Black-Latino racial tensions are on the rise in California

John Pomfret:

Large swaths of Los Angeles, such as Watts, a place that Earl Paysinger, the deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department described as an "ecosystem for African American culture," are now increasingly Hispanic. The nearby city of Compton, the birthplace of gangsta rap, is now 60 percent Latino. "The movement of Latinos into these communities has been nothing less than a demographic earthquake," Paysinger said.

Schools that for more than a decade had been predominantly black are now predominantly Latino and that shift has led to racial strife. In 2005, widespread fighting between Latinos and African Americans, sometimes necessitating lockdowns and the deployment of police officers, rocked 12 schools in Los Angeles County, said Marshall Wong, of the county's Commission on Human Relations.

Channa Cook, a teacher at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, said that even in her school, routinely regarded as one of the best in Los Angeles County, African American students each year skip school on May 5, the day when Mexicans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a 19th-century military victory over France. Mexican gangs have warned in graffiti that they will shoot blacks attending school that day.

"My first year here, I didn't believe it, but the students told me, 'No, Miss Cook, if you come to school you're going to get shot,' " said Cook who is African American. "When I arrived at class, all the black kids had stayed home."

Hate crimes experts also point to a worrying trend among the two communities in Los Angeles County. Unlike in the past when whites were involved in the lion's share of hate crimes, now, in anti-black hate crimes, 73 percent of the identified suspects are Latino and in anti-Latino crimes, 80 percent of the suspects are African American, according to a report by the county Commission on Human Relations.

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