On Edge: Blacks and Mexicans in Los Angeles

...Allard had never before run for office, and her decision to contest an open Assembly seat caught local politicos by surprise...

...Yet a Los Angeles Times analysis revealed that turnout for Bradley among Los Angeles blacks in 1986 was substantially lower than in 1982...

...They also complain that only 14 percent of Compton school employees are Hispanic...

...Then, too, the 1990 reapportionment will force the strains between blacks and Mexicans into the open...

...Hispanics protest that despite their numbers they have no representatives on the five-member council, and only one on the seven-member school board...

...It may be difficult to disentangle the idea of black self-reliance from certain impulses toward anti-Semitism...

...The emergent slow-growth movement scored a Peter Skerry is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...

...For example, City Councillor Gloria Molina has close ties to Watts Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, going back to Molina's days as a Sacramento aide and then an assemblywoman from East Los Angeles...

...Compton is frequently cited by Angelenos as an example of the combustible nature of black-Hispanic relations...

...Says a widely respected Watts community leader about the prospects of Bradley losing the mayor's office to Yaroslaysky: "I can organize more people and get them more riled up to go downtown and demonstrate against Zev than I can Tom...

...But with her father's help, she raised $108,000—five times more than her closest competitor—and captured 62percent of the mere 8800 votes cast...

...Black discontent, however, is not focused on the Mayor alone...

...For a great deal of what we're seeing among blacks and Mexican-Americans here is simply a response to a political system hostile to the organization of low-income voters...

...Despite such rumblings, I was somewhat taken aback when a black labor leader confided to me, "You know, the best black politician in Los Angeles is Kenny Hahn...

...After ten years on the City Council, and nearly fifteen as mayor, the seventy-year-old Bradley shows no signs of retiring...

...Much of Compton's predicament is evident as one drives down narrow rutted streets of shabby bungalows adorned with security grates and laundry spread to dry on bushes...

...With a murder rate twice that of the City of Los Angeles, Compton's Hispanic merchants, many of whom speak little English, have banded together to hire security guards for protection...

...He chose instead to go with an old friend from the police department, who then lost to another veteran black politico...

...He went on to strike a defensive tone, urging his listeners "not to believe everything you read in the papers...

...Such critics acknowledge that with a black constituency totalling about 17 percent of the population, Bradley has faced constraints quite unlike black mayors in Atlanta, Detroit, or even Chicago...

...Murray's introduction made clear, Bradley was there seeking support for a fifth term at City Hall, though election day was a year and a half away...

...Yet as the Rev...

...The county courthouse in downtown Compton has more security—metal detectors, guards, plexiglass shields—than your average airport...

...Much more disturbing rhetoric was heard in Los Angeles late last summer when black leaders demanded the dismissal of a municipal court magistrate who, in the course of proceedings against a white accused of a racially motivated attack on a black, had innocently repeated someone else's use of the word "nigger" in court...

...18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988...

...In part a response to the stringencies of the Reagan years, this theme seems to have particular resilience in Los Angeles, where it clearly strikes a chord with politically ambitious young blacks eager to assert themselves against their elders...

...Some have argued that minority groups would be prudent to eschew politics in favor of social and economic advancement...

...Though the Supervisor's ceaseless efforts on behalf of constituents are occasionally dismissed as "paternalistic," whites and blacks are in awe of the man...

...Another source of disquiet for black Angelenos is the competition from huge numbers of immigrants...

...And when pressed, black leaders also admit that Hahn is so effective in part because as a white he is subject to much greater scrutiny —and held to greater accountability—than his black colleagues...

...Last spring the respected five-term school board member and current board president Rita Walters, a black originally elected as a pro-busing candidate, was challenged—unsuccessfully—by the youthful head of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who styles himself a "progressive...

...City Councillor Farrell...

...Much of the discontent comes from young blacks resentful that the older, established politicos haven't done more 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 to develop new talent...

...And in 1986 Bradley's second attempt to become the nation's first elected black governor was a humiliating failure, with incumbent George Deukmejian capturing 61 percent of the vote...

...For all these reasons, many blacks in Los Angeles are questioning whether their political gains have been more apparent than real...

...Nevertheless, in the same election last spring won by the slow-growth candidate, Bradley's hand-picked black candidate for a seat on the City Council was defeated by another black...

...With the choir behind him, and the entire congregation clapping and swaying to the music, the six-foot-four Bradley didn't budge...

...More to the point, perhaps, Jews have never focused on Mexicans as a disadvantaged group worthy of their attention...

...Much of the discontent comes from young blacks resentful that the older, established politicos haven't done more to develop new talent...

...As a young black attorney on her way up told me, "Blacks have learned the hard way about parasitic relationships with whites—er, Jews...

...For it is easy to overlook that even the most successful assimilation engenders pain and confusion which make fertile ground for the faddish political movements that characterize California's political history—and indeed that increasingly characterize American politics generally...

...Impatient, many ambitious young blacks have pursued opportunities in business and the professions, leaving the ranks of the next generation of black political leaders rather thin...

...Low registration levels among upwardly mobile Mexican-Americans in the working-and lower-middle-class suburbs east of Los Angeles suggest that this group is too busy trying to make it economically to bother with politics...

...Yet the more widespread and profound threat comes from Hispanics, especially Mexicans who, though slowed by the Simpson-Rodino immigration bill, continue to arrive in large numbers...

...The legacy of those reforms is California's issue-obsessed politics, fueled by expensive media and direct mail campaigns...

...For among all sectors of the black community, there is open disaffection with Bradley...

...But it is also striking that no umbrella organization capable of defining a common black agenda was put together in the city until 1979...

...T he problem, as we know, is that 1 such spokesmen and officials frequently do not accurately represent their constituents' views...

...In Los Angeles, as elsewhere, the issues become emotional ones, such as South Africa—though as an activist preacher admitted to me, "South Africa is an important issue, but what does it do for my neighborhood...

...Yet to a remarkable degree,black and Mexican-American elected officials work together harmoniously...

...big coup last spring by defeating the City Council president, long closely identified with the Mayor...

...Moving on this and on the environmental front, Zev Yaroslaysky, an aggressive young city councillor representing a heavily Jewish Westside district, has been challenging his former ally and will almost certainly run against him in 1989...

...To be sure, tensions can be discovered just beneath the surface in greater Los Angeles...

...Even the second tier of younger black elected officials in Los Angeles—individuals like Watts Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, an early and ardent supporter of Jesse Jackson...

...Perhaps this is because the small municipality's highly personal, corrupt politics aggravates the social and economic strains contained by the impersonal, professional politics dominating the wider metropolitan area...

...As for Mexican-Americans, those eager to identify them as the latest immigrant group about to assimilate into the American mainstream should be cautious...

...Much black rhetoric these days concerns self-reliance...

...One source of trouble might be the black and Hispanic gangs, whose notorious violence has thus far—miraculouslynot crossed racial or ethnic boundaries...

...In part this is because the two ministers' associations that long played an important role in the community have fallen into disarray...

...It seemed to me, the only white among these middle-class blacks, that the Mayor and I felt about equally out of place...

...The daughter of veteran Mexican-American Congressman Ed Roybal, the fortyfive-year-old Mrs...

...and School Board President Walters—are in their fifties and have served in their present offices for nearly a decade or more...

...Thus Bradley has been criticized for not supporting a new face for that opening on the City Council last spring...

...And as these newcomers displace the residents ofonce all-black neighborhoods, conflicts of culture and interest are much in evidence.' uch strains have already emerged in 0 Compton, a small city of 93,000 inhabitants just south of Watts...

...In many respects relations between blacks and Asians, especially Koreans, whose entrepreneurial efforts in black neighborhoods are daily sources of humiliation, are more difficult than those between blacks and Hispanics...

...So after fifteen years of staunch support for one of the nation's most prominent black politicians, Jews in Los Angeles now seem to feel that it's their turn to run City Hall...

...After fifteen years of a black mayor perceived as heavily indebted to whites, blacks in Los Angeles now sense they have been deceiving themselves...

...Conservatives often need to be reminded that man—including black and brown man—is a political animal, and that politics cannot be defined as a luxury reserved for the affluent...

...Yet problems closer to home brought the Mayor to the black churches that Sunday...

...A master politician of the LBJ, come-let-us-reason-together school, Hahn is regarded as the one man who can get the various leaders of the black community to sit down together at a prayer breakfast and resolve their differences...

...Many other black leaders to whom I spoke agreed, however reluctantly, with this assessment of the sixty-eight-year-old white politician who has represented South-Central and Watts on the powerful Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors since 1952...

...He's been so busy being Mayor of all the people that he's forgotten his own," says a young NAACP official...

...The Mayor left immediately after his talk to visit nine other congregations that morning...

...This is particularly true in today's post-affirmative action environment, in which an aggressive press and a political culture that have come to accept notions of group rights look for, and, if necessary, create minority-group spokesmen and elected officials...

...Once a blue-collar white suburb, Compton turned black and is now experiencing a massive influx from Mexico...

...But self-reliance is also the lesson blacks in Los Angeles derive from recurrent disputes with Jews over Farrakhan...

...And this fall City Councillor Robert Farrell, who has represented his South-Central district since 1974, had to beat back an unusual recall challenge...

...Meanwhile, black homeowners resent the over-crowding and language problems presented by people they regard as johnnies-come-lately...

...To illustrate the point, take the election last May of Lucille Roybal Allard to the State Assembly from an East Los Angeles district carved out as a Mexican-American seat by California Democrats in the 1980 reapportionment...

...Bradley is in trouble...

...Historically, blacks have been especially susceptible in this regard...

...But as yet the level of tension 'Of course, research at the Urban Institute has been widely reported as minimizing the labor market competition between Mexicans and blacks in Los Angeles...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988 17 This should be no surprise, for the Progressive reformers who shaped California's modern political institutions on the eve of World War I sought to prevent the formation of ethnic, working-class machines then evident in cities of the East and Midwest...

...These tensions have spilled into the political arena, leading to squabbles over whether Catholic priests or Protestant ministers should offer the invocation at city council meetings...

...Unfortunately, the resulting political vacuum does not go unfilled, especially among blacks, whose leaders seem irretrievably committed to a political solution to the group's problems...

...With unintentional irony, he declared, "This place rocks, and if you don't feel it, then you'd better have yourself checked out...

...Certainly to an outside observer there is a lack of organizational life among blacks in L.A...

...Throughout that twenty-five-year period, Gilbert Lindsay, at eighty-six the dean of black politicians in Los Angeles, has served on the City Council, and eighty-yearold Augustus Hawkins has represented his Watts district in Congress...

...And the freedom from accountability that up to now has permitted them to finesse or ignore such tensions would translate into irrelevance...

...This is especially true of the Mexican-American politicians: registration figures assembled by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project indicate that only about a third of eligible Hispanics in Los Angeles County are registered to vote...

...As he stood next to the Rev...

...In 1986, enrollment in the public schools was about 60 percent black and 40 percent Hispanic—a six percent Hispanic increase, and a corresponding black decrease, over the previous year...

...Church in South-Central Los Angeles just as the eight a.m...

...Such political dynamics give one pause about the future of Los Angeles...

...City Councillor Richard Alatorre also served in the Assembly, where he was part of black Speaker Willie Brown's leadership team and handled, among other delicate assignments, the 1980 redistricting...

...So far (outside Compton, at least) black gangs have been killing blacks, and Hispanic gangs Hispanics...

...A television producer said a mouthful at lunch one day when she told me, "Hispanics are just not hip...

...What are we to make of this political passivity...

...Under such scenarios today's black and Mexican-American politicians, lacking strong bases in their communities, would be poorly situated to influence events...

...But in Los Angeles, such a view seems unreasonably optimistic...

...Meanwhile, several black elected officials in Compton, including the mayor, are accused in the Los Angeles Times of blatant nepotism and shady dealings with developers...

...He had little to say about the two issues everyone else in Los Angeles has been addressing—drug abuse and gang violence...

...They are also explained by the lack of constraints imposed on these elected officials by their largely unorganized, passive constituents...

...there remains atypical of the relative calm that pervades Los Angeles generally...

...There is a feeling, then, of suddenly waking up and wondering what's been going on since the 1965 Watts riots brought so much attention to their community...

...Battles between black and Hispanic youths, say local clergy, are routine...

...My suspicions were confirmed when Bradley spoke...

...His problems with former liberal allies over his support for coastal oil drilling and other pro-development positions have become increasingly obvious...

...And without the party organizations unsophisticated voters need to guide them, such individuals are confused and alienated, rather than mobilized, by issue politics...

...The political vacuum in Los Angeles might also be filled with rhetoric and charismatic leadership...

...They may have mailboxes and own televisions, but they lack the enormous resources necessary to organize for political ends...

...The possibility of spontaneous conflicts between blacks and Mexican-Americans cannot be dismissed...

...Yet such findings do not argue there is no competition whatsoever...

...But after a decade of heavy Hispanic immigration, black losses will be difficult to avoid...

...O n a recent Sunday morning, Mayor Tom Bradley arrived at the First A.M.E...

...But such ties cannot be attributed simply to the accidents of personal history...

...As a Mexican-American political operative commented about this article: "So you're going to blow the lid on our coalition before it even gets off the ground...

...He cited his efforts in behalf of the homeless and explained his role in the redevelopment of the black Crenshaw district, much criticized as primarily benefiting white developers...

...In 1980 these were contained by the Democratic leadership, and blacks lost no seats...

...Overlapping with this challenge has been Jewish disaffection with what is regarded as Bradley's lack of zeal in denouncing Louis Farrakhan, who continues to hold well-attended rallies in Los Angeles...

...Left unanswered therefore is the political question: how much competition is too much...

...today...

...Mexican-American leaders are continually frustrated by the attention blacks get as "the minority" in Los Angeles, while admitting that their people have always taken pains to differentiate themselves from blacks...

...Chip Murray, waiting for the organ, drums, and electric guitar to finish a rousing gospel number, the Mayor's discomfort was evident...

...He was followed at the podium by a woman soliciting contributions to the United Negro College Fund and a young man selling burial insurance...

...F or their part, blacks of course resent that Mexicans can "pass...

...Bradley's earlier razor-thin loss to Deukmejian in 1982 could be traced to a modest black turnout...

...service was beginning...

...In a political system whose few points of entry are highly visible offices requiring enormous campaign funding, the age and prolonged tenure of the black political establishment in Los Angeles is an irritant to young aspirants...

...Deprived of patronage and strong political parties, poor blacks and Mexicans in Los Angeles are at a double disadvantage...

...or, as one black preacher put it, "they can walk the Anglo walk and talk the Anglo talk...