Dilemma for Black Voters in Los Angeles Mayor's Race
Pacific News Service, News Analysis, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Mar 09, 2005
Editor's Note: The choice that African American voters make in the Los Angeles mayoral runoff will tell much about the fate of multi-ethnic political alliances in California and nationwide.
LOS ANGELES--Black voters face a tough dilemma in the Los Angeles mayoral runoff. In the May 17 contest between James K. Hahn, the white incumbent mayor, and Antonio Villaraigosa, do blacks back Hahn, who betrayed them by dumping a popular, reform minded African-American police chief? Or do they back Villaraigosa, a former civil rights, labor and Latino activist who has worked hard to convince blacks that their concerns, not just those of Latinos, will be heard at City Hall?
The choice that African Americans make will tell much about the fate of multi-ethnic political alliances in Los Angeles, California and nationally.
At first glance, that choice seems easy. Blacks screamed for Hahn's head when he ousted black LAPD chief Bernard Parks three years ago. They felt Hahn betrayed the black community by reneging on a pledge to back Parks as part of their price for delivering the black vote to Hahn in the 2001 mayoral contest. Blacks make up about 15 percent of the city's voters.
Though the multi-ethnic coalition Villaraigosa is desperately trying to fashion is a healthy model for racial cooperation, blacks didn't buy it when he faced off with Hahn in 2001. He got less than one-fifth of their vote.
Blacks saw Hahn as a safe and traditional Democrat who would best protect their interests. Villaraigosa was seen as an inexperienced political maverick who could not or would not deliver the goods for blacks. Lurking underneath everything was blacks' fear of Latino domination of city politics.
Black leaders have gotten themselves into this disastrous political "either-or" sand trap. They haven't had the courage or vision to urge black voters to look seriously at independent, reform-minded Democrats or Republicans who refuse to engage in back room deal-making that produces patronage and assorted party favors for them, but no tangible gains for the majority of blacks. This cynical manipulation of the political process further deepens the frustration and alienation of many blacks.
The current dreary plight of blacks in California politics is a sorry testament to this. There are fewer blacks in the state legislature today than five years ago. The political free-fall is so bad that there are almost as many Latino Republicans as blacks in the California Assembly. That's only part of the reason why the majority of black voters, despite their professed political loathing of a white politician such as Hahn, still may not back a progressive Latino candidate.
Black and Latino leaders have long papered over tensions and conflicts between the two groups by putting on the happy public face of blacks and Latinos marching in lockstep to do battle against race discrimination and poverty. There are many well-documented instances where black and Latino leaders have joined forces to battle conservative Republican policies that harm black and Latino interests. That cooperation, though, has mostly been among blacks and Latinos at the legislative level, in Congress and in state legislatures, and not on the ground, in communities where blacks and Latinos uneasily rub shoulders.
The surge in Latino numbers and voting power in Los Angeles has drastically changed this idyllic notion of black and Latino cooperation. Latinos now make up nearly half the city's population of 3.7 million. Latino political leaders and activists relentlessly demand that political and social issues no longer be framed solely in black and white. But that scares many blacks. They complain loudly that Latinos are taking jobs, hogging public services and running down educational standards in the city's failing public schools.
This is irrational and even borderline racist. The fight should be for greater funding and the expansion of health care, public services and education programs for poor and working class blacks and Latinos. As long as many blacks and a significant percentage of black voters believe that Latinos are political villains, they will not embrace multi-ethnic pitches, no matter how much it's in their interests to do so.
The nation's second-biggest city is well on its way to being a majority Latino city. Even if Hahn wins re-election, he will almost certainly be the last white mayor of Los Angeles for years to come. But with the numbers and political power of blacks dwindling, the real political test in this mayoral election will be whether enough blacks can tear off their racial blinders and vote for a progressive Latino candidate. If they back a white politician that they've spent the past three years condemning, it's their loss, and a loss to the cause of alliance building among the dispossessed.
PNS contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming "Beyond Michael Jackson: The Clash of Celebrity, Sex and Race" (AuthorHouse Press, April 2005).
Also by Earl Ofari Hutchinson:
Blacks Must Step Up to Fund King Center, Monument
Black Evangelicals: Bush's New Trump Card
Simmons Isn't the Answer to NAACP Woes
Media Manipulation: Armstrong Williams Payoff Tip of Iceberg
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