Those of us who grew up in the Southwest automatically assume "white people" and "everybody else." I saw more black people in Albuquerque than I did in Austin and I see more black people in Chinatown LA than I did in Albuquerque. Native Americans? Check. Hispanics? Double check. What truly confounds the issue for Easterners is the fact that the Mexicans were there 150-200 years before the white folx (Santa Fe was founded in 1610 - that's ten years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock) and the fact that the Hispanics and the Indians actually hate each other more than they hate the white folx. I find Austin to be squarely in Texas. I hate Texas. But then, I was born in New Mexico. "Must hate Texas" a prerequisite for getting a driver's license. Add to that the fact that any time we wanted to do anything vaguely fun, we had to drive to Texas... because our other choices were Colorado or Arizona. Which meant twelve hours across hot, racist, cattle-filled nothing in order to get to a Sbarro.When people hear/read the word segregation they tend to automatically think "black" in the US based on our history.
I guess that is a sign of being from the east coast if you notice fellow honkies completely ignoring the Spanish-speaking population that was there first. It screams at me when I leave my apartment. I didn't expect to see a conquered people when I move to Los Angeles. I learned about the Mexican American War in school, but it was a far-off thing for an upstate New Yorker. It's not until you're sitting at the light when you're heading down Fairfax that Pico Blvd would have been 13th Street -- the unlucky general of a vanquished people gets his name on the main drag for orthodox Jews and repair garages. The billboards are in Spanish. The taco trucks have permanent encampments all over town. The city was ranch land until someone started making silent movies in the land of eternal sunshine.