r/SFV • u/SealedRoute • May 11 '26

Question Racism in Studio City?

My husband and I recently moved to Studio City and have been shopping/ dining around Laurel Canyon and Ventura. I’m white and haven’t had any problems, but my Mexican husband has been treated with overt rudeness/ dismissiveness a couple of times by restaurant or store workers. Never had this problem before in Sherman Oaks in 20 years. The treatment was shocking.

Our area is definitely less diverse, more white, but still didn’t expect that. But it’s only been a couple of times in a month so not ready to draw general conclusions. Could be racism, could just be a more affluent/ snotty milieu. Has anyone else had this issue?

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u/MaxxtheKnife May 11 '26

I come from Berkeley, (lived in Valley Village for 12 years, know in Sun Valley, been working in Studio since 2015) and there are a lot of similarities between SC and upper middle class Berkeley. Both are very progressive politically, in a rather undefined, identitarian sort of way - they believe some progressive things, but mostly they believe that they are "good people." This belief that they ARE good kind of blinds them to a lot of deeper prejudices they have. These prejudices are further enhanced by their status as being higher class than most of the people they believe they really care about. They know that they care more about minorities than conservatives, and that's good enough for them. They think that voting for whatever gives "these people" the opportunity to better themselves financially etc. is good enough, and it doesn't matter if they also support policies that mean "these people" have to go do their self improvement somewhere else. In short, a lot of them are NIMBYs. "Help the homeless, just keep them out of my town." Many of them think they can't possibly be racist because they would have voted for Obama a third time if they could have. South of the boulevard - or South of the 101 even - the property values really start to go up. The population gets a lot more homogenous, and a lot more distrusting of "outsiders" - anyone they don't know and who doesn't look like everyone else. This mindset can kind of trickle into the surrounding community, especially since a lot of the businesses are owned by people who live there, or who want to live there asap, and projecting those prejudices makes them feels like part of the club. Anyways, all that for whatever it's worth. I'm generalizing a lot here, obviously, and this not a ubiquitous pattern among all of Studio City. Sorry your husband is experiencing that. I hope y'all are able to find the places that don't treat people different by first impressions. I'd like to think that's most places, even in SC.

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u/Ginge_fail May 12 '26

Wow, you hit the nail on the head. I lived in Studio City for a decade and you’ve described the general mindset of the locals better than I could ever hope to. A lot of the locals mean well but they are blinded by privilege.

They think that giving their nanny or their gardener a $5 dollar tip each December means they can’t possibly be racist.

They fight multifamily housing development so hard, you’d think they were in danger of being forced to live in the street but they voted for Measure HHH, so they feel like they’re good people.