Ethnic Politics Call for Deft Handling of Diverse Interests

About a month ago, attorney Theodore M. Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund stepped into an elevator outside his Spring Street office and rode upstairs. On the 11th floor, he walked a few steps to the office of Richard J. Fajardo, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.

The subject of the meeting: The suits by the U.S. Justice Department and MALDEF to force Los Angeles County to redraw boundaries of the five county supervisorial districts to give Latinos a chance to win a seat on the Board of Supervisors.

Many Legal Victories

Shaw was informing Fajardo that the county’s black leadership, as represented by the local chapters of the NAACP, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had filed suit to intervene in the reapportionment case. Their object was to assure that black political representation would not be weakened if new district lines are drawn.

MALDEF and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People have won many legal victories throughout the country, cracking the barrier of segregation and assuring voting rights for blacks and Latinos. As part of that tradition, Shaw and Fajardo were carrying the fight to Los Angeles County, where an all-Anglo Board of Supervisors governs a county of more than 8 million, most of whom are not Anglo. A United Crusade study last year said 33% of the county’s residents were Latino, 11.6% black and 12.4% Asian.

The meeting was friendly. “We get along fine,” Fajardo said. “They use our library.” But it was more than a simple conference between allies. The situation was more complicated. While Latinos, blacks and Asians have a common goal of winning more minority political representation, each group has its own agenda. As a result, there have been conflicts in a county that has become one of the nation’s biggest multi-ethnic centers.

Interviews with black and Asian attorneys and leaders show that they support the Justice Department lawsuit. But they view the reapportionment issue as a test of cooperation and good will among the three groups in the increasingly ethnic politics of Los Angeles County.

The voices speaking up on reapportionment also illustrate how politics are changing here. “It is reflective of the changed demographics of the town,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, who heads the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “There are now Asian-Pacific players, Latino players. That is just a function of diversity.”

The conference between Shaw and Fajardo thus touched on the deep soul-searching and mixed feelings among Latino, black and Asian leaders over the federal lawsuit.

The black leaders fear that redistricting might hurt black chances to win a supervisorial seat. Asian lawyers are concerned that redistricting will divide the Asian population among supervisorial districts in a way that will diminish chances for political influence.

“I don’t know how the scenario will play out,” said John Mack, head of the local chapter of the Urban League. “Maybe this can serve as a positive example of how these . . . minority groups can advance their interests without being against each other.”

Drive for Power

Weeks before the meeting between Fajardo and Shaw, black leaders began to consider how to deal with the Latino drive for power in county government.

Some of the black concerns were expressed in an interview last week with Ridley-Thomas.

“What we are witnessing now in rather an unprecedented way is a high degree of assertiveness, even call it aggressiveness, on the part of the Latino community to assure those things that are important in the way of fulfillment of rights,” he said. “Some of this (shows) . . . an unfortunate degree of insensitivity to other ethnic groups. What is most disconcerting about some of what is going on in the Latino community is the extent in which there is a strong implication that ‘blacks had their day. They got more than they deserve and we are here to get what we deserve even if it means we have to take some of that from blacks.’ Now that is difficult to swallow.”

Those feelings, Ridley-Thomas said, were expressed in discussions among the black leadership. But on the other hand, he said, black leaders realized that they and Latinos had a common goal of “saying to the county Board of Supervisors, ‘Get off the dime.’ On this point, both communities are working together because neither community is represented on the Board of Supervisors.”

Fajardo’s constituency had complex feelings about the black leadership.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina was one of those. Molina represents a central Los Angeles district created by a similar Justice Department lawsuit that forced the City Council to redraw its district lines to provide another council seat in a Latino area. She has been active in efforts to increase Latino representation on the council, the Board of Supervisors and in the Legislature since 1971.

“We sat on the sidelines for a very, very long time in Los Angeles and have not had a voice,” she said in an interview, recalling failed Latino efforts in past reapportionment fights.

“We finally have been able to put together a group of Hispanic lawyers who have the ability to pursue these kinds of cases. I remember 1971. I remember groups of lawyers getting together and talking about it: ‘Who is going to do the work, where are we going to get the money, how do we do it, who is talented enough to be able to intervene?’ We didn’t have the mechanism. Now we have a group like MALDEF, funded by the community, and we have lawyers from the community who have those kinds of interests.”

‘Correct and Right Thing’

Molina said: “From the standpoint of black leaders, it is probably the correct and right thing for them to do (intervene in the case). Their interests are no different than our interests. . . . There is a sizable black population in Los Angeles County that deserves to have a voice in what goes on in county politics and county policy issues. Hispanics the same way. And Asians are certainly emerging as a large group.”

Molina, however, said she approaches ethnic coalition politics with caution. That is because of her experience as a state assemblywoman. When she opposed construction of a state prison in her East Los Angeles Assembly district three years ago, she had to buck the Speaker of the Assembly, Willie Brown, who is black, and his Los Angeles ally, Democratic Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, one of the community’s most influential black leaders.

“I thought I was going to have Willie Brown, who was going to understand this, Maxine Waters, who was going to understand this, and a lot of other natural allies,” she said. “And that didn’t happen. It was real disappointing and I had to sit there and say, ‘Wait a minute, when it was (something) in their back yard, they want Chicanos to go out and rally about it, but when it is something that hurt us, why weren’t they there with us?’ ”

‘Be Very Cautious’

What did that teach her about ethnic politics? “To be very cautious and to be very careful about building coalitions and to talk about reciprocity because a coalition should be built on that, too,” she said.

Asian community leaders fear that new district lines could further divide their neighborhoods, now generally concentrated in a corridor in the center of Los Angeles and in the San Gabriel Valley.

Now divided between two supervisorial districts, Asians find it hard to get a hearing in the county Hall of Administration on issues important to them, said Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. Among these issues are social services and health services for the growing Asian immigrant population.

However, the Asian population, while as numerous as blacks, is too scattered in the county to advance legal claims for a supervisorial district, Kwoh said, and will not intervene in the case. But he said leaders will watch the current lawsuit carefully to see if Asian political interests are protected.

“We will remember who was worrying about us when we weren’t dominant in the population,” he said.

The realities of ethnic geography in the county illustrate the reasons for concern in arriving at a just balance of political interests.

In order to create a supervisorial district where a Latino would have a chance of victory, a major redrawing of lines would be necessary.

Latinos now are split between two districts. One is the 3rd District of Democrat Ed Edelman, which extends from the heavily Latino East Los Angeles area into the city’s Westside. The other is the 1st District of Republican Pete Schabarum, which includes the San Gabriel Valley, with its large Latino population.

The Justice Department, in its suit, charged that dividing the Latino population between the two districts deprived it of a chance for representation on the Board of Supervisors and thus violated the Voting Rights Act.

To meet the suit’s requirements, sections would have to be carved out of the Schabarum and Edelman districts. And some would come from the 2nd District of Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, a white liberal Democrat who has become greatly beloved in the black community during his many years on the board. Hahn, however, has suffered a stroke and, if he retires, black leaders are hoping to elect a black to replace him.

There are Latino enclaves in several parts of Hahn’s district and a Latino-oriented reapportionment plan could change its boundaries.

And such a change could split the bulk of the Asian population into three districts, rather than the two districts now.