When it comes to diversity, suburbs are leading the way, with Vallejo and Suisun City topping the list of the most racially mixed cities in the Bay Area, new census figures show. Rounding out the top 10 are Oakland, Fairfield, Pittsburg, Pinole, Antioch, San Leandro, American Canyon and Hayward.
The bottom of the list is also suburban. The least diverse community in the Bay Area is San Anselmo in Marin County, which is 89.7 percent white, followed by its neighbor, Ross, at 89.5 percent white, Belvedere at 87.6 percent white, Portola Valley in San Mateo County at 85.2 percent white, Sausalito at 84.9 percent and Woodside 84 percent white plus 5.5 percent Asian.
San Francisco, which for years has proudly touted its diversity, dropped to 22nd place from 17th in 2000. The drop was largely because of the ongoing exit of the city’s African American community. The city is now 40.8 percent white, 33.9 percent Asian, 15.3 percent Latino and 5.1 percent African American.
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San Jose is No. 24 most diverse and Berkeley No. 25 on the list of the 101 cities counted.
The diversity rankings were compiled by the Association of Bay Area Governments and based on the 2017 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It measures how all races are represented in a given city.
“When you look at the most diverse cities, they are pretty much in the same areas, where housing costs are less expensive, and that is on the periphery of the Bay Area,” ABAG spokesman John Goodwin said.
Suisun City Mayor Lori Wilson said she’s not surprised by the trend of growing racial diversity in the suburbs, saying her 4-square-mile city is “still one of the most affordable cities in the Bay Area.”
“You can still get a three- or four-bedroom house for the low- to mid-hundred-thousand-dollar mark,” Wilson said.
And while Wilson said Suisun City is doing just fine with housing military personnel from Travis Air Force Base and its new transplants, the inviting housing market also comes with a potential downside.
“It’s affordable for middle-income families, but low-income families who need subsidized housing are going to move even farther out,” Wilson said.
And the farther people move out, the harder it is to get mass transit and other services.
“Place matters,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “Housing in places like Antioch may be affordable, but the public transportation is not that substantial and there are fewer support services.”
There are also large demographic changes going on within the Bay Area’s cities.
Oakland, for example, has seen both a surge in gentrification and a drop in its African American population. Everyone is a minority there: Whites represent about a quarter of the population (27.3 percent), as do Latinos (27 percent), while African Americans, who used to be at about 30 percent, are now at 23.6 percent.
In San Jose, Asians are the biggest group, representing 34.5 percent of the population, followed by Latinos at 32.3 percent and whites at 26.5 percent.
In other cities, there are clear majorities.
Latinos are the largest demographic group in East Palo Alto (63.2 percent), San Pablo (60.7 percent) and Hayward (40.4 percent).
Asians are on top in Milpitas and Cupertino, at over 66 percent of the population in both cities. In Fremont, the large Indian American and Afghan American communities helped boost the Asian population to 57.3 percent.
And the impacts of the demographics are being felt at the ballot box.
Suisun City, for example, has two African American women on its five-member council — a first for the city.
Hayward, which came in 10th on the diversity list, now has three council members of Latino descent, three white and, in the November election, voted in the nation’s first Afghan American woman, Aisha Wahab.
“I think it’s also important to note that the average age of Hayward residents is about 34 years old,” which helped in her election, Wahab said.
It’s true on the county level, as well.
“It’s amazing. Contra Costa County just elected an African American woman as district attorney,” said East Bay U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier. “We used to be known at the Orange County of the Bay Area — no more.”
But then, Orange County isn’t as white as it once was, either.