District Pulls Together to Desegregate Diversity

On Feb. 20, 1970, this newspaper carried a story that began:

Creation of a Black Education Commission to deal with the failure of many Negro pupils in the Los Angeles city school system was approved by a 4-3 vote of the Board of Education Thursday.

The brevity of the report--just seven paragraphs, with no byline--suggests that this board’s action was not considered particularly momentous. After all, there was precedence:

The group is similar to the Mexican American Education Commission, the first body of its kind established by the school board last year.

That commission was formed after a series of student walkouts in East L.A. focused public concern on school problems there. Apparently it was thought these commissions could resolve problems within a few years.

The black commission will function for three years and will be provided with $10,000 to operate, an administrative secretary and office space at school district headquarters.

These commissions, as it turned out, survived until just recently, and along the way inspired the creation of five other affinity-group commissions: Asian Pacific Americans (1971), American Indians (1976), Special Education (1979), Gender Equity (1980) and Gays and Lesbians (1991). An Armenian Education Commission was being formed earlier this year, when--thanks to Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative-action initiative--the school board signaled its intention to abolish all of these groups.

And in their place, it was decided, there should be one Human Relations Commission.

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Human beings--what a concept!

Last Tuesday’s unanimous vote may have been something of a formality, but it was also a little milestone in the great American adventure. There are always storm clouds on the horizon, it seems, but right now this feels like a warm ray of sunshine.

The creation of a Human Relations Commission does not guarantee an improvement in human relations, but at least it reflects the spirit that we’re all in this together. “Identity politics,” this boiling stewpot of special-interest groups, will always be there. But at least the L.A. schools have put an end to this particular form of institutionalized segregation. The human relations have now been officially desegregated.

The idea of a single, diverse group addressing a diversity of issues is preferable to commissions advancing their particular agenda, or taking sides.

Evangelina R. Stockwell worked with these commissions for four years after taking on the duties and title of “assistant superintendent for intergroup relations.” Stockwell didn’t want to rehash specific conflicts, but she said it wasn’t unusual for the old commissions to clash.

Student racial tensions, for example, sometimes placed the African American and Latino commissions in adversarial roles. It isn’t hard to imagine other scenarios. A respected special-education teacher who accuses an Asian administrator of sexual harassment could involve three commissions--four if they’re gay.

History, considered in retrospect, always has a way of seeming inevitable. The emergence of identity politics within the Los Angeles school system in many respects mirrored American society as a whole.

When affirmative action policies were first enacted in the 1960s, the programs were widely viewed as temporary means to redress social injustice. Some 30 years passed until the California backlash of Proposition 209. Similarly, it seems that few people back in 1970 would have anticipated that the district’s Mexican American and black commissions would have lasted nearly three decades.

The commissions had no legislative powers, but wielded influence as advisory bodies to the school board. They also were called upon to help mediate disputes involving their constituencies.

The various commissions often clashed on different issues, but they united last spring to fight for their own survival. In time they realized it was hopeless, and now they have been asked to nominate persons for the new commission.

The defunct commissions were, in a sense, victims of their own success. The full flowering of identity politics, after all, helped form another identity group. Everybody in this group was an angry white male, raising accusations of reverse discrimination. (He was big before the soccer mom set the American agenda.)

Those angry white males--I truly was merely ambivalent--needed allies to pass Proposition 209. They needed women and members of minority groups who, for whatever reasons, had come to the conclusion that affirmative action was more of a problem than a solution. For those who weren’t voting out of anger, the sense of Balkanization created by identity politics was one of the strongest arguments in favor of Proposition 209. This was the argument that as long as social institutions judged people by the color of their skin, they would never truly be judged by the content of their character.

Even without Proposition 209, the proliferation of so many commissions and the ever-growing diversity of Los Angeles would have led to the conclusion that these groups were more of a problem than a solution. When would it end?

The abortive Armenian commission, after all, had been proposed by the superintendent’s Armenian Task Force. Perhaps it would just be a matter of time before the district’s Islamic Task Force would think in bigger terms as well.

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That 1970 Times story notes that the board’s “three conservative members” opposed the Black Education Commission because, they said, it would “undermine advisory councils at local schools” and was not the best use of tax funds. And remember, the commission’s initial expense was $10,000, plus a secretary’s salary.

The seven commissions that were abolished each had full-time executive directors and collectively cost more than $700,000 annually, Stockwell said. More than 200 volunteers were involved, some of whom participated on more than one commission. The Gender Equity Commission alone had more than 40 members.

The new commission is expected to cost less than $700,000, but it will have an executive director, a staff of six assistants and a few secretaries, as well as more than 50 volunteer members. Stockwell points out that there are, after all, still plenty of human relations in a huge district in which students speak more than 80 languages.

District officials are now searching for a director. At Tuesday’s meeting, board member Barbara Boudreaux suggested a few qualifications. The executive director, she said, should be “free of biases” and someone “who gets along with people.” And this too: “. . . a person who can walk on water.”

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.