Demographics

Opportunities to enroll children in choice public schools outside their neighborhoods, a well-received program that began four years ago during a downturn in enrollment, have dwindled significantly because of surging demographics. The Los Angeles Unified School District announced last week that only 7,400 seats are available this fall in its open enrollment program, about two-thirds of last year's number and down from a high of nearly 22,000 when the program began in 1994.

Most Californians are optimistic about ethnic relations and agree that reducing crime and improving education and job prospects should be at the top of the state's agenda, according to a survey by a San Francisco-based think tank released Wednesday. Yet the survey by the Public Policy Institute showed marked disagreement among ethnic groups on such issues as affirmative action, immigration and racial profiling of suspects by police.

A new census study of America's Latinos dramatizes the pivotal role that people of Mexican ancestry are playing in reshaping the nation's demographic makeup. People of Mexican lineage, who two decades ago were largely confined to the Southwest, California and Chicago, are now settling around the country and gaining ground in numbers on such long-established groups as German Americans and Irish Americans, mostly the offspring of earlier waves of immigration. Mexicans accounted for 58.

When Ed Kelly moved his family from North Long Beach to a brand-new cul-de-sac off Edinger Avenue 29 years ago, he felt like a pioneer. His neighborhood was fast filling up with young, mostly white families, many of them seeking new lives away from the economic decline and social upheaval rocking urban Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Today, Kelly said, he feels increasingly like an outsider in the suburban community he helped settle.

June Foley and Gloria Garcia may both live in Orange County, but they have vastly different visions of where the place is headed. Where one sees murky and difficult times, the other envisions a future full of promise. Garcia, who moved here 10 years ago from Mexico City, is so pleased with her Garden Grove neighborhood that she and her husband are saving to buy their first house there. Foley, who moved south from Los Angeles 43 years ago and now lives in Orange, feels less secure.

When Hyundai Motor America learned that its Elantra and Accent models were striking a chord with nurses, the car company turned to Census Bureau data to shape advertising that would reach the largely female profession. Hyundai now is anxiously awaiting the release of detailed income, education and occupation data from the 2000 census, with an eye toward honing that specialized pitch.

There's no getting away from those supremely silly power lists that litter the entertainment media landscape these days, crammed with grim visages of the BORWGs--Boring Old Rich White Guys--who run the entertainment business.

Reported hate crimes in Los Angeles County rose 25% in 1996, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations reported Thursday, a dramatic figure that experts attribute to better reporting by law enforcement agencies and demographic shifts in several cities.

James Hammonds looked stoic as he surveyed Selma's Civil War battlefield, but he could not resist a sigh: The trenches' gray planks had buckled, leaving gaps in the city's defenses. Hammonds, who 19 years ago came up with the idea of reenacting Selma's place in Civil War history, now fears that his town is losing another battle. Almost 141 years after a ragtag Confederate army struggled to defend Selma against Union forces, historical reenactors have canceled this year's Battle of Selma.

In a crowded basement in a neighborhood that symbolizes the changing face of Los Angeles, about 120 people came together Saturday morning to hear a presentation on the present and future of the region's black population. Held at the Second Baptist Church, a block away from Central Avenue near the Santa Monica Freeway, the event centered on the presentation of a city-commissioned report titled "African Americans in Los Angeles: Prospects for the 21st Century."