Ballots by Ethnicity: L.A. Futures at Issue : Power for Blacks, Latinos, Jews

The upcoming City Council election in East Los Angeles and the still-simmering dispute over a Los Angeles speech by Louis Farrakhan illustrate the difficult nature of ethnic politics in this multiethnic city.

Superficially, the two events have little in common, one a success story and the other bad news.

The Dec. 10 election, called after the resignation of Councilman Arthur K. Snyder from his seat in the heavily Latino area, seems sure to result in election of the city’s first Latino City Council member in years. That outcome, after a long and often bitter struggle, would be a tangible example of political power for the city’s largest single ethnic group--and be seen as a positive development by those who work for racial harmony and peaceful power-sharing by all groups.

In contrast, the dispute over Farrakhan, a black Muslim minister whose speeches are larded with anti-Semitism, is a negative development, an example of ill feeling between leaders of two major participants in the ethnic politics of Los Angeles, blacks and Jews. When Mayor Tom Bradley accepted the advice of black leaders and did not attack Farrakhan before his Sept. 12 speech at the Forum, Jewish leaders strongly criticized the mayor, their longtime ally and supporter. Bitterness continues, threatening to erode Bradley’s political base and damage his expected campaign for governor next year.

While the circumstances of each event are different, they show the difficulty of achieving ethnic political clout and harmony, even in a city that brags about the diversity of its population.

For years, Latinos had tried to unseat Snyder in the 14th District, an area from Hispanic East Los Angeles to more Anglo Eagle Rock. But he survived recall attempts, scandals in his private life and legal actions against his political fund- raising. Demographics were one reason for Snyder’s success. Voters in Anglo areas turned out in greater numbers than those in Latino neighborhoods and the Latino population includes people who are not citizens. But achievement of ethnic political power was also hampered by the angriest kind of feuding among Latino leaders. Frustrated by lack of Council membership for many years, Latino politicians seemed to vent anger at each other rather than at a common foe, Snyder, who also developed Latino support of his own.

Despite years of Latino organizing, only Snyder’s resignation paved the way for a Latino victory. And if the early favorite, Democratic Assemblyman Richard Alatorre, wins, Snyder will have the final satisfaction of seeing the man he endorsed become his successor.

The lesson here seems clear. Unless leaders put aside differences for the sake of victory, ethnic minorities cannot win or retain political power.

That lesson has been forgotten by black and Jewish leaders who have wielded great power because of a coalition that began in the civil rights movement days and culminated in the 1973 election of Bradley as mayor and his subsequent lengthy incumbency.

It was never an easy coalition, but it was effective in legal and political fights against discriminatory laws and practices that hurt both groups.

The coalition embraced forward-looking civic activists, politicians, clergy, lawyers and academics who believed deeply in the shared concerns of two groups subject to the worst kind of discrimination. But the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood was not always shared on the streets, in those neighborhoods where blacks and Jews were on the bottom of the economic scale in earlier years and fought over scraps left them by the majority. Leaders on both sides have had to deal with anti-Semitic and anti-black feelings among their followers.

As was true throughout the nation, blacks were angry at opposition from some major Jewish groups and leaders over affirmative action. Blacks are proud of affirmative action school and jobs programs that produced today’s generation of black leaders in politics, business and the professions. Jewish leaders, on the other hand, express fear that affirmative action, with its system of quotas and goals, is an echo of the quota systems in the 1930s and 1940s that limited enrollment of Jews in leading universities and professional schools.

Public school desegregation exacerbated the tensions in Los Angeles. Most of the founders and leaders of the San Fernando Valley anti-busing group, Bustop, were Jewish. Los Angeles Angeles City Councilman David Cunningham, a black active in the coalition, says that the presence of Jews among Bustop leaders left a legacy of bitterness that continues today.

Despite tensions, the black-Jewish leadership has functioned effectively in the past few years, rallying behind Bradley. Whether he walked on Fairfax Avenue or on 103rd Street, the mayor was greeted affectionately.

Then, when Farrakhan came to town, cooperation ended.

Several black leaders were convinced that the way to deal with Farrakhan was to ignore him publicly before his visit and perhaps convince him privately to refrain from attacking Jews as he had in a particularly virulent Washington speech earlier this year. Among the leaders were John Mack, who heads the Urban League in Los Angeles and Bill Elkins, a top mayoral aide who has been a friend of Bradley’s since they were in junior high school.

Other Bradley advisers, both white and black, were appalled at the advice. Cunningham insisted that racism in any form must be condemned. Jewish leaders asked Bradley repeatedly to speak out.

But the mayor agreed to remain silent. He said nothing until after Farrakhan’s speech, when he criticized some of the minister’s remarks. It was, most Bradley aides agree, a mistake.

Several Jewish leaders are furious at the mayor and at the black leaders who convinced him to keep quiet before the Farrakhan speech. Black leaders are angry at Jewish critics for refusing to go along with their strategy for solving what they considered a black problem--how to deal with Farrakhan.

The Farrakhan dispute seems less important than desegregation and affirmative action. The man has been peddling his anti-Semitic message in the black community for two decades with minimum impact.

But his arrival in Los Angeles had the effect of energizing all the old tensions between blacks and Jews. The incident became larger than it really was and now a political combine that has done much for minorities is threatened.

Blacks and Jews should look to some of the lessons of East Los Angeles. The fighting there was within a group rather than between two ethnic minorities. But the result was the same. Arguments as senseless as the furies of a family feud have helped keep Latinos out of municipal power for many years.

Despite all the sentimental rhetoric about multiethnic Los Angeles, life will not be easy in a city where all those groups scrap for economic and political power. It never has been in this nation of immigrants. Jews, Italians and Poles could not get along on the East Side of New York almost a century ago; blacks and Latino immigrants have tense relations in South Central Los Angeles today. In this mix of residents, nobody has to be best friends or agree on everything. Friendship and unanimity are not prerequisites for success in business or politics. But nothing works without compromise and understanding.