Just when you thought things couldn’t get more interesting in the melodrama called Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to takeover the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)…it did. After the Mayor’s takeover legislation became a partial takeover legislation, after he lost a power play by the statewide and local unions (CTA and UTLA), then was signed by a Republican Governor not viewed as public education’s best friend, overcoming a major obstacle the state Democrats knew would sink the plan, only to have LAUSD file a lawsuit claiming the Mayor’s power grab as unconstitutional, then the nation’s second largest district’s school board decided to proceed with hiring a new superintendent without the input (or approval) of the Mayor. All of this masked in a community brawl that has all but split the black community, after not one black elected official stood with the Mayor (publicly—a couple stood with him undercover, way under cover, like so far back you could barely hear [or see] them) on the takeover plan. But the church and activist community stood with the Mayor (myself included), providing the Mayor sufficient cover so as not to be labeled as making “the Hahn mistake” of alienating the black community, en masse. A mistake Villaraigosa said he would never make. But he’s come close. His saving grace is that on education, he is right—something needed to be done and be done, NOW. Most of the black community agrees with that.

The Mayor covered himself with the old “divide and conquer,” and the politicos want to claim the Mayor backdoored them in going around them directly to the church leadership. Sounds a little like the wolf crying “wolf,” complaining about somebody else tricking the sheep before the wolf could—as divided as black politicians are on any given subject (pick one). Hell, it was the black politicians that showed the Mayor the door to the church in the first place. How do you think he knew where the door was to be able to go through it? Only he forgot to take the black politicians with him. So, the black politicians decided to facilitate the pick of the new school superintendent, and forgot to take the Mayor with them. This has been one true chess game to watch. The school board went and announced (with the Mayor traveling in Asia) its new pick, David Brewer. The school board raved about him. Insiders say he was the best candidate (by far) of a top notch bunch of a nationwide search. There were no “slouches” in the bunch, one insider claimed. David Brewer also happens to be Black, something few people anticipated given “chocolate” is no longer the “flavor of the month” in California, much less Los Angeles. But this was by no means anybody’s “affirmative action” hire. It does, however, create what we in the community call, “a situation.”

It proved to be the ultimate check position on a Mayor who’s vowed to fire any pick that he didn’t sign off on. Of course, the Mayor will not be able to step out like that without his cover—those black church leaders and community activists that have cast their lots with him. And those same preachers and activists have been checked because now we’re looking at “a brotha” to save our children. While I’m a firm believer that “every Black ain’t a brotha,” and “every smile ain’t friendly” (given how we’ve been played with the Clarence Thomases, Condeleeza Rices and the Larry Elders), I do believe that this selection creates a situation that none of us can ignore. The black community knows more than most that opportunities like these now come far and few in between (particularly in the post-Prop. 209 environment). Just like they would have had to give any superintendent half a chance to prove himself, the black community will have to give this superintendent, at least, half a chance to prove he’s for real. Based on his initial comments, he seems to be. The school board may have just pulled the cover off the Mayor. But just as you don’t ask someone do they love you on the first date or, you never try to pat a strange dog the first time you meet him (no matter how nice they appear), you never claim a dysfunctional school district saved before it actually is. LAUSD can’t fall any farther than it already has. The most non-conventional choices usually face the most impossible tasks. Put fixing LAUSD in that category.

Make no mistake about it, L.A. Unified Schools are f**ked up (with a capital F). Something had to be done. Both sides did what they thought they had to do. And I believe in “doing what you gotta do,” but now the situation becomes, will the Mayor be so caught up in the fact that he had no input on this choice that he puts the black community in the predicament of having to choose sides, before the battle to improve the schools even begins? With a brotha sitting across the table, too? Mayor Villaraigosa can’t risk his community cover coming off the bed he’s made. He now has to lay in it and, at least, pretend to sleep with enemy, with the covers on—for a minute.

It’s a situation, sho nuff.

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America. He can be reached at AnthonySamad.com.

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