The 'black-brown thing'

A frank and relevant discussion of American race relations in 2001 will lead, sooner or later, to the sticky subject of "the black-brown thing."

The census confirms that America's cities have been bronzed. In the last decade, the populations of 71 of the 100 largest cities have become less white and more Latino.

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These brown-and-white terms are sure to frustrate those who don't fit in either category. Latinos can relate. For 50 years, they've watched in frustration as news media, corporations, politicians and the entertainment industry defined race issues in black-and-white terms, even as the country was going Technicolor.

As badly ignored as the nation's 35 million Latinos have been, it has been worse for Asians, whose population in cities also increased over the last decade.

In fact, Asians are now one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the country. Latinos, meanwhile, will soon be the largest minority.

Question: What are you if you're still a minority but you're no longer the largest or among the fastest-growing? Answer: You might be scared.

If you're African American and living in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York or any of a dozen U.S. cities where comparable-sized populations of blacks and browns live side by side, you may be a little shaken.

As Latino immigrants spice up neighborhoods that were once mostly black, some African-American activists are adopting the view that the white nativists who warned about invading Mexican immigrants were on to something.

That view surfaced in last week's Dallas City Council election. Candidate Dwaine Caraway was one of four African-American contenders, along with one white candidate, vying to represent a district that, while heavily Latino, is more than 40 percent African American. He was the only one who found himself having to answer for previous -- and videotaped -- comments that some called "anti-Hispanic."

Last July, before a group of black Dallas business leaders, Caraway warned his audience -- and, by inference, the city's black population -- to wake up and smell the frijoles.

He talked about how things used to be in South Dallas (a predominantly minority area of town) and how they are now. In the 1960s, he said, when black families moved into what was once a white neighborhood, whites moved out.

Now, things have changed.

"You better wake up and look at your next door neighbor," Caraway advised the audience. "Because now your next door neighbor is Hispanic."

He must have meant, since the census reports that there are now more Hispanics in Dallas than blacks or whites, that there is a good chance your neighbor is one.

"And they're moving in," Caraway says on the videotape, getting more revved up. "And they're taking over. And they're right next door. And they're right across the street."

Saying that he had "no problem with Hispanics" (insert "some of my best friends ... " line here), Caraway tells his audience that he just wants blacks to be aware of what is going on "right under our nose."

Because I was dying to know what was going on, I asked Dwaine Caraway to clarify his comments. He declined to do so, on the record.

But in wrapping his remarks to the group, he did offer his own take on what he thinks is "going on" in Dallas, and it is similar to what I've heard like-minded African-American leaders say in other cities.

Again referencing Hispanics, Caraway repeats: "They're moving in. They're taking over. They're pushing us out."

In a television interview last week, Caraway was asked if his comments didn't harken back to the sorts of things that -- to use his own analogy -- whites said about blacks 40 years ago.

Of course not, he said, insisting that his comments were not made in a "racist context." Others will draw their own comparisons between the kind of language that once fueled white flight and the sort that today stirs black fright.

This tug of war is silly. Whether the issue is improving public schools, ending racial profiling, or wrestling control of the redistricting process to ensure minority representation, the interests of Latinos and African Americans are often more aligned than they are at odds.

On election day, Caraway, along with the white candidate, Ed Oakley, each topped the field with 37 percent of the vote, earning them spots in a June 2 runoff.

It seems that this city council candidate, and this familiar brand of fear-mongering, found a constituency. Then again, so did George Wallace.