

Orange tree (Photo by faria! via the LAist Featured Photos pool)

A black family says they're packing their bags and moving out of Yorba Linda, because they're fed up with all the racism that they faced in the last two years (that's right, we're talking about 2011 and 2012).

The father, an Inglewood police officer, shared his family's story with the OC Human Relations Commission, saying: "We wanted people to know that it's not peachy keen in Yorba Linda when it comes to racism."

Yorba Linda is a wealthy city whose big claim to fame is being the site of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The family told the commission that since they moved to Yorba Linda in May 2011 the tires of their cars were slashed, rocks were thrown at their windows, racial epithets were hurled at them and classmates told their 6-year-old son that they couldn't play with a black child. The final straw was when acid pellets were fired into their garage this fall.

The family's identity is being kept anonymous, but the commission, which keeps track of hate crimes, says it wanted to share the family's story to educate politicians and the public about the racism African-Americans face in the county. It plans to conduct "listening sessions," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Although African-Americans make up a scant two per cent of the population of Orange County, they're the target of 30 per cent of the hate crimes in the county, according to the OC Human Relations Commission. Ticking off horrible stats is one thing, but hearing the ugly stories are another. Here's a description of the racism the family faced, according to a letter from the commission (obtained by the OC Weekly):



Shortly after arriving in May 2011 they were awakened in the middle of the night as rocks shattered the windows of their house. Then they found that the 8 tires on their two cars had all been slashed. Their 6 year old son related a story of classmates at Travis Ranch school who said he couldn't play with them because he was Black, and one kid told the others that they could not talk to him because he was Black. Their young adult son shared that as he rode on his bicycle to work at the Home Depot he had repeatedly been yelled at by passing cars that called him N——r. And finally on Oct 6, 2012 they were targets of acid pellets shot into their garage door that dripped down on their car ruining the paint and window. They had reached the tipping point. They decided that they just could not live in a community where they were treated like this. They needed a more welcoming community where there were more diverse residents, where a Black family would not be such a rarity. On 10/19/12 this family of public servants, moved to Corona in search of a safe and welcoming community.

The family says they're moving across county lines to Corona in Riverside County. The city's mayor Mark Schwing and the Police Department would not comment on the family's story for the Times.

UPDATE: The family spoke to CBS Los Angeles about their experiences:



Related:

Hate Crimes in OC Jumped 14 Percent