Facing Up to Race Tension in the Schools

If roots help, there’s nobody more qualified to deal with growing racial conflict between blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles schools than Barbara Boudreaux and Sterling Delone.

Boudreaux and Delone, who are running against each other for a seat on the Board of Education in the June 4 election, grew up in South Los Angeles when it was just about all black. African-Americans, they attended inferior schools segregated by unofficial policy rather than law. But still segregated, separate and unequal.

The two of them beat the system, graduated from local universities, and returned to their own public schools for student teaching. Later, Delone, as a teacher, and Boudreaux, as an administrator, watched as faces in South L.A. schools changed from black to brown.

Boudreaux is now an elementary school principal. If you meet her, she’ll instantly awaken memories. She’s the kind, but firm, principal you liked--and feared. The one who prowled the schoolyard, sharp-eyed for waste paper and sixth-graders ditching class. She’s also the one who ran to help when some kid got hurt.

Delone is another familiar campus character, the high school social studies and history teacher the students all love. An iconoclast, in tune with the rebellious teen-agers in his classroom. A story-telling history lover who makes the Constitutional Convention sound like an action-packed thriller.

We talked about the racial tension. One reason is fierce competition for educational resources. The rapidly growing Latino enrollment in South Los Angeles has increased the need for bilingual education programs--and Spanish-speaking teacher aides. That means less money for the special reading programs designed for African-Americans at the height of the civil rights movement a quarter of a century ago. Now, black teacher aides fear layoffs. Black and Latino parents clash. Their animosity adds more heat to the schoolyard skirmishes between children.

From their own experiences, and their studies, Boudreaux and Delone know the history of this process and why it is so potentially divisive.

In the 1960s, when South L.A. and other California urban areas, such as Oakland and the Fillmore district and Hunters Point in San Francisco, were predominantly black, the Legislature devoted considerable time and money to trying to improve the educational achievements of poor black kids.

The number of blacks in the Legislature increased after the 1961 redistricting. The newcomers quickly developed close alliances with the liberal white Democrats who controlled the Senate and the Assembly. The result were programs, concentrating more teachers, teacher aides and special educational material on ghetto children from families of nonreaders. The new teacher aide positions provided many jobs in South L.A.

Latinos were pretty much left out. I remember covering Hispanic political and community meetings in those days, and hearing growing anger. But when black neighborhoods started becoming more Hispanic, redistricting increased Latino representation. The new legislators pushed through new educational programs, designed for a different problem. Immigrant Latino children spoke little or no English. Bilingual education grew important as more non-English-speaking children immigrated from Asia and other places. Blacks feared that programs designed for their children were being diminished.

Boudreaux or Delone and their Board of Education colleagues will have to face the schoolyard impact of these waves of political and educational change.

They don’t have any quick answers and I admire them for that.

They will use their roots in the community, the instincts and knowledge they picked up growing up in South L.A. and teaching in the city’s multiethnic schools. They’ll use their professional and life experiences to bring people together. Growing up in the neighborhood and working with children of different races has taught them the dangers of adding to tension. “I’m not into that racist business,” said Boudreaux.

But it’s more complicated than that. Washington and Sacramento, which have paid for the special education programs, are pulling back. The projected $12-billion state deficit will mean huge cuts for the Los Angeles district, which receives 75% of its money from the state Capitol.

Blacks and Latinos will be fighting over practically nothing.

The schools aren’t segregated, as they were in Delone and Boudreaux’s day. But they’ll become more unequal--or at least unequal to the job of equipping students to compete in California’s technology-dominated economy. “In the third grade, our kids are chipper and eager,” said Delone. “By junior high school, they’re dropping out.”