CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : A Quarter-Century of Slipping Backward

The black population of Watts is worse off than it was 25 years ago, at the flash-point of the urban rebellion that left 34 people dead, 1,000 injured and $40 million in property damage.

True, that civil disorder focused attention on the array of social ills that constrained the lives of the community’s predominantly black residents: poor housing, high unemployment, racial discrimination, limited access to quality health care and social services, poor transportation and the lack of business development. Governments at all levels committed fiscal and program resources to solve these problems. But these efforts have utterly failed, overwhelmed by broader demographic and economic forces that contributed to decline.

The forces at work include:

--An ethnic transition that has changed Watts from a predominantly black community to a mixed black and Latino area, and the succession of Asians (particularly Koreans) to the helm of the community’s retail trade;

--The increased spatial isolation of black residents of Watts from mainstream social and economic life, causing it to be viewed as the prototype urban underclass community, with all of its negative connotations.

Twenty-five years ago, Watts’ black population was angered by the presence of white entrepreneurs who charged exorbitant prices for goods and services. Today that resentment has been transferred to Asian entrepreneurs who are using the same corner groceries and liquor stores as a launching pad for social and economic mobility. African Americans, Latinos and Koreans vie for housing, jobs, business locations and a host of scarce public resources.

But more important than this conflict, which saps civic energy and fragments community power, is the restructuring of employment opportunities in the Los Angeles region, which has exacerbated blacks’ geographic isolation and economic marginality.

Once the center of a thriving regional industrial core, Watts is now surrounded by closed factories where nearly 70,000 jobs were lost during the late 1970s. The region’s major employers have opted to relocate near Mexican border towns where labor is considered cheap and docile. The fastest-growing sectors of the economy require skills, knowledge and credentials that are largely absent among black residents.

This mismatch between available jobs and skills is exacerbated by the educational disfranchisement of the poor that is, paradoxically, a result of the nation’s quest for educational reform. Funds have been channeled to suburban schools at the expense of inner-city schools, leaving a generation of minority students behind in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Also contributing to the isolation and social despair of Watts’ black residents is the escalating cost of housing in both the rental and purchase markets. Moreover, the available public housing actually builds a concentration of poor citizens who have limited contact with those who are gainfully employed. Thus, young people have little access to role models who can aid them in pursuing the “good life” in conventional and acceptable ways.

Together, the structural shifts in the local economy and the housing crisis have restricted economic opportunities of blacks in general, and black males in particular. More than 50% of Watts’ black men in their prime working years do not participate in the labor force. This has had a devastating impact on black family structure, as these men are unable to form and maintain stable families.

In part as a consequence of black male joblessness, gang activity and drug-related violence have also reemerged as community problems. The significant infusion of War on Poverty funds, coupled with the thrust of black pride that accompanied black affirmation in the 1960s, had begun to positively redirect the attitudes, aspirations and behavior of Watts’ black youth during the late 1960s and early 1970s. But black gangs made a strong comeback in the late 1970s, concomitant with Watts’ continued social and economic decline.

Watts is at more risk today than it was 25 years ago. The more things have changed, the worse they have become. That is the message that Watts’ black residents receive each day of their lives. If their quality of life is to improve, business, government and the local community must recognize the impact of these larger structural forces and jointly devise strategies to eradicate their most deleterious effects--joblessness, poor education, family disruption and community divisions.