A New Way of Cutting Up the Pie : Skilled Management Will Be Needed to Mitigate Potential Conflict as Mexicans and Other Latin Americans Challenge African Americans at the Voting Booth

Latino leaders are coming around to an unprecedented interest in promoting citizenship. They have seen that a lot of gains have been made. For example, in 1992, Latinos from Los Angeles County went from three members of the Assembly to six, and we had an extra person elected to Congress.

There is a recognition that gains based simply on population growth and redistricting have pretty much been accomplished, and what’s really lacking now is getting more voters out of the people who are already here.

So there is a drive among the Latino leadership to encourage citizenship. Lots of organizations now are really promoting this. The Clinton Administration is actually budgeting $30 million for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to promote citizenship acquisition.

The potential is extraordinary for a dramatic increase in the numbers of Latino voters. And that will have consequences. There’s no question that this will lead to the election of more Latinos and this will mean replacing, in certain electoral districts, elected officials who are not Latinos.

This is going to affect African American political officeholders. Electoral districts that form a good deal of the base of African American political power have seen substantial population change due to two things.

One is the influx of Latin American, Mexican and Central American immigrants. The other almost simultaneous factor is the out-migration by middle-class, upwardly mobile African-Americans.

This will probably mean a decline of African American office-holding in the city and the county of Los Angeles over the next several years.

This is not to say there are not new avenues for African American politics, but it will be in other areas, such as the suburban and more middle-class areas African Americans have moved to.

One of the things that needs to be dealt with, with real political skill and honesty and commitment, is the likely competition between two distinct groups, both of whom are still struggling to define their place in American society. The competition could aggravate already tense relations between Latinos and African Americans.

It’s really incumbent on the broader metropolitan community to approach this with open eyes and to confront the delicacy of managing that competition and recognize that it is real.

Anti-immigrant attitudes among African Americans, racist attitudes among Latinos--those are real factors. And they require skilled management to contain the conflict.

It’s incumbent on the leaders of every community to confront bigotry when it manifests itself. And I think we’ve had notable failures to do that up to now.

We’ve had failures within the African American community to recognize and to confront and to suppress instances of bigotry toward Latinos--Mexicans in particular. We’ve had in the Latino community a failure by elected officials to recognize when certain self-styled leaders make inflammatory statements or take a demagogic and racially provocative approach to Latino-black relations. And I think we’ve seen a failure in the established Anglo leadership to recognize this bigotry for what it is and to confront it as well.

A number of things have got to be made clear.

One is that as you bring in and represent groups that have lacked representation before, it is not to the exclusion of other groups.

African American politicians have got to recognize that their districts are changing and they may be, in several instances, the last African American to serve in that position.

They’ve got to recognize that they need to serve their entire constituency, everyone who lives in their district. That means their staff must reflect that and the issues they take up have got to reflect that.

It requires leadership on all sides.