Forum Focuses on Racism in Irvine, County

A forum called Wednesday night to examine racism in the city and Orange County drew a small crowd and some conflicting views about the problem.

The forum--sponsored by the political advocacy group Irvine Tomorrow--attracted about 70 people, many of them students, to a meeting room at the Marketplace shopping center across from the UC Irvine campus.

“Irvine is the epitome of the way racism works in this country,” said panel member Joseph Graves, a UCI professor of evolutionary biology. “The existence of a community like this is a result of continued segregation.”

Some residents who attended the forum, however, complained that many immigrants don’t try to learn English or adopt “American ways.”

Organizers said the forum was intended to spotlight the existence of racial hatred in the county as a whole but particularly in the city of Irvine, which has experienced an increased level of ethnic tension, they contend.

Incidents have included distribution of white supremacist leaflets, which has provoked anger in the community and questions at City Council meetings. There is also worry that an emerging skinhead influence will spark trouble on school campuses, where a few fights linked to ethnic tension have already occurred.

Panel member Tina Fernandez, a staff member with the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said her two children who attend Irvine schools have related incidents of racial slurs, mimicking of accents and comments by teachers about the learning abilities of minorities.

And organizers say the failed fight in 1989 to include gays and lesbians in the city’s human rights ordinance revealed a deep lode of animosity directed at all minorities.

“I think people were not expecting some of the anger that was directed at others, like Jews and immigrants,” said coordinator Pamela Parham.

Part of the problem, said participants, is that the image of Irvine as a rather dull but well-managed, mostly homogeneous community has not kept up with its reality.