Lots of smoke, not much fire

LOS ANGELES’ BLACK leadership is a microcosm of black leadership everywhere: a superficially similar but fractured collection of individuals and interest groups that can nonetheless unite in the heat of a racially controversial moment, especially if there are cameras rolling. Never has this been more evident than in the last week at the side of Tennie Pierce.

Pierce is the black former firefighter who was the target of an allegedly racist incident in which fellow firefighters sneaked dog food into his dinner. He sued for harassment and discrimination, and the city settled for $2.7 million, which the City Council approved,11 to 1, but Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed. Last week, as it became clear that a disconcerted council would let Villaraigosa’s veto of its initial approval stand, support for Pierce and his settlement broke swiftly and sharply along racial lines.

It started with the council’s three black members -- Jan Perry, Herb Wesson and Bernard Parks, in a surprising show of solidarity -- who said they were sticking with their settlement vote. Eventually, support for the settlement, and calls for ending endemic racism in the Fire Department, grew to include the NAACP, Watts activist Lilian Mobley and various other community types who literally stood behind Pierce, solemn faced, as he spoke at the podium in council chambers last week.

Why is Pierce a cause? It has less to do with the worthiness of his case than with the things that these days tend to galvanize black political energy, which is being spread thinner but not necessarily smarter. Pierce’s chief appeal to supporters is that he’s an individual with a beef against the system that clearly goes deeper than the dog-food incident.

Empathy for Pierce on this point isn’t political as much as cultural. The me-against-them workplace scenario is something most black people, certainly those over 50, understand and have probably lived themselves. Seeking redress for hostile treatment that is almost never recognized, much less compensated, strikes many as perfectly reasonable, if not overdue. Call it vicarious reparations.

Pierce’s symbolic value doesn’t end there. He also represents a limited fight that may be won, a welcome change from big, bruising, historically and morally complicated fights that have no end and few victories, such as the fight to save King/Drew hospital or to end police brutality (not to mention the nebulous fight against the “n-word”). For black leadership, such fights have too many issues and almost no clear heroes, engendering over the years plenty of rallies but no one to rally around. Pierce’s grievance speaks to many familiar complexities and gives them a face.

Nor is his just any face. Pierce is a longtime public servant who is solidly middle class, a guy who many of his supporters have no problem identifying with; he could be their neighbor. Unlike other galvanizing black figures, such as Huey Newton or Rodney King, Pierce doesn’t carry with him troubling issues of the urban black poor -- criminal justice, poverty, joblessness -- that have long alienated blacks from each other.

Pierce is not the victim of a police shooting who may or may not have been in a gang, or a man on death row who may or may not have been wrongly convicted. He’s a citizen who was doing his job, a job that entailed saving property and lives. You can’t get much more heroic than that. That he was excoriated on KFI-AM’s “John & Ken Show,” a program known for its impolitic stances and racial high jinks, only increases his heroism in the eyes of his backers.

Politics, by the way, are also a big part of the Pierce cause. Black leadership is still ambivalent about Villaraigosa for a number of reasons, and his veto of the Pierce settlement -- prompted, it seems, purely by public opinion -- angered many. Partly in response, Villaraigosa forced out Fire Chief William Bamattre and replaced him with interim Chief Douglas L. Barry, the first black man to hold the top position in the Fire Department. Villaraigosa says he wants real reform, and it’s hard for anybody to argue against that or against the significance of his new (if temporary) chief.

But it’s also hard not to think that so many black issues increasingly are being reduced to gamesmanship, a series of maneuvers by players less concerned with fixing systemic problems than with keeping one step ahead of ... well, whoever’s ahead. Whatever happens with Pierce, rest assured that the black populace most in need of leadership will remain miles behind.