HispanicTrending

Population shifts are threatening to upset political understandings that have kept the lid on racial tension.

June 24, 2007
By Harold Meyerson

IS AN INFORMAL COMPACT that has helped keep racial tensions from boiling over in Los Angeles about to end? Are Latinos on the verge of displacing the region’s black elected officials?

On Tuesday, voters in the Southern part of Los Angeles County will decide a special election that may mark an end to the delicate balance of power between L.A.’s black and Latino political elites. In the race to succeed Juanita Millender-McDonald, an African American member of Congress who died of cancer in April, the leading candidates are state Sen. Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach), a Latina, and Assemblywoman Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach), an African American. (Millender-McDonald’s daughter, Valerie McDonald, is also running.) Because Oropeza and Richardson essentially hold the same positions on major issues, their matchup is significant chiefly for its racial implications.

The contest in the 37th Congressional District, which includes most of Long Beach, Carson and Compton, could be an exception to an unwritten political rule in Los Angeles: Growing Latino political clout doesn’t come at the expense of black political power.

In a city like L.A., one would expect the city’s black and Latino political communities to have clashed more frequently than they have. Liberalism may be their common ideology, but the economic interests of the black and Latino working classes have at times come into conflict as the Latino presence in the city grew. For example, Latinos have largely taken the janitorial and hotel jobs that blacks held 25 years ago. In the poorest quadrants of the city, violence between black and Latino gangs rages.

And yet L.A.’s black and Latino political elites have tended to avoid conflict more often than not. In the 2005 mayoral election, for example, both groups largely supported the candidacy of Antonio Villaraigosa. Multiracial coalitions have been, if not the norm, at least frequent in city politics — surprisingly frequent. Generally, as once heavily black parts of the city have become plurality or majority Latino, the elites have worked together to limit the possibility of Latino candidates winning elections in districts historically represented by blacks.

So the implications of an Oropeza victory in a longtime black seat may at first glance seem stark. Historically black South L.A. is now sufficiently Latino that, in theory, black political representation could be threatened. In the 2000 Census, Millender-McDonald’s district was just 25% black and 43% Latino, though many of those Latinos were not registered voters or American citizens. The Latino population also exceeds the black population in the other two L.A. congressional districts represented by African Americans (Maxine Waters and Diane Watson), though again, many of the Latinos are noncitizens.

In the zero-sum game of electoral politics, that could augur the eventual extinction of L.A.’s black political leadership, not only at the federal level but at the state, county and city levels as well. Such a move could imperil the majority center-left coalition that dominates L.A. politics, and destabilize the city more generally. And because African Americans, like the Irish a century ago, have used political power to attain public sector jobs (a logical response to the employment discrimination they’ve long encountered in the private sector), any reduction in political clout could also foretell a reduction in economic prospects.

So far, though, no one is playing the zero-sum game. For one thing, a multiracial coalition is still the key to victory in Tuesday’s election. In the 2006 Democratic primary election in Millender-McDonald’s district, the turnout was estimated to have been 28% African American, 22% Latino, 6% Asian and 44% white. Because the winner of this week’s race will need to win more than 50% of the vote (either in the primary or in a runoff), he or she will presumably need the support of a racial rainbow to prevail — and that’s the case in a large number of electoral districts across Los Angeles.

Second, the black and Latino political communities have a long-term commitment to preserving black political representation. Up to now, that hasn’t really hindered the growth of Latino representation — there are five Latino members of Congress from L.A. County. In the reapportionment that followed the 2000 census, attorneys Connie Rice, then of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Antonia Hernandez, then of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, worked together to ensure that the newly drawn districts didn’t come at the expense of blacks.

"Over the years," says Antonio Gonzalez, the president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, which registers Latino voters, "there’s been a prudent consensus that you try to work it out so that everybody has what they perceive as a critical mass of representation. It’s in everyone’s interest that communities be represented."

Rice is more explicit: "Latinos have bent over backward not to take African American districts."

Another significant player in keeping L.A. politics less racialized than they could be is the labor movement, which has been a dominant force in many L.A. district elections. Over the last decade, union leaders have compiled a remarkable track record of persuading their members to vote economics rather than race.

Still, a demographic tide is a demographic tide. So it’s particularly important that candidates of all races in the L.A. area have begun to win districts that aren’t racially "theirs." The Assembly seat that Richardson won in November was held by Oropeza, just as the Senate seat that Oropeza captured then was occupied by the term-limited Alan Lowenthal, a white Jew. In San Bernardino in November, African American Democrat Wilmer Carter was an upset victor in an Assembly district that isn’t heavily black and had been represented by a Latino.

The future political clout of the African American community may, in fact, partly depend on the ability of its candidates to win outside historically black areas because the number of predominantly black districts will continue to shrink. Carter’s victory, and the early successes of the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, are provisionally hopeful signs.

As far as Rice is concerned, it’s about time. "We [the African American community] have had 20 years’ notice that we need to move from having our power derive from [district-based] political clout to having a more universal appeal," she says. "In more diverse districts, we should be able to play."

Source: Los Angeles Times

June 23, 2007
By ALAN SVERDLIK

A couple of years back, Rafael Lopez and his sister Alma fashioned papier-mâché and wire into a life-size figure of their recently departed dad and hoisted it atop cinder blocks on their back porch. Cherries protruded from the skull, carved out of sugar, and satin strips cascaded from the torso into bird cages at the statue’s feet.

Effigies are considered sacred yet lighthearted tributes to the dead in many parts of Mexico, but along a narrow corridor in northern Glynn County, the Lopez’ altar caused a ruckus among the neighbors, who saw it as a macabre pagan ritual.

"I tried to explain to them that it was in memory of our father, and it helps my children understand who he was and where we came from," said Lopez, a 38-year-old seafood packager, alternating between Spanish and English. "We don’t consider it sad to die like Americans do. We like to play with death, make fun of it."

Lowering his voice, Lopez added, "We took my father down after a week. The kids were getting nasty comments at school."

Shrouded in a haze of cultural differences, the estimated 6,000 Hispanic immigrants (their numbers may indeed be much higher) who live in and around Brunswick remain the closest of strangers, pining for entry into a mainstream that finds them as bewildering as they find Golden Islanders.

In perspective, a certain degree of their social isolation can be attributed to Latinos’ constant fear of "La Migra," the nickname for immigration agents; even a staunch supporter such as Simon Librado, who ministers to an all Spanish-speaking Pentecostal congregation, says 90 percent of his community is here illegally.

Since Mexicans and Central Americans began trickling in at the beginning of the decade, however, this may be the summer of their deepest discontent, given the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping the country and the prospect of stricter laws and deportations. "They are going to have to hide even more," said Dolores Rangel, director of the Center for Latino Studies at Georgia Southern University, in Statesboro. "They’ll turn into ghosts because that’s the only way they’ll be able to survive."

"It’s a very critical situation, a time of great uncertainty," concurs Rebecca Gowen, program coordinator with the Latin American Resource Center, an advocacy group that runs an English As A Second Language academy in Brunswick.

"They don’t know if they’ll have to go back to Mexico tomorrow or next week or next month. Everybody’s waiting to see what the politicians will do."

For the moment, signs of Latin influence abound.

A makeshift canopy, little more than a swath of beige tarpaulin stretched above five rickety outdoor tables, fluttered in a brisk breeze as lunch hour revved up the other day at Los Arcos.

Judging from the menu, seasoned with the Latino palate in mind, and the patrons, pulling up with salsa music blaring from their car radios, this could have been an outtake from the barrios of Los Angeles or Denver. But the street sign said Altama Avenue, a main Brunswick thoroughfare.

The assistant manager, Jorge Franco, has a closely shaved head and charcoal eyes that convey an overall softness. Among Brunswick’s Latinos, Franco, 28, is somewhat unusual: Despite the occasional inverted syntax, he speaks English with fluency and ease, and he holds a degree from a technical college.

Franco’s gentle deportment makes his cynicism all the more startling.

"When I came here eight, nine years ago, no one understood why we were here," the Mexico City native said. "Now they know they need us. Why? To do the hard jobs that the locals don’t want to do."

As genteel and polite as Brunswick may strike American-born visitors and transplants, Franco tells of a flip side.

"Hey, hey, hey," he said a policeman told him during a traffic stop when Franco was new to the area. "Speak English or be quiet."

He stepped back into his itty-bitty kitchen, a year-round cauldron, and ladled posole, a hominy broth, into a to-go bowl. "Bitter?" Franco said with a wan smile, sticking his head out of a sliding window. "Yes, I’m bitter."

Franco and his brother Ignacio, both welders by training, exemplify the nomadic life of economic refugees, as they call themselves. After eking out an existence in southern California, they moved east, skipping more established Hispanic communities for southeast Georgia.

In this state, the coast is the immigrants’ last frontier, demographic studies have shown.

According to Georgia Southern’s research center, which began seven years ago to document the plight of migrant farm workers, the information pipeline that reaches Mexico and Central America has been largely quiet about Brunswick. With its abundance of poultry plants, northeast Georgia has been known for several decades as a jobs bazaar; the textile industry in the northwest employs many immigrants as well. Georgia’s vast middle continues as a venue for transient field labor.

"Most of those flocking across the border are inland people," said Georgia Southern’s Rangel, a Mexican-American. "They have different social patterns than the Mexicans who live on the coast (of Mexico), who enjoy many more possibilities."

Hispanic Brunswick has its own hierarchy.

At the juncture of U.S. 341 and G Street this week, a long, snaking line of day laborers waited in the early morning light, a mild gust mussing some of the men’s thick, jet-black hair. When a stranger approached a pair speaking Spanish, they darted in different directions, stirred by the breath of fear.

At La Salsa on Altama, between downtown and Colonial Mall, Gabriella Bernal was perusing the aisles for a good mole, the nutty, chocolaty sauce that Mexicans put over chicken and beef. A 22-year-old nanny who lives with five relatives in a flat on Union Street, she is happy that the bodega opened three months ago, partly because it suggests Hispanic Brunswick may be stabilizing, partly for the sake of her taste buds.

"My mother always calls and wants to send me food," she said. "I tell her I have everything I need here."

Sometimes it takes some looking, however.

Neither Brunswick nor the outer sections of the county has what is considered a Latino enclave; rather, the immigrant population is spread out, with pockets in Arco, the margins of downtown and the south end, according to Gowen of the local resource center. Most hail from Mexico, with a smattering from Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.

If someone wants to learn English, "we don’t ask if they’re legal or not," she said.

When it comes to saving souls, neither does Librado. At Wednesday night bible study and at services Saturday and Sunday at Iglesia Evangelica Penocosta, the preacher mixes the holy and the historical, telling several hundred congregants about slavery and Georgia’s resistance to integration.

"When you share the suffering of others," he said, referring to the Jim Crow laws that discriminated against blacks, "it makes your own suffering a little easier to bear."

Is reconciliation on the horizon? Are Hispanics and coastal Georgians really, in their interiors, that much different?

"Both are very attached to and proud of their traditions," Rangel says, "and don’t want that to change."

After an uneasy couple of years following the brouhaha over the mannequin, Lopez gingerly invited a neighbor’s daughter to his girl’s quinceanara, the Hispanic coming out party usually held at age 15.

"She came," Lopez recalled, "and after talking with her, I realized that Southern people have the same custom. She told us she was looking forward to her own fiesta."

Source: The Brunswick News