were attacked in both South Central LA and in Koreatown.
The 1993 mayoral election coincided with the sudden disappearance of a whole
generation of leaders. Within a very short span, Mayor Tom Bradley, Police Chief
Daryl Gates, District Attorney Ira Reiner, and county supervisor Kenneth Hahn
left office. Those who remained in office were either too raw and new, or too
tied to their own communities to build coalitions. Others made their deals with
Richard Riordan. Few who would lead at the grass roots had the clout or the
interest in building citywide coalitions. Never in the thirty-year span of
biracial politics had there been so few well-known people trying to do this work.
The most widely known progressive leaders in the city was probably the new
police chief from Philadelphia, Willie Williams.
Beyond the fall of these leaders was the loss of confidence created by the
devastating violence of 1992. The Watts uprising of 1965 brought confidence to
progressives. They were out of power, and could view the violence as a failure
of the conservatives sin power.(Sonenshein) No such view could be credible in
1992, after nearly twenty years of biracial liberal rule. The fiasco of turning
over the reconstruction of South Central to businessman Peter Ueberroth bespoke
a sense of weakened legitimacy at city hall. And would that not be indirectly an
argument for the election of a businessman like Riordan a year later?
Conclusion The 1993 election of Richard Riordan was a [powerful defeat for
progressive politics in LA. Already fading as the new decade came in, the ruling
biracial coalition lost its way completely after the civil unrest of 1992. With
its leaders aging or leaving office, with an electorate disenchanted with
government policies and with the state of their city, circumstances favored the
conservative outsider with unlimited funds and a simple message.
But the meaning of the election was much more complex than a simple shift to the
right. The ideological basis of coalition politics remained intact, and in that
sense the Riordan campaign represented an accommodation to the overall
liberal/moderate nature of the city’s voters. Even an ineffective liberal
candidate got 46 percent of the vote. The ideological potential also counted for
less than in the past, now that the city was filled with interest conflicts and
uncertain leadership. After Yorty’s defeat in 1969 to Tom Bradley, liberalism
was weaker as an electoral base than it is today, but leadership and interest
were far stronger in the direction of successful coalition and victory.
The persisting debate between rainbow and biracial coalition politics finally
led to the defeat of both. The rainbow model, by contrast to the interracial
approach, is too narrow to be successful. If progressives concede the bulk of
the White vote to the conservatives, and confine their minority appeals to the
rainbow ideology, then they will be facing defeat for a long time to come.
Latinos and Asian Americans must be approached on their own terms, not simply as
shades of the rainbow. Their interests are unique, and their concerns must be
taken seriously. Jews should not be arbitrarily excluded from progressive
coalitions, they still represent the single greatest link between minority
communities and Whites. It is crucial to build cross-town coalitions, not simply
to try and build an inner-city alliance against everybody else.
To hold power, progressives need to realize that the other side is more
formidable than in the past. Conservatives have gone beyond trashy demagoguery ?
or at least they do not need to prime the pump anymore ? and are arguing that
they can govern. This approach makes them a devastating threat to take control
of the center. And the center matters again in urban politics; if progressives
want justice and conservatives want peace, the balance of power increasingly
rests with those who want both peace and justice.
In the broadest sense, the 1993 LA elections shows the importance of the debate
between biracial and a rainbow model of minority politics. In the long run, the
cost of unexamined assumptions on this question may be profound. ? the rollback
of hard-won minority political gain. To apply the lessons of biracial coalition
politics to a new generation of progressives in LA is the most important task in
the years to come.
Bibliography
Boyarsky, Bill. “Competing for Jobs in the New LA,” Los Angeles Times, June 19,
1992., sec. B, p.2.
Browning, Rufus, P., Dale Rogers Marshall and David Tabb, Protest is Not Enough:
The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in City Politics (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984).
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power (New York: Vintage
Books, 1967).
Horton, John. “The Politics of Ethnic Change: Grass Roots Responses to Economic
and Demographic Restructuring in Monterey Park, California,” Urban Geography
10:6 (1989): 578-592.
LASUI (Los Angeles Survey of Inequality) Focus Group Interviews, 1992.
Oliver, Melvin L., and James H. Johnson, Jr., “Interethnic Conflict in an Urban
Ghetto: The Case of Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles,” Research in Social
Movements, Conflict, and Change 6 (1984): 57-94; US Bureau of the Census.. op.
cit.
Oliver and Johnson, see above; Also by Oliver and Johnson, “Interethnic
Minority Conflict in Urban America: The Effects of Economic and Social
Dislocations,” Urban Geography 10 (1989): 449-463.
Ramos, George and Tracy Wilkinson, “Unrest Widens Rifts in Latino Population,”
Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1992.
Sonenshein, Rafael J., Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los
Angeles (Princeton: NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
US Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing. (Washington, DC: US
Bureau of the Census, 1970).