Advisory Group Hears of Hostilities, New Ethnicity : Steps Needed to Ease Racial Tension, Panel Told

The message was repeated several times: Racial tensions are at an all-time high in Orange County, and some basic but necessary steps need to be taken now to head off violent incidents.

The California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights met Friday at the Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana and heard a number of community leaders stress that message. With tremendous change in the county’s racial makeup having occurred in the past 10 years, many members of minority groups feel that they are excluded from the ranks of power.

All of those who hold top management positions in the county’s two largest cities, Santa Ana and Anaheim, are Caucasian, said Amin David, a spokesman for a group of Latino residents known as Los Amigos of Orange County. In Santa Ana, that fact is even more disturbing because Latinos are now the majority ethnic group, he said.

The lack of representation was echoed by other speakers Friday, including Nampet Panichpant-M, who talked about problems within the Southeast Asian population, and the Rev. John McReynolds, pastor of the Second Baptist Church and a leader of the Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, a group of black church leaders.

David also cited recent City Council meetings in both cities that were marked by vehemently anti-Latino statements from the public.

“The day will not be long before we’re going to have violence, because I’ve never felt that kind of hatred before,” he said.

Alienation Among Blacks

McReynolds said that he perceives many of the same feelings of alienation among the county’s black community of about 30,000 people. He cited a recent newspaper editorial that allegedly supported the right of the owner of the Red Onion Restaurant to exclude blacks, Latinos and other minorities. “This is the kind of attitude . . . venom that is sweeping the community,” he said.

Santa Ana Deputy Police Chief Eugene Hansen told the four committee members that the potential for violence is present, but that it would be wrong to envision the kind of violence that marked the Watts riots of the 1960s.

“It would be naive to say that there isn’t the potential for conflict,” he said.

Santa Ana, Hansen said, has become the melting pot of Orange County with a population that is almost 50% Latino and includes another 50,000 to 75,000 illegal aliens. In addition, about 6% of the population is made up of Asians and Pacific Islanders, whose 19 dialects make it “nearly impossible” for local government to effectively deal with their diverse problems.

In addition to the many different ethnic groups, the Police Department has had to face community pressure to abandon a longstanding policy of non-cooperation with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which makes periodic arrests and deportations of undocumented workers. The demands, he said, come not just from Caucasian residents but also from the “old, established Latino” community, which feels threatened by the influx from south of the border.

“We have tried to embrace, accept and assimilate wherever possible our undocumented population, and it hasn’t always made us a very popular department,” he said.

The best way to head off the mounting tension is to attack it head-on, said Santa Ana Councilman John Acosta. He said local officials should actively work to appoint minorities to city boards and commissions that would become “training grounds” leading to elected positions.

Minorities Sought Measure

In June, Santa Ana voters narrowly rejected a proposition that would have created ward elections for the City Council--a system several minority-group leaders believed would have allowed them more representation in the city’s government. At present, Acosta is the only Latino on the seven-member council.

William Allen, a member of the advisory committee and a professor at Harvey Mudd College in Pomona, said a ward system would actually have been less advantageous for minorities in view of population projections.

“It won’t be terribly long before Santa Ana has a Latino majority,” Allen said.

Allen also pointed out that several speakers hadn’t provided examples of overt discrimination that would really cause one to worry about violence on a large scale.

“There seems to be some disproportion between the facts presented and the fear expressed,” he said.

Subtle Discrimination

Most of the discrimination present in Orange County isn’t of a violent or overt nature, said Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the county Human Relations Commission. Most of it, like opposition to bilingual education programs, is more subtle.

“It’s primarily motivated by misunderstanding based on lack of knowledge, which, in my way of thinking, is a form of racism,” he said.