California Journalist Defines ‘New California’

SAN LUIS OBISPO – What exactly is “The New California?” The new home of the “kosher burrito,” according to Peter Schrag, Sacramento Bee journalist and author of “The New California: America’s Future?”

Schrag examined some of California’s most serious challenges during a presentation at Cal Poly, using such outrageous examples to share his perceptions on immigration, education and electoral issues.

As the second speaker in the Provocative Perspective series, Schrag defined the “new California” as a “majority minority state with a great gap between what’s on the ground and what’s going on in institutions and government processes.”

There’s a huge disparity between California’s population and the people who vote, Schrag pointed out. “Forty-seven percent of California is Anglo. Seventy percent of the electorate is Anglo.”

Schrag, a lifelong journalist, has written about education and other public policy issues for more than 40 years. For 19 years, he was the editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee, for which he still writes a weekly column.

He is the author of “Final Test: The Battle for Adequacy in America's Schools,” “Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future,” and “California: America's High-Stakes Experiment.”

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