 700 of the 5,000 blacks in the state to British Columbia to move away from discriminatory legislation such as the right of testimony law and the Fugitive Slave Act.
Templeton has previously observed a trend in California away from average rates of growth for self-employment in the past four years as author of the State of Black Business reports.
This report, part of a day of presentations on the impact of the anti-affirmative action initiative, looks at a variety of other demographic attributes. This multi-variate approach will help to distinguish which policy changes played the greatest role in the abrupt shift in population and other trends.