Pitting Blacks Against Latinos
In response to “United We Stand, Divided We Fall” (editorial, Aug. 30):
The “Them vs. Us” game that pits one essentially poor and powerless ethnic group against another one is indeed, as The Times notes, an old game usually played by the white Establishment to preserve power. In this case, the pawns in the game are blacks and Latinos. The twist is that the chess master this time is the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission.
Evidently, the commission is prepared to issue a report that claims that blacks are depriving Latinos of top management and supervisory positions at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew and County USC medical centers which serve the largely black and Hispanic population of South-Central Los Angeles. Certainly the commission must know that in drawing such a wrong-headed conclusion, the end result will be more friction between blacks and Latinos.
The commission’s “blaming the victims” tactic could not come at a worse time. The problems that plague Latinos and African-Americans worsen daily, and they are the same--high unemployment, poor housing and schools, medical neglect, crime and drug abuse.
Common sense should tell anyone that blacks did not create the problems of the barrio and Latinos did not create the problems of the ghetto.
But apparently common sense is in short supply within the commission’s hallowed ranks. This should hardly surprise anyone who is even remotely familiar with the commission’s recent checkered history. Before he took a seat on the federal bench, Clarence Thomas directed the commission. Thomas totally embraced the conservative Republican ethics toward business.
This meant: Do as little as possible to interfere with business practices even when those practices included discrimination in the hiring and promotion of women and minorities.
If the commission continues to play this kind of divisive game with minorities, my hope is that Congress will take a hard look at its operations when it comes appropriation time.
EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON
Inglewood