The Collaborative City

Opportunities and Struggles for Blacks and Latinos in U.S. Cities

John Betancur, Douglas Gills

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136536038
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This edited collection examines joint efforts by Latinos and African Americans to confront problems faced by populations of both groups in urban settings (in particular, socioeconomic disadvantage and concentration in inner cities). The essays address two major issues: experiences and bases for collaboration and contention between the two groups; and the impact of urban policies and initiatives of recent decades on Blacks and Latinos in central cities.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

JOHN J. BETANCUR
DOUGLAS C. GILLS

In 1982, African American and Latinos in Chicago organized as part of an unprecedented grassroots movement and coalition that led to the election of Harold Washington as the first non White mayor of that city. By 1989, this coalition had broken apart and the two communities were, in fact, in contention with each other over multiple issues (see Chapter 4). In 1989, after many failed attempts at unity in New York City, Latinos and Blacks coalesced to elect David Dinkins the first Black mayor of the city. After the defeat of Dinkins in 1993, their leadership parted company, suffering multiple losses in city political elections. This erosion has had serious negative effects on local public policy for both groups (see Chapter Three).

Even though both Chicago and New York are minority¹ majority cities, Latinos and African Americans have been unable to consolidate and sustain lasting political coalitions in these two places. While their electoral successes demonstrate that they can translate their shared power into significant improvements for their respective communities, these experiences, as well as those of several other big city coalitions, also reveal such coalitions’ failures to create long-term, positive effects on local public policy.

Blacks and Latinos have also engaged in joint actions of pressure, protest and disruption in the nonelectoral arena (see Chapters 3, 4, 8 and 9). The 1992 Los Angeles riots are a clear example of the disruption and chaos they can generate. Gains in education, housing and jobs, among others, testify to the great power of these initiatives and communities (see Chapter 3; also Mier 1993).

Regrettably, many initial gains have been lost during the implementation process or have been taken back, since these communities lack the institutional power and resources necessary to maintain them (Delgado 1994). Also, political conflicts between Latinos and Blacks, elites in particular—e.g., struggles for position or for control of public institutions, conflicts around distribution of goods and services—have set them back, often pitting one group against the other in the public and private arenas. Thus, while success of grassroots coalitional activities demonstrates the power of minorities when acting together, the conflicts show that they can cancel each other’s gains when acting in opposition.

As the system keeps failing these groups, the struggle for opportunity and resources needs to continue targeting the state very particularly. Ruled by a conservative ideology, the state is acting today to disclaim racism and the need for redress, while blaming Blacks and Latinos for their condition of underdevelopment. Thus, as both the private and the public sectors turn their backs on Blacks and Latinos, only self initiative keeps them going.

The situation calls for a new level of collective effort between African Americans and Latinos, and demands that they reassess opportunities and failures. Today, large and growing proportions of Blacks and Latinos are concentrated in the cities. Their majority in many of them provides the sociopolitical space for concerted action in both the electoral and non electoral arenas. Coalition around complementary agendas and policies can give them the political and community strength required to address their problems, at least locally.

This book explores Latino and Black and other relevant local experiences of collaboration and contention around policies and initiatives of advancement, in the context of recent global and national socioeconomic changes and changes in social policies. It examines these experiences to identify sources of success or failure, systemic inequities, possibilities of collaboration around common needs, and new approaches to common development problems. Moreover, aware of the contradictions that Latinos and Blacks confront—presumably resulting from the workings of the urban social system and its institutions—the book studies systemic and other sources of distress that can lead variously to unity or contention between them.

This work is important because Latinos and Blacks are unevenly incorporated in cities, yet are dominant populations within many of them. Collaboration may be the key to improving their condition. New policy approaches and organizing forms can make a difference for the majority who are low-income. At the same time, globalization poses challenges that need to be understood for effective strategizing (see Chapter 2). The place that these groups occupy within the global and urban political economy and the associations that they build may influence supranational and local politics and public policy formation. Certainly, this will have a bearing on the distribution of social resources, the substantive basis for most collective efforts in urban politics.

Searching for solutions together and participating in transformative dialogue² are critical because of the present deterioration of, or strain on, Black-Latino relations. Interactions among them have, perhaps, more impact on the politics and social policies of the nation and of selected cities than those of any other nationality groups. We need to learn about particular dynamics of the new political economy that bring Latinos and Blacks together or that set them apart. We must assess the capability of various strategies for community building, for facilitating collaboration, and for overcoming barriers to productive relations within and between these communities.

Three views of the difficulties of urban-based coalition efforts between Latinos and Blacks are explored here. First, separate cultural histories and racial or national differences explain their relative poor performances in the arena of sustained alliance building. Second, White elites are too dominant; their relative empowerment overwhelms efforts at change, especially when armed with the pervasive forces of racism and racial oppression. Third, activists and analysts have paid little attention to internal dynamics, such as class divergence, multi-nationality, and characteristics of the leadership strata, that emerge in political struggles and in collective efforts at reform. All these views highlight the roles played by racism and class dynamics, themes which are addressed in different ways by each of the chapters in this volume. The multiple analytical perspectives these chapters present are crucial for understanding Latino and Black relations and development possibilities and, thus, for developing strategies of action.

PURPOSES AND AIMS

This volume was triggered by recent local and national events such as the alleged split between Blacks and Latinos in cities like Chicago, New York and Miami; the elimination of government policies and programs of redress; and the condescending, racist national media projection given to Blacks and Latinos in the aftermath of the Rodney King police brutality trial verdict in Simi Valley and the riotous events in Los Angeles following the verdict. Not only have Blacks and Latinos been portrayed as the problem of the urban U.S.A., but rifts among them are being exploited to suggest new racial dynamics, in substitution for the majority-minority relationship.³ Such events sounded the alarm that the editors used to initiate a dialogue and bring together Latinos and Blacks to identify and discuss their common fate in cities, to examine ways in which policies can be reinvented in response to economic and political restructuring, and to develop new approaches for resisting the accumulated effects of racism in an environment of denial. It is time for these groups to confront their differences and to search for common ground toward the solution of many of the problems that they confront together in cities. It is time for voices other than those of the majority elites and the media to be projected, including the voices of people closest to the ground.

We believe that Latino-Black rifts result more from the competition and contestation of middle class elites than from the actions of grassroots activists and ordinary citizens. They are promoted by an environment of renewed racial tension, social polarization, neoconservatism, opposition to minority immigrants, the attack on social welfare and other policies that may signal a coded attack on Blacks and Latinos. Much of it has to do with external forces pushing them to compete against each other for a fixed set of resources and opportunities. Restructuring is a case in point: it forces them to contend with each other and with other non-racial minorities and groups in need of assistance for a substantially reduced social wage.

METHODS AND APPROACHES IN THIS VOLUME

This book promotes and contributes to a new dialogue between Blacks and Latinos around the problems faced by them in cities, the ways in which they are being addressed and the possibilities of working together to overcome these problems. It has been built around a group of authors who are active in the search for solutions to the problems of these communities.

The book evokes a discussion of the future with a more inclusive audience than those who traditionally chart the course of social and political relations. This is done, in part, by removing the discussion from a purely academic discourse and from the exclusive purview of political elites and by starting the dialogue between Latinos and Blacks themselves. The legitimacy and success of searching together, we believe, requires the input of a broader audience of actors engaged in social action and applied social problem-solving.

The articles in this volume are in the genre of social action research. They were written by people with organic connections to popular struggles and to activities of social, institutional and community change. The theme of consensus building and compromise is reflected in many of the contributions. The styles are intense and engaging. They manifest the dance between social action and scholarship where meaningfulness is an important ingredient (Mier 1993). While learning from the academic experiences of many of the authors, the chapters reflect the conviction and moral fervor of activists engaged in the struggle. It is as much a search for knowledge as the telling of insights and experiences gained in years of activism.⁴ Generally, the contributors adhere to an approach that brings scholarship and social science research to social problem solving. The social problem solving approach is certainly not without method. It assumes that representatives are involved who are most affected by the extant social conditions.

The dialogue we wish to engender is symbolized by the team approach to writing in many of the chapters. The book brings together diverse elements of the communities who rarely intentionally speak with each other. The authors, in fact, engaged in dialogue and networking around the production of this book.⁵ Most of the chapters are authored by teams of scholars, scholars and activists, scholar-activists, applied researchers and practitioners, and Blacks and Latinos mixed in multiple ways, at times with other individuals involved in the struggle.

The book brings together scholars and activists from across the country to share their experiences and research, exchange views, and to advance social action initiatives in cities like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Diego, Boston, and Los Angeles. It is intended to inform the joint struggles of Blacks and Latinos in these cities and efforts as well as a broad audience of scholars, practitioners, activists, and their supporters.

GENERAL THEMES

The roots of the tenuous-to-estranged relations between Blacks and Latinos are deep, complex and intricately bound to the core relations of the overall society. These roots will not be untangled easily; nor will unity, no matter how strongly desired, be readily achieved without serious collective efforts. Such efforts require honest engagement and commitment of time and resources to identify ways to meet the challenges posed by unity-building. Frank dialogues, centered on the external and internal forces shaping their mutual and reciprocal relations are essential. All chapters explore changes and new opportunities or obstacles to development in Black and Latino communities. The analyses point to systemic and policy factors that define minority development in terms of competition or confrontation over externally controlled, limited allocations. The chapters suggest that both, objective and subjective factors need to be considered in proposals for collective action.

Several themes are explored or emerge from the chapters: (1) the reality and the pursuit of diversity and the collective effort to affirm cultural and social difference; (2) the manifold societal, institutional and individual acts of racism, as they operate within and among communities of color; (3) the pursuit of and struggle for social, community and human capacity development and related efforts to overcome the effects of uneven development; (4) collective initiatives and struggles to attain democracy in public and civic life, including access to decision making on the basis of equitableness; and (5) exposure of systemic inequities that preempt development in these communities.

The book advances the hypothesis that while current material and objective factors are conducive for alliance building, the most significant factors are subjective or qualitative. They include (1) the level of development of leadership; (2) its strategic vision of social change; (3) its orientation toward the involvement of ordinary citizens emerging in struggles in community and institutional settings; and (4) the need for both communities to interact and learn about each other as a trust-building foundation. These factors are explored in chapters five, six and ten.

Diversity, as it is presented here, is complex. It has dynamic social bases and is not simply shaped by individual volition or external dynamics. It has multiple aspects. There is the diversity of the issues that we examine and the diversity of the fields of engagement of the contributors. There is the diversity of racially defined groups and nationalities that is crucial for the building of social justice. And there is the diversity within our communities that may be as much a source of tension as are racial and nationality diversity.

There is considerable evidence of a growing class divergency within the Black and Latino political communities. That divergency is between the leadership elite and a more affluent class, on the one hand, and the working poor and dispossessed, on the other. Some authors see these internal sources of divergence as the central factor shaping Black and Latino politics in the near future (Chapters 3,4, 5, 6 and 11). They argue that there are more possibilities for building united action and collaboration from below, among the masses, than between the affluent leadership of these groups. Developing a culture of collaboration requires more than willingness to conduct joint efforts (Chapters 4, 9, 11 and 12).

The second factor is the dynamic of racism and the meanings of race in the lives of Blacks and Latinos and in the reproduction of relations of oppression and privilege. The question is not whether rac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Restructuring of Urban Relations: Recent Challenges and Dilemmas for African Americans and Latinos in U.S. Cities
• Chapter 3: African Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York: Cycles and Circles of Discrimination
• Chapter 4: The African American and Latino Coalition Experience in Chicago Under Mayor Harold Washington
• Chapter 5: Race and Class Coalitions in the South
• Chapter 6: Displaced Labor Migrants or the “Underclass”: African Americans and Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia’s Economy
• Chapter 7: Pulling Together or Pulling Apart? Black—Latino Cooperation and Competition in the U.S. Labor Market
• Chapter 8: Can’t We All Just Get Along? Interethnic Organization for Economic Development
• Chapter 9: Building Networks to Tackle Global Restructuring: The Environmental and Economic Justice Movement
• Chapter 10: Black and Latino Coalitions: Means to Greater Budget Resources for Their Communities?
• Chapter 11: Community Economic Development and the Latino Experience
• Chapter 12: Understanding the Future: Toward a Strategy for Black and Latino Survival and Liberation in the Twenty-First Century
• Chapter 13: The Possibilities of Collaboration and the Challenges of Contention: Concluding Remarks
• References
• About the Authors
• Name Index
• Subject Index