The conflicts
that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are having with the African
American community have taken an increased (and regressive)
posture, as the downtown government gossip tabloid, Los
Angeles City Beat, has weighed in on the matter - if you
want to call it that. In its “Frontlines” by-line last week,
writer Alan Mittelstaedt entitled the piece, “L.A. Sniper:
Antonio’s Negro Problem,” with a sub-caption of “How many times
can ‘Mayor Ambition’ get away with pandering to L.A.’s black
community?”
City
Beat prides itself on being a mix between the L.A.
Times, L.A. Weekly and the Federal Register, offering
mainstream and alternative commentary, while keeping the
L.A. “power establishment” plugged in to what’s going on
in City Hall, and white folks plugged into communities they
rarely frequent, namely the Eastside and the Southside of
the city. The fact that they would be particularly plugged
into the black community’s issues and the way they are framing
this issue, seem that City Beat is more interested
in stirring the pot than asking a question. And the fact
that it would refer to the African American community’s accountability
agenda as a “Negro Problem,” and refer to Blacks in a context
to which they have not been referred to (in the collective)
in over forty years (Blacks haven’t been Negroes since before
the Black Power movement started in 1965), lets us know,
quite succinctly, how the article capsulizes the racial posture
of its editors - and probably much of the downtown establishment.
There’s a whole history to African Americans being associated
as a “problem” in America’s post slavery social construct,
which I’ll explain in a minute. However, more relevant to
this point is that the Mayor does have a Negro problem.
It is not in the community, however. It is in his office.
Two
weeks, I took to task the Mayor’s firing of Gloria Jeff and the reality
(not perception) that he manipulates his appointment power,
with his hiring and firing authority of department heads, when
it come to the African Americans in the city. He frequently
convolutes the two issues and uses the often manipulated statistics
of racial/ ethnic “population parity” to justify his actions.
The day the commentary ran on Eurweb.com (which breaks two
days before the weekly print media), I received a call from
the Mayor’s “special assistant” to the black community (the
Mayor has no black deputy Mayor), Rev. Leonard Jackson, telling
me he’d like to meet to “go over my numbers” because he suspected
that he has information I do not have. I told him I didn’t
think so.
In
the nation’s
most diverse city, the Mayor’s appointments are public record
and every community keeps its own racial scorecard. Jackson
wanted to know my source. I told him that plenty of groups
have this information, including the black group headed by
Valerie Shaw (I couldn’t remember the name of the group). My
numbers have since been validated by two other non-black groups.
Jackson went back and told the Mayor, and his (white) Chief
of Staff called Valerie in and accused her of giving information
to the press. Now understand, Valerie Shaw has been a commissioner
for three Mayors and has a long history of advocating for African
American empowerment in City government. She is also a friend.
When I have it wrong, she tells me I have wrong — and when
I have it right, she’s tells me I’m on point. She told me I
was on point on this issue — but she didn’t give me the information;
I already had it. The more troubling aspect of this whole scenario
is that a so-called “African American” representative who is
in place to keep the Mayor up on black community issues for
the purpose of constructive resolution, “outted” this sister
on an issue of major concern to the black community. That’s
something a butt (crack)-kissing, boot-licking, buck-dancing,
head-scratchin’, stepin’ fetchit, schuffin’ a** Negro would
do.
Now,
is Rev. Jackson that kind of Negro? You can decide for yourself,
but I’ll never trust him again and here’s why: Rev. Jackson
seemed more concerned about protecting the Mayor than protecting
(and advocating for) African American interests. When Ms. Shaw
jammed him about it, he told her that he didn’t tell on her,
that the Chief of Staff heard himself because he was on the
line with Jackson when Jackson was talking to me. Now, I’m
used to the “devil being on the line” since my civil rights
days, so that’s no surprise. But for him to know and tell someone
that his “overseer” was on his line, means one of two things
(maybe both): either the Mayor’s office doesn’t trust Jackson
and has to monitor his calls, or Jackson has chosen to be used
in a way such that we can’t trust him when he calls or when
he is in the room. Either way, he’s a provocateur as far as
I’m concerned. He can’t represent African American interests
if he doesn’t have the independence to take a phone call or
keep a confidence. Nor can he speak up. I understand that the
only people the Mayor has around him who can speak up with
any degree of candor, are white people (even Latino activists
will tell you that; they call him Villa-La Raza - La
Raza, in this case, meaning more American than Mexican in a
cultural patriotism context). Everybody else has to blow smoke
up his butt to keep his oversized ego in tact. There is as
much suspicion about Villaraigosa in his own community as there
is in ours.
Is
it a problem? Well, anytime African Americans demand equality
and
accountability, it’s a problem. This “problem” conversation
started in the 1870s as part of the Redemption Period (1877-1896)
discourse that sought to try to determine what to do with Blacks,
now that they had their freedom, their social and political
equality, and were demanding economic parity in the midst of
a depression and an industrial revolution. The solution to
the “Negro Problem” was to repeal their political rights and
to exclude them from society, socially and legally — culminating
with the Plessy decision in 1896. Fifty years later,
society was still debating the "Negro Problem," as
the first ever international study on America’s race relations
was released by the Carnegie Foundation in 1944. Written by
Swedish sociologist, Dr. Gunnar Myrdal (because no American,
white or black, were viewed as being able to be objective enough
to write a study on race in America), the study was titled, “An
American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.”
For City
Beat to reference the black community in Los Angeles
as a “Negro Problem” certainly has a dual connotation which
they would not expect us to understand. But we do. The
city leaders don’t see any real value in the African American
demographic beyond its ability to elect a Mayor. If the
black community limits its involvement in civic affairs
to that, it is a problem and City Beat called it
(as offensive as it is). If L.A. Blacks are demanding an
equal power share in the economic and social affairs of
the city, and the Mayor chooses to pander rather than listen,
that’s a problem, too. But it’s not in the community, it’s
in the Mayor’s office and he’s needs to rid himself of “the
Negro perspective” around him before his alienation from
the black community becomes permanent.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist
Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing
director of the Urban
Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving
The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Click
here to contact Dr. Samad.