Camarillo

The 1990s brought a more diverse population to Ventura County. Due largely to an influx of Latinos in every local city, and a boom in upscale housing in the east county, the number of Ventura County residents rose to 753,000--up 84,000 in 10 years. The people pictured below represent the region’s increasing diversity.

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It was family that brought Jerome and Tisa O’Neal and their three boys here in 1993. There is no longer such a tie. But the O’Neals would never leave.

“Man, besides the price of houses, it’s great,� said Jerome, 34, a carpenter.

“People tease us and say we live in Pleasantville,� said Tisa, 32, a nurse. “And we belong to an incredible multiracial church.�

The congregation meets at the Boys & Girls Club in Camarillo, and the couple said there is no other one like it in the county.

Nor can you find many local families such as the O’Neals. They reflect the county’s increasing racial diversity.

But as a mixed race couple--he is a black from Illinois and and she is a white from Oregon--they are still residents of a city that is predominantly white and a county that is racially segregated.

“But race has never been a problem for us, even when we lived in Oregon and Utah,� Jerome said.