Inglewood's ballot offers glimpse at Wal-Mart's future.

ON April 6, Wal-Mart will make history of sorts. In a special election the mostly black and Latino voters in Inglewood could green-light Wal-Mart's determined effort to skirt environmental and land use requirements in opening its first supercenter store in the Los Angeles area.

Wal-Mart currently has 20 stores in L.A. County, but the supercenters have become its bread and butter. It wants to put up 40 of them in California over the next four years. The stakes are high, and the Inglewood vote will be watched hopefully by many business leaders--and nervously by many local politicians.

At first glance, it seems far-fetched that black and Latino voters would have such an important say over a big ticket corporate and public policy measure. For decades, Wal-Mart was a staple in the big box-crazed suburbs. But Wal-Mart has also become the poster child for corporate malfeasance. It is accused of exploiting sweatshop labor in Asian countries, is the target of piles of gender and racial discrimination employee lawsuits and is branded a ruthless union buster.

Wal-Mart officials say this is anti-business propaganda, and that their stores offer thousands of jobs, increased tax revenues, and a massive selection of quality merchandise at bargain basement prices--as well as bankrolling an array of social and educational causes.

In 2002, Wal-Mart made its first big local foray by opening one of its regular stores in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles--the apparent answer to the desperate plea black leaders had been making to pump investment dollars into decaying urban communities.

L.A. officials and major corporations have largely failed to keep the mountain of promises they made to bring major business to the area after the 1992 riots. Many of the burned out stores and shops in South L.A. have been replaced with piles of morn and pop fast food stands, doughnut shops, hair and nail parlors, and liquor stores.

These have done little to economically resuscitate the area. The unemployment rate is still the highest in the county, public schools are an abomination, and accessible neighborhood services remain poor to non-existent.

Government hasn't been much help, either. A study by the National Center for Enterprise Zone research found that the much-touted enterprise zones have created minimal employment and few business opportunities for minority firms.

The ugly truth is that South Los Angeles and other economically stagnant urban areas continue to deteriorate because many banks, businesses and public officials still buy the racist fiction that these areas are wastelands of rot and ruin. They have horrific visions of their businesses going up in smoke or being hopelessly plagued by criminal violence.

Many banks, shackled by fear, indifference and blatant racial discrimination, are loath to provide loans and technical assistance to black and Latino owned small businesses in South Los Angeles. This feeds the popular notion that the area is a social and economic disaster zone.

Wal-Mart has funneled millions into a massive campaign to snatch the hearts and minds of black and Latino consumers and leaders. Despite the assault on its labor and environmental record by union and activist critics, the retailer has deftly sold itself as the corporate savior of economically undeserved South Los Angeles. The Inglewood initiative is a critical litmus test to determine how well Wal-Mart made its case.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black."