Professor to Discuss Area’s Ethnic Change

A Cal State Northridge geography professor will discuss Southern California’s changing ethnic composition in a lecture Friday at Pierce College.

CSUN geography professor Jim Allen’s lecture, “The Ethnic Quilt: Population Diversity in Southern California,” is part of the college’s Geography Lecture Series.

“I think people who have lived here in the last 20 or 25 years will find the lecture very illuminating because, even though there’s been a lot of immigration during that time, there hasn’t been enough time to adapt,” Allen said. “It will help them understand and explain the changes going on.”

Allen will also discuss the ethnic occupational specialties in Southern California.

“In their adaptation [to] the need . . . to survive in Southern California, there is a pattern in the ethnic variation in the different occupations and industries people go into,” he said.

For example, Allen said, women of Asian or Indian descent are 10 times more likely to be physicians than other women in the mainstream. Citing another example, Allen said 35% of the Korean American population in Los Angeles is self-employed.

“The pattern of Koreans adapting to entrepreneurship is much higher when compared to other ethnic groups,” he said.

The event, which will begin at 1 p.m. in Room 0914 of the physics building, is open to the public.

For more information, contact Pierce College at (818) 719-6442 or 347-0551.