When I was a small child, I was really looking forward to The Future: flying cars, jumpsuits with diagonal zippers, the whole bit. I envied a friend's little sister because she would grow up in a more futuristic world than I would. I was very excited when dumpy old 1965 turned into sleek new 1966 -- which, you have to admit, featured a particularly futuristic looking set of numbers.
Funny, though, how the future keeps turning out like the past, only dumberer. For example, the LA Times illustrates the future of urban politics in
Racial shift plays out in Lynwood politics
As African Americans lose numbers and influence to Latinos, the friction can be felt at City Hall and beyond.
By John L. Mitchell, Times Staff Writer June 5, 2007
For years, the battle for control of the city of
A former mayor is serving a 16-year sentence in federal prison for embezzlement. Five current and former City Council members have been charged with padding their salaries with public funds. And an effort is underway to recall four of the five current City Council members.
But beyond the allegations of graft and corruption, a different war — rife with racial and ethnic stereotyping — is being waged in the working-class city south of
Latinos, who make up more than 80% of the city's 72,000 residents, are vying for power with African Americans, who, despite smaller numbers, maintain considerable influence by virtue of superior voter strength in a city where 40% of the residents are foreign-born.
A decade ago, when blacks controlled the city's political landscape, Latinos complained that they were being denied city jobs and lucrative municipal contracts. Now Latinos dominate and African Americans complain of being frozen out.
The problem is emblematic of emerging tensions throughout
The tensions are playing out in cities such as
The black-Latino friction in a city such as Lynwood is exacerbated by a lack of resources and decent jobs and by poverty — all problems common to both groups, said Harry Pachon, a USC professor and head of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, which released a report in April titled "Beyond the Racial Divide: Perceptions of Minority Residents on Coalition Building in South Los Angeles."
One conclusion, he said, was telling.
"Each group is buying off on the negative stereotypes held by the majority [white culture], rather than questioning them," Pachon said. "Blacks say that Latinos don't take care of their housing, and Latinos felt that blacks don't value families as much."
In
White people have such amazing voodoo powers! White people don't even live in Lynwood, and yet they are still hexing minorities by remote control from over the horizon into not seeing each other as they really are -- rocket scientists and philanthropists, every one of them. Instead, evil white people are hypnotizing the black and brown residents of
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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Latinos driving blacks out of the neighborhoods from which blacks pushed out the whites. How to describe my reaction? I believe the word is Schadenfreude!
Has Harry Pachon ever questioned why stereotypes exist in the first place?
Anyway, I for one welcome this kind of diversity. G.W. has assured me that diversity is not to be feared. Has G.W. ever steered us wrong?
In the past, blacks have blamed whites for racism - for filling jobs with whites instead of blacks. Who will they blame in the future when all the formerly black jobs are filled by Hispanics, who were only let into this by Democrats (including blacks) in congress?
Connecting cause and effect has never been a black strength.
To paraphrase an 80s song: the future's so dark, I've got to wear night vision binoculars.
Don't kid yourself, Blacks experienced plenty of racism. Prior to the late sixties even in Southern California opportunities were non existent due to both law and custom.
Jim Crow, the color line, and segregation were real. They were also forty years ago.
Blacks prefer to focus on the struggles of before, against enemies that were beaten. Instead of the challenges of today. Which aren't going to be solved by yelling racism.
Sixty years ago Jackie Robinson could not find a hotel that would take him and had to stay at a church in traveling to Vero Beach to join the Dodgers. That was real. But literally history. Perhaps the lingering echoes are because the real thing was "loud" even if so long ago.
How come Latinos don't absorb anything else from whites--language, culture, academics--but they do absorb anti-black racism?
"Don't kid yourself, Blacks experienced plenty of racism." The trouble is, their identity continues to be founded upon the experience of racism, they have nothing else. Please check out my
post on this!
How do blacks and latinos even differ politically?
Socially conservative, economically liberal.
What are they fighting about specifically? Whether elected officials are light brown or dark brown?
jm
Oh, that was the 1950s future. There are plenty of other futures that seem ready to come true, like Blade Runner, where the rich are so separated from the poor they commute in helicopters, or Clockwork Orange, where street crime is out of control.
Here's a confession. I belong to WEDGE (Whites Emitting Divisive Group Energy), a group of otherwise ordinary citizens who've been concentrating together and sending hate waves to the city of Lynwood. We believe that it is only due to our collective power and focused hatred, skills honed by years of hexing California's prison system, that the blacks and Latinos living in Lynwood have been unable to turn that city into an idyllic oasis of multicultural cooperation and brotherhood. I reveal our group's complicity in these matters to ISteve.com for one reason only: the celebrated, insightful sociologists at UC Berkeley are on to us, and it is only a matter of time before they acquire the political backing, piles of grant money, and passionate media support necessary to expose our work and seal our doom.
Go ahead and break the story Steve. Better you than the enemy.
bwdave - Are individual members of WEDGE known as Wedgies?
Harry Pachon obviously wants to turn all brown skinned people against the dwindling numbers of light skinned people. But, wait, that started 20 years ago. Has Pachon ever had an original idea?
-fifi
"Don't feel too good. The blacks have to go somewhere. My guess is they will push whitey out again so the cycle can repeat itself."
You may be right, Kevin, but I wonder, for as the article states, in "Los Angeles County...the Latino population has surged as African American numbers have dwindled." Like whites, blacks are leaving the area, not relocating within it. Or are there parts of metro L.A. that have seen significant increases in the black population?
White people have such amazing voodoo powers! White people don't even live in Lynwood, and yet they are still hexing minorities by remote control from over the horizon into not seeing each other as they really are -- rocket scientists and philanthropists, every one of them.
Don't mock them, Steve. A famous black physicist by the name of Einstein had a name for this quite explicable phenomenon: spooky white action at a distance. What's that you say? Einstein wasn't black? Oh, don't worry. In centuries ahead, Afrocentrists will determine he was indeed black.
it's really far past time to stop using the words "Latino" and "Hispanic" to describe mestizos and american indians. not only is it wrong, it signficantly dumbs down the level of discussion.
let's review.
1) spanish, it's a white man's language, white guys in europe speak it, they forced american indians to speak it. thus, mexicans already speak a white language.
2) catholicism, it's a white man's version of christianity, white guys in europe practice it, they forced american indians to practice it. thus, mexicans already practice a white religion.
3) latinos, they are white guys from europe. for whatever reason, american indians magically turned into latinos after white guys invaded central and south america. strangley, they did not magically turn into anglos after different white guys invaded north america.
summary: the people in lynwood are very white in their culture. they speak a white language, practice a white religion, they even think they're white.
From a report on the not-as-famous-as-it-should-be 2003 Duke study:
Latino immigrants often hold negative views of African-Americans, which they most likely brought with them from their more-segregated Latin American countries, a new Duke University study shows.
The study also found that sharing neighborhoods with Blacks reinforced Latino’s negatives views, and reinforces their feelings that they have “more in common with Whites” — although Whites did not feel the same connection towards the Latinos.
“We were actually quite depressed by what we found. The presence of these attitudes doesn’t augur well for relations between these two groups,” says Dr. Paula D. McClain, a professor of political science at Duke University, who led the study along with nine graduate students.
The study, “Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Latino Immigrants’ Views of Black Americans,” is based on a 2003 survey of 500 Hispanic, Black and White residents in Durham, N.C., a city with one of the fastest-growing Hispanic population.
This study reiterated a similar conclusion reached a decade earlier out of Houston, which found that U.S.-born and foreign-born Latinos expressed a more negative view of African-Americans than Blacks expressed of Latinos. In both studies, it’s interesting to note, Blacks did not reciprocate the negative feelings.
"Blacks prefer to focus on the struggles of before, against enemies that were beaten. Instead of the challenges of today."
That handicap is so pervasive amongst all people. If Sun Tzu didn't mention it, he should have.
Further, people also get handicapped by wishing that "their" most hated enemy and the actual enemy doing them harm are one and the same.
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