Race and Your Community Essay

Submitted By shezsweets
Words: 1060
Pages: 5

R
Race and Your Community I stay here in Long beach California the city is a dominant maritime center of the United States and was recently named "Aquatic Capital of the Nation." The Port of Long Beach is the United States' second busiest container port and one of the world's largest shipping ports. The city also maintains a large oil industry with the substance being found both underground and offshore. According to the 2010 Census, the racial composition of Long Beach was 46.1% White (Non-Hispanic Whites: 29.4%), 13.5% Black or African American, 0.7% Native American, 12.9% Asian, 1.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and 5.3% were from two or more races. People of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 40.8% of Long Beach's population. According to a report by USA Today in 2000, Long Beach is the most ethnically diverse large city in the United States. Its Hispanic community is nearly three times as large as that of the Asians. Its Asian community includes the largest Cambodian community in the United States, and the second-largest Cambodian community outside of Asia. There are also sizable populations of immigrants and descendants from Vietnam and the Philippines. Long Beach had offered many industrial jobs to African Americans during the years of World War II. This resulted in the increase of blacks in Long Beach caused by the Second Great Migration. Long Beach's black community resides in the Eastside and North Long Beach neighborhoods. Ethnicities are very diverse here and there is a wide range of minorities groups within my area. You can drive from multi million dollar homes to a rough project area within minutes. My neighbor hood is very mixed I have pacific islanders, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Cambodian and philipino neighbors. I am of mixed ethnicities Portuguese and Mexican I feel my features are strongly towards my Mexican side, I believe I fall in the Latino/Hispanic group of my community but some people still question my ethnicity especially having a mixed family my boyfriend is black, Italian, German, Norwegian, and Swedish and my daughter part Portuguese. There are a lot of mixed people in Long beach but it seems when you are mixed you come out having a very different look. A lot of people have ethnic features that can give away there ethnicity. I think its funny a lot of people always ask if I speak Spanish they can never figure out if I am Hispanic and for some reason they always mistake my boyfriend as Hispanic. Since he is so light brown skinned and has brown eyes a lot of times people come up to him speaking Spanish I always have to take over and explain he isn’t Hispanic he doesn’t speak Spanish. The leaders in my community come from a variety of backgrounds. I feel that they are very diverse in there ethnic backgrounds and this allows them to get a look into things differently in the community. Recently at work they transferred mangers from the Los Angeles area because they needed more African American and Hispanic supervisors and managers to run the store to equal the proper demographics. I feel that this was a good thing because it allows the customers in the store to feel more comfortable with the staff. I used to not understand stand this but have realized that it is useful in many cases. In Long beach the gay population is also very large and accepted. Downtown Long beach has a large gay parade every year that is usually very wide spread in the media. So everyone is pretty much treated equally here I feel that race or sexual preference doesn’t come in to play much. I work for Kaiser Permanente and Kaiser is very diverse all of there training videos use people from all different races and ethnicities. One thing that is not tolerated at work is speaking another language or having a conversation with another employee in a different language other than English. The only people that should be spoken to in any other language are to patients that speak that