When a black office-seeker runs against a white office-seeker in modern America, it is not uncommon for black voters to loyally support their guy in the 90 to 95 percent range.
Historically, this is an eminently logical and defendable sociological phenomenon.
Circularly, this brings us to the most fascinating Los Angeles race of the electoral season — state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas against Los Angeles City Councilman Bernie Parks for the Westside/South L.A. seat that Yvonne Brathwaite Burke is vacating on the County Board of Supervisors.
Even though the June 3 election pits two black politicians, racial sparks, curiously, have glutted the skies over this acerbic competition for months.
A Day in Culver City
The sweetly named essayist Betty Pleasant, a plain-spoken veteran of black newspapers, brings bristlingly provocative racial perspectives to this election that Westside voters should find illuminating.
In this week’s essay (wavenewspapers.com), one of Ms. Pleasant’s piques concerns Mr. Parks’ whereabouts last Saturday afternoon.
The former LAPD chief was billed as the headliner for a casual Meet the Candidate setting in Culver City, between 3 and 5 o’clock, at Fox Hills Park.
Flanked by two of his prominent backers, former Mayor Alan Corlin and former Vice Mayor Carol Gross, Mr. Parks arrived at 3:30 and spent close to two hours with about 30 persons.
According to Ms. Pleasant, Mr. Parks evidently was supposed to be elsewhere at the same hour. It wasn’t just that the candidate was a no-show, she says, but that he stood up a sizable crowd comprised of various ethnicities.
Would it have been a larger or smaller sin if the crowd had been of a single color? The designated bean-counter at Fox Hills Park reported that 60 percent of the crowd was black and 40 percent white.
In Ms. Pleasant’s words:
“I want to relate my great disappointment in Parks’ failure to show up for the big supervisorial candidates forum hosted Saturday afternoon by the South Los Angeles Alliance of Neighborhood Councils. While his no-show status disappointed me, it enraged the 200 people from eight neighborhood councils and the Korean Resource Center who gathered to question their councilman on why they should give him a promotion. His absence spoke volumes. … It should be noted, however, that Parks did appear at the candidates forum held earlier Saturday in West Los Angeles by the West L.A. Democratic Club and UCLA Government and Community Relations departments. But he totally ignored and disrespected the forum convened by his own multicultural South L.A. constituents. Why am I not surprised?”
For those who are closer to the periphery of the black community than the essayist, Ms. Pleasant’s reflections on her attitude toward former Mayor James Hahn’s firing of Mr. Parks as the police chief may be even more instructive.
Her salty telling demonstrates how faithfully political developments are viewed through racial lenses.
Ms. Pleasant writes:
“I was city editor of that other Black
newspaper six years ago when the predominantly White Police Protective League launched an attack on Parks which culminated in Hahn, the white mayor, cutting him loose, with the concurrence of the predominantly White Police Commission and City Council. Even though I had serious problems with Parks as police chief, I was incensed by what all those white people were doing to him and I used the bully pulpit of my paper to help whip up rage against those people, to circle the wagons against those people who were bringing down a Black man. Our support for Parks had nothing to do with his being chief, and everything to do with his being Black.
“Yes, the instinct to close ranks racially does come to the fore, and to quote my grandpapa again, ‘sometime it be like that.’ And it was like that then. That instinct caused Marion Barry to be re-elected mayor of Washington D.C. after the FBI videotaped him smoking crack cocaine before he was sentenced to prison for a drug conviction. We in L.A. did it when our current Latino mayor tried to promote his personal agenda by running his handpicked candidate for the Board of Education against our chosen incumbent, Marguerite LaMotte. We were gearing up to do it when that same mayor played musical Negroes with the Transportation Department manager’s job, and I dare say we will do it again if we perceive anything racially untoward happening to LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer.”
Only later, Ms. Pleasant says, did she realize that the full story had not been told publicly.
“According to insiders and Hahn confidants, Parks was blatantly and continuously insubordinate to the mayor. They report that Parks said ‘no’ to everything Hahn wanted him to do. Most of the things Hahn wanted him to do were mandated by the consent decree and if they were not done, the federal government was going to take over the LAPD. You can’t have a police chief telling the mayor ‘no.’
“It was clear that Hahn and Parks could not work together. That’s worst than those years we spent with Mayor Tom Bradley and Chief Daryl Gates not even speaking to each other. Hahn had no choice but to fire Parks. Hell, I would have fired him in a heartbeat myself — but I would have told the citizenry the reason, then we wouldn’t have had to flip-flop on Parks. We would have continued, unabated, to attack his leadership as chief of police. As grandpapa would say: ‘We woulda kept on keepin’ on.’”
