>larger suburbs (some have populations exceeding 100,000)contain a
>fair cross section of the US class structure...
MIke Davis writes that this is happening in Southern California's Inland Empire, where Davis spent his early childhood in Fontana, California.
[....]
>But the Inland Empire, if gridlocked and addled by speed, also adds
>something positive to the balance-sheet of civilization in Southern
>California. It may not have beaches, but it has the most democratic
>and racially mixed neighborhoods in the state. If you blended the
>2000 California census in a Cuisinart, the result would resemble the
>multiethnic student bodies of Fontana or Perris high schools. Unlike
>much of Los Angeles, where diversity is often the transitional
>artifact of ethnic replacement, the blue-collar interior is a true
>rainbow. Affordable and, for once, racially unrestricted housing has
>attracted working-class whites following the eastward migration of
>warehouses and trucking companies, as well as African-American
>families trying to save their kids from the carnage of LA's gang
>wars. Chicanos, more than a third of the population, follow in the
>footsteps of their grandparents, who toiled in the Inland Empire's
>orchards and railroad shops.
[....]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030407/davis