After a Long Wait, Blacks Can Raise the Leadership Ceiling

The political glass ceiling in Los Angeles’ black community has shattered.

“Glass ceiling” usually refers to the frustrated academic or corporate career aspirations of ethnic minorities, and of women of all races. You get hired. You rise in the ranks. But then you don’t make tenure. Or you fail to move up to a power executive job. A ceiling, invisible, unacknowledged by your bosses, blocks your path. You think it’s discrimination, but usually you can’t prove it.

In Los Angeles, the political glass ceiling has worked differently as it pertains to black politicians. It’s not been a matter of discrimination. This particular barrier is the result of having all the elected offices in predominantly black districts filled by veteran politicians who are elected year after year. In its own way, this ceiling is as frustrating as the other kind. For it has meant that young black leaders have had no chance to take over, to run for office in the community where they were raised.

Now, suddenly, that’s changed. Last week, Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, who had represented the 9th District since 1963, died. And today, Councilman Bob Farrell, who represents the neighboring 8th District, will announce that he will not run for the seat he’s held for 17 years.

If the news prompted a certain amount of enthusiasm among younger African-American activists on New Year’s Day, it was understandable. Their time was coming after a long wait, and so was their chance to promote a new agenda.

Several weeks before Lindsay’s death and Farrell’s decision to retire, I got an idea of some of the issues propelling the younger activists when I attended a fund-raiser for Kerman Maddox, a college instructor in political science and government affairs consultant who is one of several candidates running in the 8th District.

Among the others are Mark Ridley-Thomas, who heads the Southern Christian Leadership Conference here; attorney Billy Mills Jr., son of a former 8th District city councilman, and Rod Wright, longtime aide to Rep. Maxine Waters, (D-Los Angeles). There will be others.

The host for the Maddox party was Walt Hazzard, the former UCLA basketball coach. It was just his second experience in politics. His first involved a race that eventually made national news. His wife’s cousin is Sharon Pratt Dixon, the underdog winner in the race for mayor of Washington, D.C. When Dixon languished toward the bottom of the polls and couldn’t raise money, she turned to the Hazzards, who held a Los Angeles money-raising event that helped get her campaign going.

Still, the coach was uneasy in his political role. “This is a whole new arena for me,” Hazzard said as he introduced the candidate. “I’d rather be on the bench, sweating.”

It was like a homeowners meeting, with the agenda on home-grown issues. About 50 people were there, having paid $100 a person and $150 a couple. There were lawyers, merchants, accountants and corporate executives in the crowd, people who had established their careers and now wanted to give something back to the community.

They told me that they thought Farrell had neglected basic services in the district. As Maddox put it in a brief talk, “The alleys are dirty, cars are left on the streets for weeks at a time, the parks don’t operate. . . . If people don’t feel good about the community, they don’t feel good about themselves. Physical blight adds to a certain psychological and personal blight.”

Or, as candidate Mills told me later, “When I was growing up, it was OK to play outside. When your mom called you to come home, it was to get something to eat, not because it was dangerous.”

Concentration on such issues would be a big change for both the 8th and the 9th districts.

Gil Lindsay was a well-loved figure. His rise, from janitor to councilman, made it easier for those who followed. But he was locked into an earlier era, one of downtown growth, high-rises and “trickle-down” economic theory: Prosperity downtown will help the poor parts of his district in South L.A. However, not enough trickled down to offset the economic and social decay in the South L.A. part of his district. And even the most determined community activists failed to persuade Lindsay to change his ways.

Farrell was another story. His major contribution was to help make important African-American issues part of the city agenda. He, for example, was a prime mover in the city’s boycott of firms doing business with South Africa. But, like Lindsay, he seemed to forget to push for clean alleys and safe streets in his council district.

Accomplishing that will be much more difficult now than it was in the past. The successors to Lindsay and Farrell will have to squeeze more for their districts from a city government that is poorer. And they’ll have to compete for resources and power with ethnic minorities who had little power when African-Americans first moved into City Hall--Latinos and Asians. It will take sophistication, toughness, political skill and the patience to spend hours on the grimy service delivery aspect of municipal government.

Waiting for an opportunity to do something was frustrating. But now comes the hard work.