Daily Class OutlineDaily Class QuestionsDaily Class Web LinksDaily Class Notes



 Question for Discussion: According to Limerick,
how can we understand the interior West's fear
of Californians as a fear of the urban, developed,
ethnically and racially diverse modern Industrial
civilization that we have become in 21st-century
America?

Reading: Hornby, "Recognizing the West as an
Urban Place"; Limerick, "Will the Real Californian";
O'Connor, "A Region of Cities" ; Wilkinson, Cities and Water; Brooks, "The Real America, really";
Lewis, “Class Notes” (See quotes on anti-California sentiment in the West);

Video: Falling Down (1992); L.A. Story (1991)

Daily Class Web Links

Studying the Urban West

Daily Class Outline



Daily Class Questions

 

 


Daily Class Notes

Californians and the Urban West

"The West as a whole has shifted from 43 percent metropolitan in 1940 to 64 percent in 1960, 78 percent in 1980, and 80 percent in 1990.... In the 8 states of the Far West--California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii--88 percent of the population lives in urban areas."
......Carl Abbott (1993)

[Because of this urbanization] the "western backcountry will be monopolized and subordinated to city uses through metropolitan political and economic influence, but it will be far less important than the wider world to the key cities of the West."
.....Carl Abbott (199)

In the 1960s and 1970s, fearing uncontrolled growth, "overgrown and overdeveloped California became the leading negative example; Oregon and Washington vowed not to repeat its mistakes. Indeed, citizens in each state, especially west of the Cascades, increasingly focused on Californians migrating northward to live in the Pacific Northwest as the single greatest threat to their environment and way of life."
.....John Findlay

"They were not Californians, and they were not shy about saying so. Oregonians made the most of this antipathy during the 1970s when they tried to make newcomers, especially Californians, unwelcome....Bumper-sticker messages such as "Dont' Californicate Oregon" also expressed (and continue to express) deeply felt antagonism."
....John Findlay

"By the late 1980s, many in Washington state, especially around Puget Sound, considered recent growth as too rapid and uncontrolled, and felt overwhelmed by such problems as urban congestion, crime, and lack of affordable housing.... Washingtonians preferred to single out migrants from California as the major source of their problem. One transplant from California to Washington said: "The hostility toward Californians is worse than race
relations in the South. It is just open season for contempt of Californians."
.....John Findlay

"A California sociologist reports that anti-California attitudes continue to prevail in Oregon. Glenn T. Tsunokai took surveys commonly used to detect prejudice toward African-Americans, gays, and other vulnerable groups; substituted "Californians" for "blacks" and 'homosexuals" on their forms; and sent them out to a sample of Oregonians. The respondents demonstrated fairly significant prejudice against their neighbors to the south. See Foster Church, "Oregonians Just Say No to California," Portland Oregonian, 12 November 1996, A1, A6."
.....John Findlay

[California] "is perceived as overdeveloped and uninhabitable, the product of an unhealthy way of thinking. Opponents of an Oregon development project will denounce it as a 'California mentality'-- or, if they wish to be really nasty, a 'southern California mentality'....A letter-writer to the Portland Oregonian last year defined the California mentality crisply as 'eyesore condominiums, numerous fast-food franchises, and ugly shopping center' ".
....David Sarasohn (1983)

"A part of the bitternes of Oregon's sectionalism is the feeling of some state residents... that the battle may already have been lost. Oregonians have seen the future and it looks like Orange County."
....David Sarasohn

"Wherever you go in the interior West, you hear hostile remarks about an invasion of Californians.... 'Californians', the articles usually begin, 'continue to flee their state in large numbers."
...Patty Limerick, (1998)

"In the states of the Colorado River Basin, California has for a long time held the role of the rapacious parasite draining the resources of the interior. This hostility has been intense for a long time, and it seems to be getting more intense....More likely, if California left the scene, then states like Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado would lose one of their favorite scapegoats and have to face up to how much of their 'trouble and pain,' how much of the problems of growth, smog, and overallocation of water, is of their own creation, or at least inflicted on them with their own full cooperation and complicity."
....Patty Limerick

"When residents of the interior West cringe and shudder over California, they are often cringing and shuddering over the challenges California faces in ethnic diversity. When residents of the interior West try to edit out California, they are, I think, trying to imagine a West without ethnic friction, without urban poverty, without smog, and without water overallocation...."
.....Patty Limerick

"It is not simply that the real Rocky Mountain West is, like California, very urbanized; it is also that the real California has enormous rural areas and extensive public lands, and thus struggles with many of the same issues that now preoccupy the interior West."
....Patty Limerick

"There is also no avoiding the fact that many of these efforts to close the door, throughout the Western past, have had race and racial prejudice as their determinants."
....Patty Limerick

"The history of internal Californian friction is a rich one...[Violence was directed against Indians, Spanish, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Phillipinos, Whites from
the Dust Bowl, and African Americans among others.]....Northern Californians even peer down their noses at Southern Californians."
....Patty Limerick

Some Western historians refer to this suspicion and resentment of Californians as "California bashing.
.....Chris Lewis

California Bashing Editorial Cartoon

Why is the interior West in the 1990s and early 2000s so quick to see California and Californians as scapegoats?
.....Chris Lewis

"At the same time, many of the lifestyle and ethnic problems associated with California-bashing in the early 1990s have spread to competitive regions. Mass in-migration to places like Las Vegas and Phoenix, both from within the nation and abroad, has transformed these cities into smaller versions of ethnically diverse, sprawling and congested California cities. "Los Angeles: America's First Third World City" was the headline on an early 1990s Arizona Republic screed, which indicated that most middle-class Anglos were looking for a way out. Now, according to one recent poll, nearly half of Phoenix's residents say they would move away if they could."
...Joel Kotkin (2001)

Anti-California Stereotypes

I have been doing this survey for about ten years, and over that time students' attitudes toward "California" and "Californians" have been fairly consistent. Each year when students are asked to list phrases that come to mind when they hear the word "California" or "Californian," they regularly mention the following: "bad drivers," "pollution," "overcrowded," "busy" or "fast-paced," "wealthy" and "powerful," "crime," "in love with their cars," and various combinations of "pushy," "vain," "self-centered," "loud," "rude," "disrespectful," "superficial," "immoral," "uptight," "plastic," "artificial," and "mindless." A number of respondents have claimed that Californians are "taking over" the Pacific Northwest, or that too many are "coming to Washington." In 1997 one student spoke for many when she or he wrote, "Californians: 1) are invading our beautiful area; 2) as [former Oregon governor] Tom McCall said, 'Come and visit but go home'; 3) Californians are crazy drivers who cause accidents; 4) they are driving up the housing prices; and 5) as my mother says, 'I hate Californians.'"
....John Findlay (1998)

 

"Besides Californians, the other increasingly powerful foil for regional identity in recent years has been salmon. In this case, however, in contrast to Californians, salmon seem to stand for all that is good about the Pacific Northwest (and perhaps all that appears to be endangered by the influx of people from south of the 42nd parallel). The wild runs of Pacific salmon are an indigenous, homegrown species. Unlike recent immigrants, they are native to the Northwest. In fact, they are of nature itself, spawning in freshwater streams. Salmon appear to bind the region together by crossing the lines that divide it. For example, they live on both sides of the Cascade Mountains, and therefore stand as something that the eastern and western halves of the Northwest can claim in common. Moreover, the salmon apparently cross human divides as well as geographic ones. Although Indians and non-Indians have fought one another for years over access to the runs of fish, the iconic salmon is something that the two groups share. One consequence is that artwork portraying the fish by both Indian and non-Indian artists has grown quite popular throughout the region. And much is made of the newfound cooperation between Indians and non-Indians as they cooperate in trying to save the dying runs of wild salmon."
....John Findlay (1998)

"Touristst haven’t always been all that welcome in Oregon: until the mid-1980’s a popular bumper sticker in this state read "Don’t Californicate Oregon" and "SNOBS" (Society of Native Oregonian Born). But since then the disdain for tourists has faded into some kind of hospitality, and into a flourishing tourist industry."
....Henk Binnendijk (2002)

"The no-growth advocates are pushing for voter annexation because they are betting that the drawbridge mentality of local voters will result in "gated cities." It harkens back to the 1970s bumper-sticker message of "Don't Californicate Oregon!" It is sad that these people cannot see that the bumper sticker actually reads "I don't want my children to live here."
....Richard Carson (1997)

"Californian's ... if you're caught with one, you're quickly invited to leave the state. Oregonians used to be afraid Californians wanted to come and pave everything over for parking lots (ironic considering the level of deforestation that occurred with the timber industry). Anyway "Don't Californicate Oregon!" is still a catch phrase."
....zappowbang's guide to Eugene, Oregon

"What non-Oregonian’s need to know is this: though Oregon’s hostility to foreigners seems funny at first (because it is simply so irrational, so unbelievable, that, come on, it must be a joke) it turns out that they’re not joking. In the 1970s there was a motto like "Welcome to Oregon. Now leave." It persists, joining more recent calls of "Don’t Californicate!"
....The Asian Reporter

Hornby, Recognizing the West as an Urban Place

"Most Westerners are urban people. A much higher percentage of our population lives in units that the Census Bureau describes as urban than any other region of the United States. And yet, in our discussions about the West, so often our historical approach - the way we shape our ideas about the future --- is to handle the city or the town as if it were the exception. The city is the place most Western historians don 't want to think about. Let's talk about the mountains, the resources, the water. We really can't work in the cities when we're talking about the West. 'Yet the West has to be shaped, has to be preserved, has to be protected in such a way that it serves the places most of its people live, the towns and cities, as well as the beautiful empty places where they don't." (120-21)

"Why do people come west? People come west because of their dreams. They dream that they will do better financially. They dream that they can find more space. They dream that they can find a better quality of life. And the fact of the matter is that one of the reasons they come west is that it is better than east; it always has been, in terms of people dreaming that if they went west they could make a new start. The dream isn 't just of people coming west. The dream is still alive for the people in Mexico who are coming north. The dream is still alive for the people along the Pacific Rim who are coming east. They dream of the American West, although their compass direction, their label of direction, is different." (121)

"The other point I'd like to address is this sense I have that we think that if we could plan better, if we could manage better, somehow we could solve all of these problems in a clean, efficient fashion. I don't think that is true. We are a politically free and mobile people. The whole history of the West gives no comfort to those who believe they are going to solve the problems of the West by some superior form of planning." (122)

"He [Charles Wilkinson] argues that gradually, through the workings of our political process and through our courts, we're going to develop a new "ethic of place." An ethic of place would hold that the needs of people extracting resources are going to have to be balanced with the needs of community. An ethic of place would say that People are here and have rights, but Place also is here and has rights, and the law must balance the two." (123)

"Those who are arguing for protection of place these days are polarized to the point where, in general, they are excluding the part of the equation that looks out for people. But in our political system, you cannot exclude the majority of the people in the long run. It does not work. You just can't draw lines that keep them out. You can't draw lines that keep them away. You have to hope you can instill in the majority attitudes that will protect place. Then those attitudes will lead to appropriate law." (124)

O'Connor, A Region of Cities

Nevertheless, what mattered was not how old a city was when it acquired public transit but rather how dominant was its core and how much crowding had occurred there. In almost every case, western cities availed themselves of the technology of mass transportation before they entered the most important phases of their growth. As a result, distinct business, governmental, and industrial areas, as well as residential areas distinguished by class, emerged at dispersed locations. A low-density form of development became the norm; the suburbanization of the city had begun. " (542-43)

"But in another sense the appeal of western cities did remain distinctive. For, although they could export aspects of their built environment, they could not export their natural environment. Mountains, beaches, oceans, and deserts played a part in the appeal of their settings. After all, where was the eastern metropolis that could rival a Denver, Seattle, or San Diego in offering opportunities for outdoor recreation?

Nevertheless, the lure of western cities rested on an increasingly fragile foundation. As houses grew too expensive to buy and freeways too congested to drive, residents faced a predicament that stemmed from their region's knack for attracting newcomers. Moreover, another characteristic of the region-the westerners' attachment to and dependence on the automobile--was itself fouling the healthfulness and beauty of the places they loved." (557)

Limerick, Will the Real Californian
Please Stand Up?

"And that makes my present situation in these matters all the more awkward. Wherever you go today in the interior West, you hear hostile remarks about an invasion of Californians. The Denver Post reports regularly on the number of Californians applying for Colorado drivers' licenses, and the tone of these reports is not one of cheer. "Californians," the articles usually begin, "continue to flee their state in large numbers."(259)

"When people ask, "Are you from the West originally?" I am sometimes at a loss, because I know many of them are ready to respond, "You are not from the West; you are from California." Maybe this would be the more
effective answer: "I am, in fact, from the West, but I am from the illegitimate West, the fallen and degraded West. Still, I was only a baby when it happened, and no one consulted me." (260)

"In the states of the Colorado River Basin , California has for a long time held the role of the rapacious parasite draining the resources of the interior. This hostility has been intense for a long time, and it seems to be getting more intense." (260)

"And there is this more important fact: when residents of the interior West cringe and shudder over California , they are often cringing and shuddering over the challenges California faces in ethnic diversity. When residents of the interior try to edit California out of the West, they are, I think, trying to imagine a West without ethnic friction, without urban poverty, without smog, and without water overallocation." (261)

"Who, under these circumstances of constant population change, could qualify as a real Westerner, either born to Westernness or grown into Westernness, entitled to claim the right to make decisions about Western resources and to profit from those resources? Indian people have an obvious claim based on duration, as well as treaty rights. But the rest of us are all comparatively late arrivals or the descendants of late arrivals, and we are having a hell of a time dealing with this puzzling legacy of history." (262)

"This is the well-known "close the door right after me" script, usually performed by people who do not seem to be aware of how extremely arbitrary and self-interested they are being in their setting of these deadlines. There is also no avoiding the fact that many of these efforts to close the door, throughout the Western past, have had race and racial prejudice as their determinants. Anyone in the late twentieth century who wants to engage in this exercise of distinguishing legitimate Westerners from illegitimate Westerners had better be prepared to deal, frankly and
directly, with this heritage of racism, and of thin and brittle self-interest masquerading as high-minded principle." (262)

"The history of internal Californian friction is a rich one: the condescension and violence directed at the Indians by Spanish colonizers; the contempt and violence directed, in turn, at Mexicans and Indians, by Anglo invaders; early opposition to the presence of free blacks; the hostility and violence directed at Chinese immigrants, Japanese immigrants, and Filipino immigrants; the hatred of Okies; the scape­goating of Mexican immigrants; the exclusion of African Americans from jobs and housing; the viciousness of the Red Scare and Cold War in Hollywood; and, on a less injurious but still irritating level, the haughtiness of northern Californians peering down at southern Californians." (263)

"Consider, for instance, the well-known but still stunning act of arrogance involved in the Foreign Miners' Taxes of the 1850s. California belonged to Mexico in 1848. In a matter of close timing that probably sent Cortez and Coronado tossing in their graves, James Marshall came upon gold in California just before the negotiators in Mexico City signed their treaty, transferring ownership of the Southwest to the United States . Anglo-Americans rushed into California , a territory in which they had been very sparsely represented, and instantly labeled the other guys "foreigners"--not only labeled them "foreigners" but designed, wrote, and imposed special taxes on these instant "foreigners" to keep them from competing with these instant legitimate Californians. The real Californians, this story reminds us, may well be the Californians who control the legislature, while the rest of us, no matter how distinguished our pedigree, scale down from each other in degrees of illegitimacy." (265)

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Wilkinson, Cities and Water

"At bottom, the answer is that traditional Western water law amounts to legalized theft or, put more politely, a mechanism to allow private water users to take--for free--as much water as they see fit from public rivers and aquifers. It was a simple system, developed in Gold Rush mining camps and called "prior appropriation." The keystone of prior appropriation was seniority, "first in time, first in right ": the first user had a guaranteed supply (subject always to the vagaries of aridity), the next senior had the second priority, and so on down the line, as long as water still flowed. Only utilitarian, extractive uses--mining, farming, ranch­ing, municipal, industrial, and domestic--that physically took water out of the stream were eligible. ....Although water is said to be the West's most precious resource, traditional prior appropriation allowed for profligate waste of water, both in the cities and on the farms."

"Prior appropriation rewarded the aggressive, those who got to the water first. This meant that Western water law, as it played out on Western rivers, had a fundamental bias in favor of big interests. Rural areas lost out to cities. Small farmers lose out to large irrigation districts with the clout to lobby Congress for subsidized dam-and-reservoir protects. Indian tribes and hispanic communities lost out to everyone."

"Not so. The decisive time for peopling the West has been the post-World War II era--the one we are still in. In 1945, the region 's population stood at 16 million. By 1996 it had risen to 58 million. In the Interior West, population has shot from 5 to 18 million. Except for increases in the early 1990s, rural population has remained quite constant."

Map of Water Users in the West (in-class)

"To accomplish that, the urban centers needed vast amounts of water and energy. They had exhausted sources close to home, so they moved out into the rural areas. Whether cities within the Intermountain West (Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, has Vegas. Reno, Salt Lake City, Boise, and Spokane) or urban areas on the Pacific coast from the southern California complex to Seattle--they all reached into the empty for their needed resources."

"The rural West has long felt under the thumb of the cities for reasons other than resource extraction. The urban areas have always been the supply centers. People in the country had to travel to the city or wait for the city to deliver. Mining and timber quickly became corporate, before the nineteenth century ended, and all the corporate headquarters were in the cities. The state capitals-have been located in distant urban centers. Rural Westerners have long complained about the heavy hand of Washington, D.C., but Western cities also colonized the rural West. "

"Then you have the tourists. To country people, they seem to he everywhere. They're pushy. They don't leave all that much money behind. Something just doesn't exactly ring true about those hiking helmets and tight, powder-blue Lycra shorts on the main street of Ely or Pinedale or Twin Falls. "