In Democrat-leaning California, this is not insignificant. Orange County is one of the reddest counties in Southern California, and a traditional bastion of GOP conservatism. The Orange County Republican Party can still muster tens of thousands of votes for local, state, congressional and presidential candidates. Republican presidential candidates have beat a steady path to the county for decades to secure votes and money.

This tells a big part of the story of the chronic segregation, but it’s only part of the story. The painful truth three years after the election of America’s first Black president is that there are far too many policy makers, political leaders, and many Whites that still think that segregation is too much a long-standing, even immutable, way of life in America to ever change.