Amid the Grandstanding, Real Rights Issues Languish

It’s been depressing to watch in recent years as many of the most prominent organizations in Los Angeles -- especially those that have been committed by history and tradition to advancing minority rights and civil liberties -- have succumbed to the lure of headline grabbing. These days their silly positions, irrelevant battles and trivial pursuits seem to be reaching fever pitch, running the risk of demeaning the very real challenges that remain before us.

Consider, for instance, the civil libertarians at the ACLU who have elevated the removal of the cross on the Los Angeles County seal to a titanic 1st Amendment struggle. What’s that all about?

It makes for great headlines, but is it really the kind of pressing church-state issue that requires the ACLU’s energies and resources? Of course it’s not.

There are profound issues related to the 1st Amendment -- taxpayer dollars going to faith-based institutions with few safeguards on how the money is spent, religion intruding into government ceremonies, etc. -- but the county seal’s cross isn’t one of them.

Or how about the once-noble California NAACP, which seems to have nothing more important to worry about these days than Secretary of Education Richard Riordan’s recent gaffe in which he spoke to a child in an uncivil manner. The president of the California State Conference of the NAACP ricocheted from reporter to reporter, newscaster to newscaster, decrying Riordan for “know[ing] nothing about children and having even less respect for them.”

Such comments, clearly designed to put the NAACP back into the news pages, were made at a time when African American students are, on average, graduating from high schools across the country with achievement levels four years behind their white and Asian counterparts. When SAT scores for black students are nearly 25% below those of whites and Asians. Rather than preen in the Klieg lights about an insignificant comment (made by a man who, we should note in the interest of full disclosure, chairs our organization), perhaps the NAACP’s leadership should focus on more meaningful problems.

Then there’s the assault by LAPD officers on Stanley Miller. The reaction of civil rights leaders over the last several weeks -- from the innumerable press conferences to the “Day of Dialogue” meetings to the multiple investigations, commissions and rallies -- has elevated the incident to a full-blown “civil rights” extravaganza. This before there has been any evidence offered that race was the, or even that it was one of the, motivating factors in the assault.

Rather than expend our limited public relations capital on facts not yet in evidence, wouldn’t we be better focused on the 44% of black high school dropouts who are permanently out of work nationally, or the 25% of black men who are unemployed all year long?

Really, who deserves our concern and attention more -- Stanley Miller, who was not badly hurt, or Miguel Gomez, the young man shot dead in Boyle Heights as he painted over gang graffiti at nearly the same time the Miller chase occurred?

Unfortunately, there’s a price for invoking sacred causes for symbolic gestures. In the eyes of the public, if the 21st century’s civil rights struggle has been reduced to worrying about a swollen cheek on a convicted felon, a rude comment to a young girl or a tiny cross on a county seal, things can’t be all that bad.

We could all benefit from a little less yearning for the spotlight combined with a closer examination of what really matters in the community around us.