As a Punjabi-American girl, she changed schools, then saw Fresno’s race and class divide

One area of Fresno is home to some of the most vulnerable populations in California. With a huge population of Black, Latinx, Punjabi, and Hmong people, Fresno seems like a diverse city. However, the segregation in “California’s Poorest Large City” runs deep.

Growing up as a first-generation Punjabi-American in West Fresno, I always only saw diversity until one day my parents made me switch schools using my cousin’s address to go to an elementary school on the east of Highway 99. I noticed that the other side of town was always cleaner, had more white people, richer folks, and bigger houses. But what could a 10-year-old say to the divide she was noticing?

As residents of Fresno and the neighboring towns of Fresno, especially Clovis, we ought to grapple with the implications of racism in our backyards because they are evident by examining the disproportionality in schools, jobs, housing, and environmental conditions among low-income and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. We continue to see these divisions and our lack of attention to the racial issues, making problems worse.

Oftentimes the goal of Fresnans and residents of Clovis is to move north of Shaw Avenue, either to the houses by the golf course or to the houses near Shepherd. The thought that goes through these residents’ heads is that they need to escape the musty neighborhoods and areas of West Fresno and south Clovis. My parents were two of those residents. As immigrants in this nation, in order to fulfill the falsified “American Dream,” they have to resemble the white lives in this nation. The truth is that the city is preventing areas like West Fresno and south Clovis, generally south of Shaw Avenue, to resemble the white neighborhoods.

In 2018 The Atlantic, along with UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, came out with a seven-part series uncovering the “ugly divide” of Fresno. I read the first part of the series in my Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy class at UC Berkeley, where it was the first time my own realizations about the separations in my hometown were validated.

Shaw Avenue is the Mason-Dixon Line of Fresno and Clovis. The Mason-Dixon Line was what separated Maryland and Pennsylvania to show the social and political separation of the free states and slave-owning states. North of Shaw Avenue there are primarily white and higher-income families, bigger houses, cleaner areas, newer infrastructure, and well-funded schools. South of Shaw, where I have lived most of my life, there are families of color, low-income families, smaller houses, factories emitting pollution, and schools that are not given as much attention and funding as the others.

According to The Atlantic, redlining was in full effect after the New Deal was put in place where maps were outlined as to where white families’ loans would be accepted in the green shaded areas and poorer families, which were primarily Black and brown families, would be denied mortgages and were made sure to stay in the red shaded areas. Although redlining has been outlawed, we can still see the effects of it today.

The integration of racism in this city is hidden by the diversity of this town in numbers. When people think of Fresno, they think of farms and people of color, but little do they know how much the people of color in this town suffer because resources are given out disproportionately. There is segregation in this city today and the city shouldn’t be working on policies to deepen this divide, they should be working on policies that integrate this town and give BIPOC in Fresno a new meaning of life.

Work has been done through many grassroots organizations like the Fresno Building Healthy Communities, Leadership Counsel, and many more organizations and organizers to make Fresno and Clovis a place where everyone in every part can thrive, not just specific races and specific areas.

Those in power and those who have access to capital should redeploy assets to the parts of their communities that go unnoticed. Fresnans should invest back into the communities that they rely on the most — the ones who pick our crops, small business workers, and the children of West Fresno, who tend to be inflicted by gangs and police. Being home to the most productive farmland in the nation, it’s time this land becomes productive for each of its residents.