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>> 117 4 Racism or Power? Explaining Perpetrator Motivation in Interethnic Cases When Channise Davy first laid eyes on the cream-colored, three-bedroom bungalow on a peaceful street in Duarte, a small town in Los Angeles County, California, she thought she had found the perfect place to call home. The charming little house was accented by red and yellow roses in the front yard, with a nectarine tree, a red swing set, and a small gazebo in the backyard. In April 2009, the thirty-one-year-old black beauty salon owner moved her four children from North Hollywood into the lovely house in Duarte. Davy did not think much about the fact that her family would be the first blacks to move to their block. Unfortunately, as Davy later learned, others in the neighborhood found her race to be significant. About a month after Davy had moved in, she entered the front door of the house to find the hardwood floors, mirrors, and televisions defaced with the word “nigger.” The vandals also destroyed furniture and ransacked dresser drawers. No room in the house was left untouched. The scope of the violence impressed law enforcement. “As far as hate crimes go,” Sergeant Tony Haynes of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department later said, “it’s probably one of the worst ones I’ve seen in my career.”1 Davy turned down city officials ’ offers to send volunteers to clean up. She and her family moved out immediately after the crime, with no intent to return. Though Sergeant Haynes had not seen worse hate crimes, at first glance this incident seems identical to other contemporary acts of antiintegrationist violence in that it fits the following pattern: a black person moves to a neighborhood and soon after experiences vandalism accompanied by racial slurs and epithets. A closer look at Davy’s case reveals that the harassment directed at her was slightly different from 118 > 119 violence. If members of minority groups are committing crimes against other minorities, are the perpetrators motivated by ideological racism? Are such crimes struggles for turf? Blacks and Latinos in America, and in Los Angeles The acts of move-in violence I describe in this chapter involve crimes committed by Latinos against African Americans in Los Angeles. “Latinos ,” and nothing more specific, is how the perpetrators are described in court cases, human rights organizations’ materials, and press accounts. This is slightly problematic because the term “Latino” is a catchall phrase that encompasses people of Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, and South and Central American descent. This generic lumping under the term “Latino” of individuals from different countries with different national histories does not do justice to the complex relationship that Latinos from different regions have with African Americans. For instance, as the political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson notes, due to the history of political oppression that drove Central Americans to the United States, blacks, Salvadorans, and other Central Americans as a group have a relationship characterized by cooperation rather than friction.3 This applies as well to Salvadoran gang members, who are not known to be involved in turf wars with black gangs. Context matters as well. Blacks in Chicago and New York have lived in close proximity with Puerto Ricans and have cooperated since the 1960s on electoral and housing issues and school reform.4 In addition to the countries of origin of Latino immigrants, in any given geographic space, Latinos may have a variety of other issues that influence their perspectives on race relations. In Los Angeles, the very diverse Latino community includes individuals of Mexican and Central and South American descent; it includes seventh-generation Californians and people who have only just arrived, either legally or illegally.5 These differences among “Latinos” are added to economic, political, educational, and religious backgrounds, all of which may influence their perspective on—and consequently their interactions with—African Americans. Despite the diversity of the Latino community in Los Angeles, there is evidence of several moments of cooperation between Latinos of many 120 > 121 early 1990s, members of Latino gangs began to target African Americans living in predominantly Latino neighborhoods.11 The commission separated out the number of antiblack hate crimes committed by Latinos in 1998 and 1999. In 1998, 76 (34 percent) of the 219 antiblack hate crimes reported to the commission were committed by Latinos. After 1999, the number of cases in which blacks were attacked by Latinos showed blacks to be a large percentage of hate...

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