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06/14/2008: "Black-Latino racial tensions, not gangs, are at the heart of LA's violence"

As a Latino raised in East Los Angeles, and as the elected sheriff of Los Angeles County for the last decade, I have seen many sides of the race issue. I have lived it, in fact.

So let me be very clear about one thing: We have a serious interracial violence problem in this county involving blacks and Latinos.

Some people deny it. They say that race is not a factor in L.A.'s gang crisis; the problem, they say, is not one of blacks versus Latinos and Latinos versus blacks but merely one of gang members killing other gang members (and yes, they acknowledge, sometimes the gangs are race-based).

But they're wrong. The truth is that, in many cases, race is at the heart of the problem. Latino gang members shoot blacks not because they're members of a rival gang but because of their skin color. Likewise, black gang members shoot Latinos because they are brown.

[ There has to be more to it than the hue of the skin of course. There is group solidarity through identity and there is rivalry over resources and territory as an ethnicity although this is not as direct as gang competition. ]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-baca12-2008jun12,0,6037482.story