At a volatile community meeting on July 28, the Los Angeles Times reported that anger boiled over at illegal immigrants. The report characterized the two-hour event titled "Blacks and Hispanics: Allies or Rivals?" as a public airing of views that were often muttered in L.A. but "not spoken out loud."
Much of that anger was directed at Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks by the audience, who heckled the former Los Angeles Police Department chief throughout the evening with a steady chorus of scoffs, boos and jeers. A lot of the blatant racist feedback was directly at the African American public servant from blacks --- and even Hispanic citizens --- at the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny's headquarters near Pico and La Cienega boulevards.
For Parks, elected in March 2003 as the Eighth District Council representative and previously a police officer for 38 years, it was an eye-opening experience.
"What was shocking to me was that these black people, brown people, a few whites and even a couple of Asians were all spinning the same venom as though the illegal immigrant was the cause of all their problems," the 61-year-old councilman told The Tidings in an interview Aug. 5. "It was probably the largest group of outwardly biased people that I've ever been in a room with knowingly --- 50 to 60 of them. And not one person in the audience ever expressed a different view. Even the commentator was clearly of like mind as well as three of the six-member panel."
The watchword at the gathering, according to Parks, was "American." People proclaimed they were American because they were simply born in the United States. The other thing he noticed right away was how members of the audience who rose to speak made no distinction between illegal immigrants and Hispanics who were legal immigrants or who were even born in this country.
"They just viewed, blanketly, brown people as all illegal immigrants," he reported.
When the former LAPD chief brought up that fact that many undocumented immigrants today came from Canada, Ireland, Asia and Africa, he was loudly booed. He also reminded the audience how their own ancestors had often received a hostile reception to America's shores.
Who's American?
"I told them what you blatantly label is the same thing other folks said about you when you came in the community," he recalled. "When white people looked at you and said, 'You shouldn't live in this community!' When people had covenants on their property that said you couldn't buy that property because of your race.
"I even asked this one black guy, 'How can you sit there and say that when your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were lynched for just being the color you are? Your ancestors got on a boat and just happened to come to the United States. You say you're an American. But all that means is you survived, your grandparents survived lynchings, and someone thought enough of creating laws to allow you to be legally educated. And you're going to turn around and say these other folks are less than you.'"
The councilman added, "It was a mind-boggling experience," shaking his head.
Other participants --- including the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, who moderated the meeting --- claimed that black children were dropping out of middle and high school because their classes were "overwhelmed" with illegal Hispanics.
First of all, Parks countered at the July meeting, Hispanic families who live in the neighborhood have as much right as any family to send their kids to public school. And, second, he pointed out that black adolescents were dropping out of school because of the terrible education they had received in the primary grades, which doomed them to later academic failure.
Another man at the meeting rose to say Hispanics were taking away good jobs in construction because they were willing to work for lower pay. But, the councilman responded, whenever he drove past a building site, he saw mostly white males working --- skilled laborers who had a trade, unlike most black men.
Parks shook his head again, recalling the hostile confrontation.
"Most of their statements that evening boiled down to 'I've arrived and you haven't,'" he said. Later that night at home, the father of four told his wife, Bobbie: "Every time you think you've made some progress, you run into something like that meeting when you say, 'Man, there's a whole lot of work to be done.'
Still, the councilman, whose Eighth District includes Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw, Leimert Park, West Adams, Jefferson Park and Chesterfield Square (areas west and southwest of downtown Los Angeles), said he was optimistic about the future of African Americans and Hispanics in Los Angeles. If he didn't believe that, he said, he couldn't come to work at City Hall.
Moreover, he had learned that some local social problems, like poverty, education and crime, were so overwhelming that no public servant was going to solve them in one fell swoop --- or even a decade.
The key, he stressed, was not to become "totally hopeless and helpless," and to deal with incremental issues where you could see success.
'Small hopes'
He pointed out a number of projects initiated by his office, including: the Pie Program at Crenshaw High School that brought Hispanic leaders to address students about community issues; the 1,000 units of market-rate housing that will soon start construction; a new $100 million government building planned at 83rd and Vermont; youth leadership councils operating out of his field office and three new 20-minute AIDS testing centers
"No, we're not going to knock out hunger in 10 years," he acknowledged. "But if we can help you get a job, and your kids get educated without being injured, then there's a hope of those kids getting a grip on something. Those are the small hopes that they have and can build on."
Bernard Parks experienced many of his own hopes and dreams during his years at local Catholic schools in Los Angeles: first at St. Patrick and Holy Spirit, and finally St. John Vianney High School, which is now named Daniel Murphy High School.
"You tell people this and they look at you strange, but there's not a day that passes that I don't appreciate the 12 years of Catholic education and discipline that was instilled in me," he said. "Just the values you received to know right from wrong --- not that you did right all the time, but you knew the difference. And those are things that every day you make decisions based on.
"You had a pride instilled in yourself because of the people who took the time to educate you. I mean, Sister Mary Andre, Sister Rose Dolores, Sister Charlene. And the Dominican brothers at St. John's. I could have gone a hundred different ways, except they were there. When you got on that school campus, they took care of you. They always brought you back to the center, and they were your anchor.
"Everybody was expected to take a leadership role, whether you were on the football field or in a classroom," he noted. "And they gave you those expectations, so you didn't walk around wondering, 'Can I do that?' They made it clear that with hard work, you could do anything you want."
Catholic school gave the career public servant one more thing.
"Service was also instilled, when you were collecting those little pagan baby boxes and collected money for this or that," Parks said. "You got that there was more to life than just you succeeding. Life was about helping other people." |