I Moved From Rural California to LA: It Wasn’t the Culture Shock I Expected

photo credit: Adrian Mendoza

by Adrian Mendoza ‘25

In high school, my teacher once told me that I was too sensitive for the real world. To this, I told myself that I was a queer person growing up in one of the most conservative areas of California and intended to move to Los Angeles after graduation. Surely I was more than prepared for the world outside my Trump flag ridden, Evangelical upbringing. I thought the ostracization I felt in my hometown would be a thing of the past once I moved to this liberal city and I would experience culture shock in the best way as someone eager for a more diverse and accepting community. What I’ve learned after three years in LA, however, is that the difference between my rural hometown and my new urban place of residence is a thin veil.

I learned in high school that the best way to survive as someone in the margins is to find community. In such a conservative area you might expect finding this community would be difficult, but queer people are really good at finding each other, and I was surrounded by great people that allowed me to largely block out the queerphobia of my town. 

The difference between my friend group back home and the friend group I’ve found here at USC isn’t a difference of support but one of access to resources. In high school, GSA was a classroom full of freshmen trying to escape the harassment they faced for being visible. At USC, we have a well-funded LGBTQ+ student center, mental health professionals, and a massive annual drag show. I am grateful for these resources, but the attitude I’ve observed from many of my peers is that the resources are proof that our job is done and we have achieved equality.

USC is, in actuality, a highly policed, performative bubble that has enabled prolific racial, class, and gender-based violence and discrimination. Being in a liberal city and university has not prevented sexual violence from being allowed to continue in Greek life, it has not held professors accountable for using racial slurs, and it has not created a space that recognizes and respects its trans students. 

Fellow USC students shared experiences of professors reluctant to provide them with the accommodations they needed, being regularly misgendered in classes, being made to feel unsafe in spaces such as gendered restrooms on campus, and witnessing racially motivated harassment.

USC is predominately White and East Asian with a majority White tenured faculty and an overworked, mostly Latino non-academic staff that they use to boast about a “diverse staff and faculty.” The university is located in a city whose largest demographic group is Hispanic or Latino but has elected officials exposed for their racist remarks and over 46,000 people that are unhoused–most of whom are unsheltered. Neither USC nor LA are safe havens for marginalized people.

Admittedly, campus is one of the few places I feel entirely safe holding hands with my partner in public, but this isn’t true in the majority of the city. In fact, I feel safer walking at night as a visibly queer person in my conservative hometown than in LA despite my hometown having a higher violent crime rate. This may be unfounded or influenced by my familiarity with navigating the streets of my hometown, but I have observed a particular outspokenness in LA residents that make walking the streets more intimidating. In high school, I witnessed and experienced the use of queerphobic slurs by my peers; in college, they’re hurled by strangers on the street.

I firmly believe that at USC, students are given a space to form some of the most supportive and tightly knitted communities they’ll have in their lives, but these groups are formed to help each other overcome the shortcomings of the environment around them. I am overwhelmingly grateful to be in a city that I am learning to view as my home, but I have also learned to recognize that a city or an institution that claims to be progressive is not exempt from the work that still needs to be done. Just as I criticize my hometown out of the love that I have for it and desire to better it for the next generation, I hope to see LA grow into the city that it claims to be.

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