The Missing Link

About a month after the riot a friend sent me a copy of an unsigned editorial from a Mexican-American newspaper, La Prensa San Diego, dated May 15. What other Latinos had begun to insinuate, La Prensa angrily spelled out: Blacks were not victims. Latinos were victims. Blacks were perpetrators.

Though confronted with catastrophic destruction of the Latino businesses, which were 60% of the businesses destroyed, major looting by Blacks and by the Central Americans living in the immediate area and a substantial number of Hispanics being killed, shot and/or injured, every major television station was riveted to the concept that the unfolding events could only be understood if viewed in the context of the Black and White experiences. They missed the crucial point: The riots were not carried out against Blacks or Whites, they were carried out against the Latino and Asian communities by the Blacks ! What occurred was a major racial confrontation by the Black community, which now sees its numbers and influence waning.

Faced with nearly a million and a half Latinos taking over the inner city, Blacks revolted, rioted and looted. Whatever measure of power and influence they had pried loose from the White power structure, they now see as being in danger of being transferred to the Latino community. Not only are they losing influence, public offices, and control of the major civil rights mechanisms, they now see themselves being replaced in the pecking order by the Asian community, in this case the Koreans.

The editorial ended by declaring "the established Mexican American communities" to be "the bridge between Black, White, Asian and Latinos." It said, "They will have to bring an end to class, color, and ethnic warfare. To succeed, they will have to do what the Blacks failed to do; incorporate all into the human race and exclude no one."

There was, to put it mildly, little in that editorial to suggest that desperately poor, fifteenth-generation African-Americans might be within their rights to resent sudden, strong, officially tolerated competition from first-generation Latin Americans and Asian-Americans. But La Prensa's anger clearly arose not just from the riot, perhaps not mainly from the riot, but from frustration at television's inability to see Latin Americans as a part of the main action at all.

Here's what strikes me about both Navarette's column and the Atlantic Monthly piece: both take the notion that blacks and Latinos see themselves as competing identity groups as given, rather than as an unfortunate consequence of historical racism prolonged by flawed public policy and identity politics.

As David Menefee-Libey, my old college professor, told me yesterday, race, gender and income are the three factors in American history that have been used to create legal distinctions among citizens. Today neither men and women nor rich and poor people are seen as homogeneous voting blocks to be won en masse.

Racial groups, however, are treated as homogeneous groups whose racial identity is their defining characteristic. We treat social welfare spending as though it is a racial matter. We act as though the color of the people who resettle New Orleans is important. We institutionalize affirmative action policies that make race a defining characteristic in who gets a job or a spot at an elite college.

All these policies and behaviors, whatever their overall merits, have benefits. They also ensure that American society won't move past racial identity as a primary factor that defines us.

As long as blacks and Latinos feel that they are competing against one another, economically and politically, as racial groups--rather than competing as individuals in society against other individuals--tension seems to me not only predictable, but inevitable.

An alternative is possible: colorblind policies and social norms that treat citizens as individuals rather than as members of racial identity groups.