Op-Ed: L.A.’s history of Latino-Black political conflict? It’s a curiously short tale
A new report by the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission (LHRC) paints a picture of an ongoing clash of cultures and the growing tensions between white and Latino immigrants.
A new report by the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission (LHRC) paints a picture of an ongoing clash of cultures and the growing tensions between white and Latino immigrants.
But that’s not exactly how history or politics go.
In fact, the report’s short narrative of the conflict – “The Problem of Whiteness: An Analysis of the Latino-Black Interaction Patterns and the Latino-White Relationships” – provides the more accurate picture of the current state of American politics.
The story begins in the late 1940s with a series of race riots that erupted after the passage of “the most vicious and racist immigration bill in American history,” according to the report’s authors, Robert B. Weadick and Maria Elena de la Nuez.
A war had been raging over whether Japanese-Americans, along with blacks and Hispanics who fled the war, were “illegal” immigrants or not. Racial antagonism flared up when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1952, which was, in part:
The most vicious and racist immigration bill in American history.
For those familiar with the history of interracial conflict today, the report’s author, Robert Weadick, and his co-author, Maria Elena de la Nuez, may seem like modern-day civil rights activists.
But in fact, the two were civil libertarians, and their work is a reminder that sometimes, history’s arc bends in the wrong direction.
But the story’s arc is decidedly in the right direction.
“We are not in a civil rights era, but the civil rights era did begin in the late 1950s and it continues there today, with the movement on the issue of immigration,” Weadick said.
The story’s narrative begins with the bill passed by Congress in 1952, and concludes with the 1994 death of Oscar Grant, a black civil rights activist, at the hands of a white police officer in South