Adams did literally say that, BUT, In this manner:
“IF the Rasmussen poll is true . . . Bla bla bla . . . THEN White people should get the hell away from Black people.”
Speaking in general terms, it seems like this is what has been happening for a long time, and vice versa. Since I have moved to this valley nearly 50 years ago, I have seen greater integration between the white people and the Middle Eastern people and the Asian people and the Hispanic people and Native American people.
Just the opposite has been true between the Black people and the white people. (Please take note that my racist iPhone immediately capitalized all of those “identities” except white.)
The blacks in Fresno county Are still concentrated west of the tracks in old Fresno. The ones that get enough money to move out of that area are leaving, and most, I suspect, are leaving California completely.
So the population here is growing rapidly except for the blacks. By far, they are the slowest expanding and least participating part of the local culture.
I worked for years with a black pastor from West Fresno, who had a day job as an engineer. His wife also worked there and I cannot recall any other Black people in the office. We had a couple black engineers when I worked at Vendo Corp. There were a handful in the shop. I worked for Kellner, Decker, Manlift, Thomason Co, Kawneer Co, Vendo, Contractor’s Service Corp, and Advanced Structural Design. 8 jobs in 48 years.
By and large the participation rate always just seemed sadly low. I’d literally go out in a shop that had 100 production workers asking for Charlie and the foreman would say, “oh yeah he’s the black guy.” Because there was like one black guy in the whole shop.
Overall, the industrial production in this county has gone from modest to very low. Everyone of those companies I’ve mentioned has left or gone out of business over the years except for Advanced Structural Design, which is still doing well, Kawneer, which has downsized to almost nothing here.
Vendo which moved out of the area after enormous EPA clean up activities and a huge downsizing.
You guys don’t know that half of the Coke machines in the world used to come from Vendo in Pinedale California, which is a little neighborhood north of Fresno that was once the housing for production workers during WW2. During the war they made plexiglass bubble turrets and did electroplating for military parts.
The old opportunities just aren’t there anymore.