When California Was The Epicenter Of The Culture War

Demographic change made it an undisputed liberal bastion

In the 1990s, there was no place where the culture war was more intense than in California. Crime, race riots, the O.J. Simpson trial, illegal immigration, and affirmative action roiled the Golden State. Nowhere was politics more aggressive than in California. The battle lines pitted the Old America against the New.

This may surprise younger people who only imagine California as an uncontested, left-wing fortress. Any fight there just seems hopeless. But it wasn’t always like that. White backlash was a powerful force in California within our lifetimes. It only died out thanks to demographic change.

The ‘90s were a tumultuous decade. While conservatives now look upon the Bill Clinton era as the new 1950s, America was no Mayberry. California illustrated this fact. Crime was horrible, especially in the early part of the decade. There were over a thousand murders in Los Angeles in 1992. By comparison, there were just 327 homicides in the City of Angels in 2023. Gangs ruled entire neighborhoods and their exploits were celebrated in the burgeoning “gangsta rap” genre. Smog covered much of Southern California. Illegal immigrants were pouring in by the tens of thousands. Entire communities were being transformed overnight by legal and illegal immigrants. Race relations were at a boiling point and spilled over into real-world violence. There was also plenty of cultural degeneracy for Californians to experience in media and in real life. Gritty films such as Falling Down captured the state’s tumultuous mood.

California’s culture war was shaped by its rapidly changing demographics. By the end of the decade, whites were no longer a majority and Republicans no longer competed for it in presidential elections. The white share of the population dropped by 30 points in just 30 years (76.3% in 1970 to 46.7% in 2000). With the exception of 1964, Republican presidential candidates won the state in every contest from 1952 to 1988. But the decline in white population made it one of the bluest states in the country. It also largely ended the state’s culture war. The Left decisively won thanks to demographic change.

The racial context of the culture war was abundantly clear. Take the Rodney King beating and the subsequent LA riots. King was an intoxicated black motorist who led police on a dangerous car chase in the early morning hours of March 3, 1991. After succeeding in getting him stopped and out of the car, King refused to comply with police orders. Officers used their batons to subdue him. Footage of the beating became international news and four white officers were charged over it. The four cops were found not guilty in 1992 by a mostly white jury. The verdict set off one of the deadliest race riots in American history. The carnage cost 63 lives and a billion dollars worth in property damage. Blacks set off to attack and destroy anything that was not black. Korean-owned stores were targeted for destruction and any white person or Hispanic they got ahold of experienced a vicious beating. The riots were only quelled after federal troops intervened.

The riots shaped the next racial battle. Former football star O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his white ex-wife and one of her friends in 1994. The mix of celebrity and racial strife made it the trial of the century. Despite the overwhelming evidence that O.J. did the murders, the majority of blacks were convinced he was innocent. It was the opposite story for whites who strongly believed he was guilty. A majority-black jury delivered a not guilty verdict as payback for Rodney King. The nation reacted to the decision along stark racial lines. Blacks celebrated it as if they had won the Super Bowl. Whites were stunned and could only shake their heads at the news.

But whites weren’t mere spectators to these happenings. They were pushing to save their state from racial chaos. The state passed three measures that sought to make it a better place for white Americans to live. But they all proved too little, too late. In 1994, the state overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 187. The measure called for a crackdown on illegal immigrants and, if properly implemented, would make California inhospitable to such lawbreakers. The law would’ve barred public services (such as schools and hospitals) to illegals and mandated more citizenship screening. Nearly 60 percent of Californians voted for it and Governor Pete Wilson won another term off supporting it. But it was never to be enforced. A federal court dismissed the will of the people and struck it down. The illegals kept on pouring in.

The other efforts were more successful. In the same year as the OJ murders and Prop 187, nearly 72 percent of Californians voted in favor of Proposition 184. This measure established the famous “three strikes law” that aimed to keep habitual criminals locked up. This law remained unchanged for nearly 20 years and crime went down after its enactment.

In 1996, a majority of Californians voted to eliminate affirmative action in university admissions, government hiring, and public contracting. This made California relatively meritocratic compared to the rest of the country, at least in these areas. Shockingly, this ban was upheld in 2020 when voters rejected a ballot initiative to overturn it.

White Californians voted for these proposals. But without whites as a majority, all these victories were insufficient to reserve the state’s trajectory. California is no longer a battlefield in the culture war–it’s completely in the Left’s hands. High crime, lower quality of life, and other ills just encourage the sensible to leave. The elements that shaped the cultural turmoil in the ‘90s are now very different. The “white supremacist” LAPD is now nearly 50 percent Hispanic. Simi Valley, the white enclave that acquitted the Rodney King officers, is barely majority white now. Many of the black neighborhoods that rioted in ‘92 are now majority Hispanic.

There are important lessons to learn from this. California stands as a stark rebuttal to those who think things getting worse will make whites wake up. There is no real opposition to the state’s dystopian drift. Most of the sensible whites left the state. White flight is usually the response when ordinary people have no realistic alternatives. Middle-class whites aren’t going to become suburban guerrillas if the state government turns into one-party rule.

For there to be serious challenges to progressive rule, a white majority must be a fact. Many conservatives think we can still be the same country in a browner America. California disproves that. The only way conservatism can survive in America is if whiteness remains at its core.

The culture war was lost in California, but it need not be the same for America. The right lessons must be learned so the entire nation doesn’t suffer the same fate.