I was born in Sacramento and spent my earliest years there, before heading to Los Angeles and spending a few years there before ultimately bouncing my way east. Grew up and spent time back in both cities, especially Sac, used to get back yearly but now it's been 4 years since I've been home...
Also have hung out in Oakland and San Fran and the smaller cities in the general Bay and LA areas---->Fairfield, Vallejo, SFV areas of Van Nuys/Panorama City/Pacoima...
Off the rip, I don't think California is a great state for black people, but I'm asterisking that statement. Overall, we are pushed way to the bottom of the "minority" tier here, and socially are overshadowed in ways we just aren't in many other states. This social capital matters because that's how policies are created and how positions of authority are assumed, and we are lacking here big time statewide...
The cost of living in California is impacting Black Californians, and former Black Californians, more than anyone else, and it doesn't help that California is increasingly becoming a state for the super rich and the super poor. The image of Black California as a land of entertainers and athletes and gangbangers doesn't help us, either...
But I did say I asterisked that statement...
In a perfect world, meaning there was a reasonable cost of living, California would be one of the best places for Black people in the US, and I truly believe that. There are benefits to growing up around hyperdiversity, but more importantly, the economic diversity and biodiversity of California is unmatched anywhere in the United States. There's a season here for everyone, there's a career here for everyone, there's somewhere here for everyone, and it's highly urbanized with all the perks of being one of the largest economies on the planet...
Black people will flock back to California in droves if the national and state cost of living ever stabilizes. Educational opportunities the best in the country, just so much potential for mobility for us as a people. It won't happen as long as the status quo resumes, but I'm a big believer in nothing lasts forever. Bubble will burst at some point and our seeds will head back because of two cities primarily:
Los Angeles and Oakland...
People who have never been to Cali or have been on a visit but are otherwise unfamiliar with us fail to grasp the scope of black history in California. Have long, long been trendsetters for Black America, case in point the statewide reparations movement currently. People get caught up in the numbers, but Black Californians are highly prideful and self-aware, and I mean this with all conviction, Los Angeles and Oakland are two of the more culturally black cities in the nation, in the sense that the cultural pulse of both cities got its cues and has its root in so many things that black OGs of those cities started...
Los Angeles has a circular bubble that you can draw centered around the Westside of South Central, that encompasses all of South LA (~820,000 people), W/SW pipeline from Gardena/Hawthorne/Inglewood/Culver (~330,000 people), and S/SE pipeline of Compton/Carson/North Long Beach (~350,000 people) that is around 28.7% black...
Put this in context. The city of LA overall is only 8% black the the heart of Black California in the bubble I described, which goes beyond LA city limits, has approximately 1.5 million people total, of which about 29% of the 1.5 million are black--->that's roughly 430,000 black people...
This is a higher percentage of black people than cities like Houston and Dallas, two cities with comparable populations to the Black LA bubble, and this is more black people than the entire cities of "chocolate cities" like New Orleans and St Louis, and more black residents than found in other chocolate cities like DC, Baltimore, or Memphis...
People who only know LA thru media or reading numbers off papers can't quantify the magnitude and cultural richness of Black LA. LA is STILL one of the 10 best places for Black people in America because if the significance of the bubble I mentioned...
Oakland is similar but on a much smaller scale. Oakland and surrounding cities of the East Bay are also more richly black than you'd realize if you've never been...
In a state thar overall isn't great for black folk, those two cities, especially Los Angeles, are still great places for Black people. They set all the statewide trends from politics to entertainment and have deep history for us as a people both statewide abd nationally...
