It Happens Here

Repeatedly, UC Davis community members affirmed that, yes, discrimination happens here, in our community in Davis. Contrary to the idyllic image of the university town as a liberal haven of tree-hugging bicycle-commuters, the city of Davis – like the rest of this country – has an unsettling history in relation to race. One administrator recalled that during the 1950s Davis was an “exclusive community,” home to white residents only. Also, during the United Farm Workers’ grape strike in the 1960s, Cesar Chavez visited every UC campus except Davis, for fear of his life. For these and other reasons, Davis is known as “the Mississippi of the West,” according to one faculty member I talked to.

In 1983, the murder of a Vietnamese American student, Thong Hy Huynh, at Davis High School, brought “unwanted attention” to the city, in the words of one professor. In response, the city established the Human Relations Commission to promote “mutual respect, understanding, and tolerance between all persons.” Twenty years later, a series of racially-motivated incidents at the high school sparked a number of community members to action, resulting in the youth-led creation of a multiracial history class at Davis High. A faculty member and Davis resident explained that this project “was an investment [we] put in to change the wallpaper, to change the landscape of conversations kids are having, to equip them so that they can police themselves.” These efforts are documented in the film From the Community to the Classroom, which is freely available online. Many Davis residents responded to these incidents of discrimination and bias with denial, unwilling or unable to understand that the experience of living in Davis is shaped by one’s racial/ethnic appearance and racial/ethnic identity.

Few UC Davis students are aware of Huynh’s murder, which one professor attributes to a lack of institutional memory about race on campus. Another gap in that memory concerns the 1975 discovery that Alpha Gamma Rho (AGR) fraternity members included in their initiation rituals a song called “Lupe,” which contains racist and sexist lyrics targeting Mexican women [1]. The fraternity, which is the oldest Greek society on campus and one with alumni among the UC Davis elite, apologized for the song, but faced few repercussions. In 1992 conflict again sparked between AGR and the Chican@/Latin@ community: this time at both UCLA where a copy of “Lupe” had resurfaced and UC Davis where the university named a room in its new alumni and visitor’s center after the fraternity following a sizeable donation from fraternity alumni. In 2006, the campus newspaper The Aggie reported, “Many members of the Latino community pledged never to step into the AGR Room. … [They] feel the room represents deep-seated injustices that make holding events there intolerable” [2]. Although the university now provides an annual scholarship for farmworkers’ children who are involved in social justice activities, the conflict between the fraternity and the Chican@/Latin@ community on campus is not resolved. Most people on campus likely are unaware of this history concerning AGR. In my conversations with UC Davis community members, I did not ask about the AGR controversy and it only came up once when an administrator mentioned the lingering tension. Finding evidence of this history either online or on campus is challenging, and reflects the lack of institutional memory about race.

My sources frequently mentioned the occurrence of racial profiling by Davis and UC Davis police officers. A professor reported being told by a student that when students do ride-alongs with Davis police, they are informed matter-of-factly by the officers that police routinely question individuals who are suspected of not belonging in the community. The professor told me, “They call that ‘making contact.’ See, I call that racial screening in an unobtrusive way… I find that chilling. Because that’s the kind of racial screening that has kept people out of neighborhoods… So yeah, that’s life in Davis.” Research published in UC Davis’s undergraduate research journal confirms that students of color are more likely than white students to “perceive racial disparities in police practices.” In 2005 a group of “concerned campus affiliates” released a report alleging racial profiling by city and campus police. In response, the UC Davis Police Department committed to establishing a Citizens Academy, reviewing internal procedures for handling complaints, and providing additional diversity training. The 2006 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, which included questions about UC Davis students’ interactions with police, found little difference by race in experiences on campus, but off campus African American students reported higher than average police-initiated interactions.

For students who are undocumented – commonly known as AB 540 students, after the California law that allows certain undocumented individuals to pay in-state fees at state universities – simply being questioned by the police can result in deportation. One professor explained that AB 540 students have established an informal network to protect each other from police searches: when police set up drunk-driving checkpoints, for example, students will text each other so they know to avoid the area – not because they are drunk, but because they “are just deathly afraid of getting pulled over by the police.” Such concerns are not even on the radar of most citizens, yet these are daily worries for a number of UC Davis students.

As in any college town, the relationship between UC Davis and the city of Davis is not always harmonious. One staff member described the university as both a “fortified city” and an “island” within the city of Davis. Tensions between long-term residents of Davis and the transient student population occasionally flare. While property values price many staff members out of Davis, the university grants special housing loans to faculty members to encourage their local residence. Many members of the university community prefer to live elsewhere and commute to campus. One African American woman that I spoke with shared that she chose to live in Sacramento because of Davis’s reputation around race.

Figures from the 2000 census indicate that whites and Asians are over-represented among Davis residents, while Blacks and Latin@s are under-represented, compared to California as a whole. Among undergraduates at UC Davis, the same pattern holds. However, the university brings greater racial diversity to the town as UC Davis undergraduates are more likely than Davis residents to be Asian, Latin@, or Black. The median household income of Davis residents mirrors the state median, but Davis residents are much more likely than Californians in general to have graduated high school or college.

[1] Deena J. González, 2002, “‘Lupe’s Song’: on the origins of Mexican-woman-hating in the United States,” Pp. 251-264 in Velvet Barrios: popular culture and Chicana/o sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
[2] Dyanna Quizon, 2006, “The Legacy of ‘Lupe,’” The Aggie, January 25.