Stockton earned another No. 1 title, this time for being the “most diverse” large city in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Stockton, with a population of 310,496 as of 2017, is home to the Filipino, Mexican, black and white communities for over 100 years.
U.S. News & World Report’s data was collected by finding large cities (population of 300,000 or more) and calculating a diversity score.
“The diversity score represents the likelihood that, in a particular city, two individuals chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups,” according to report materials.
Raksmey Roeum-Castleman, adjunct professor of yoga at Delta, is of Cambodian-Chinese descent. She immigrated from a refugee camp in 1990 and has lived in Stockton for 20 years.
“I’ve been in Stockton ever since, so Stockton is my home,” she said.
She shared her thoughts on how differences can be overcome.
“There are many cultures here and one thing that I didn’t know, and this is part of that cultural humility, like we have to humble ourselves to know what we don’t know,” she said. “I would love to learn more would be middle eastern communities, because I think we really miss that,” she said. “You know we learn about Asians and Southeast Asians, Pacific Islanders, and African Americans, and Latinos and Latinas. But we don’t really touch much about the Middle Eastern [population] and what brought them here, and the current struggles that they have. And culture goes deeper than just our skin color, and just the food that we eat and what we wear. We have to dive much, much deeper to understand what brought us here, and what are some of the challenges that impact our community now. All of the various communities now.”
Dr. Steve Graham, an Irish-American professor of communication studies, has lived here for five years, but has been teaching at Delta since 1990.
“I think often times because we live here we don’t realize the impact of diversity, and how great it is on us. Like everyday I go to the classroom, we’re getting different viewpoints, different cultures, different perspectives, and it adds so much to all the other students in the classroom,” he said.
A relatively recent arrival to Stockton, Artavious Russell moved here from Memphis two years ago. Russell is onDelta’s football team. He is African American.
“I’m not from here. It’s very different, first the diversity, you see more diverse people together, more than anything. And how people react to each other. The area’s just different, how people react. I really didn’t know that there were so many different types of Asians, Hispanics and also Cambodians. I didn’t know about all of that when I was in Memphis. … Honestly, coming to California made me a better man. For me, coming to Stockton made me see things differently.”