“Why is Marin County So White?”
“look back at Marin County’s history and you’ll find that it wasn’t always that way. In fact, its demographic history is not too far off from the rest of the Bay Area’s…
Between 1834–1846, significant portions of Marin were owned by people of Spanish and Mexican descent.
Finally, there was a huge influx of African-Americans who came to work in the shipyards during World War II, though it wasn’t enough to change the demographics significantly.
So what explains the county’s demographics as they look today?…
The county’s demographics looked a lot like Westchester County in New York, which became the site of a famous fair housing lawsuit related to patterns of residential segregation. Officials suspected the same thing might be happening in Marin County…
“What we saw by and large was that the effective opposition to affordable housing had a corollary effect of creating impediments to housing choice to people in protected classes,” said Sparks. “[That includes] people of color, people with children, people with disabilities.””
Related: Some other intensely white spaces — the whiteness of national parks, Oregon in general…
