The L.A. reality: whether it's public projects or employment, African Americans have been excluded in California's largest city.

THOUGH HIS VOCAL CORDS HAD NOT yet recovered from throat surgery, Gov. Pete Wilson traveled to Los Angeles in July to sound a rallying cry. He announced an executive order that rescinded affirmative-action edicts and positioned himself as the national front-runner in the anti-affirmative-action movement.

Wilson's choice of L.A. was strategic. California is spearheading the national anti-affirmative-action debate, and L.A. has come to symbolize the most ardent resistance within the Golden State.

The City of Angels has been less than angelic to African Americans, excluding their meaningful participation in everything from the 1984 Olympics to public contracting and employment. While some in Los Angeles have fought hard to exclude blacks and other minorities, the African American community has been agonizingly slow in responding. Traditional black organizations such as the NAACP and the Urban League have issued statements defending affirmative action, but have done little else.

Unlike other cities--where African Americans form considerable voting blocs that keep some politicians from retreating on affirmative action--L.A.'s black population hasn't mustered any significant backlash at the polls. (The black population in Los Angeles decreased from 17% in 1980 to 14% in 1990, according to Census Bureau statistics. African Americans have also failed to form coalitions with other minority groups to protect common interests.

Joe Hicks, a former director with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says he is troubled by the relative silence on the issue. This silence, he believes, will allow the anti-affirmative-action tide to gain a momentum that will be hard to break. "People aren't vocal enough," he says. "For us, this is a survival issue, and we have to cast it in that light. If we don't, white forces can snatch it from us."

Though in the early stages, some efforts to build a black front on affirmative action in Southern California are under way. Hicks is spearheading Californians for Affirmative Action, a statewide coalition planning educational forums, voter registration drives and other activities. State Sen. Diane Watson is heading a similar group, the Coalition for Affirmative Action. Watson says she will use L.A. as a launching pad for efforts to raise the visibility of the pro-affirmative-action movement. One goal is to produce TV spots that match the emotional energy of the Civil Rights Initiative attack. "We have to put our most compelling faces forward," Watson says. "We're going to have to put our most cogent arguments together, and convince people that affirmative action does not mean stigmas or set-asides."

While Gov. Wilson's camp has long insisted that he is simply trying to establish a color-blind society, his critics say they see nothing but political cynicism at its most blatant. "There's a right-wing rise," says Hicks, "so moderate Republicans like Wilson are taking a David Duke line just to stay in power. What we're fighting now as black people is a full-fledged assault on our rights."

A LEGACY OF NONCOMPLIANCE 

The state Supreme Court ruled last year that L.A. can require firms seeking large city contracts to recruit minorities and women. But those requirements have softened on paper while the city gathers new data on diversity needs. Senior assistant city Attorney Pete Echeverria admitted that the language might get even softer in light of the recent Supreme Court Adarand ruling, which drastically limits the scope of affirmative-action programs.

Large-scale incentives for black-owned businesses in L.A. have had limited success. In 1984, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC) enacted an aggressive policy in granting product licensing, contracting and employment opportunities to minorities, women and the disabled. Product licensing, which gave small businesses potentially grand opportunities for growth, promised the most long-term benefits. While 12 of the 21 firms that were granted licenses and sublicenses were indeed owned by African Americans, a third of them later reported insolvency largely because the LAOOC did not force big corporate sponsors to buy Olympic products from them. Nor did the committee regulate minority involvement in Olympic construction sites, where black employment was negligible. Since the LAOOC received no public funding, the government had no role in setting its affirmative-action policies.

Even the $2.2 billion Century Freeway Project, which cut a wide path through South Central and was court-ordered to employ local people, put its total freeway construction force in the designated "freeway corridor" at only 16% minority in a 1992 report.

Some black contractors say they indeed feel like they're in a state of suspended animation. Jake Bellamy, vice president of the Southern California Black Carpenters Association, has joined the fight to employ more black people at construction sites at the Martin Luther King Jr./Charles Drew Medical Center, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and elsewhere. "There are no watchdogs for blacks in affirmative action," Bellamy says. "Even though a lot of us got work rebuilding after the riots, the local government has really dropped the ball in enforcing affirmative action with general contractors on big projects. There won't be any real change until we get that commitment."

A county survey of its affirmative-action programs bears out Bellamy's concerns. Despite a 62% minority population, 95 cents of every public works dollar went to white-owned construction firms last year. In subcontracting, which accounts for most minority-owned businesses, 89 cents for each public works dollar still went to white-owned businesses in fiscal year 1992-93. In fiscal year 1993-94, only 1.03% of public works contracts went to black contractors.

Local architect and developer Michael Anderson shares Bellamy's frustration. Anderson, a resident of the affluent Crenshaw district, lost a bid on a federal government lease that would have translated into Crenshaw's first sizable new office building in 30 years. Anderson is battling the General Services Administration, the department that awards such leases, to repeal its decision to award the lease to an out-of-state, white-owned company. "This was an opportunity for the government to act affirmatively and benefit the black community, and they blew it," says Anderson, whose general managing partner's development team oversaw the $450 million California Plaza downtown. "I'm a small black business, I brought together all the necessary forces to do this, and they're saying it's still not enough. If you don't give people incentives, nothing happens."

SILENT SCREAMS

There is little support for affirmative action anywhere in L.A. It's been a volatile issue within the fire department, where the exposure of departmental discrimination ultimately forced out Chief Donald O. Manning.

The fire department has made progress in diversifying its ranks, but some in the department have fought hard against efforts to increase the numbers of women and minorities. In 1979, a federal lawsuit forced the city to agree to make half of each incoming class of firefighter recruits nonwhite. Despite that agreement, the fire department--until 1993--maintained an unwritten policy prohibiting more than one black firefighter per four-person engine company.

A November 1994 city audit noted that 19 of the fire department's 20 top officers were white males. The report urged the fire department to take strong steps to dispel the notion that women and minorities were not welcome.

The civil unrest of 1992 also spotlighted racism within the city police department. The LAPD has since tried to enact sweeping reforms recommended by the Christopher Commission, the panel created to outline such reforms.

UCLA has taken up the fight against dismantling affirmative action in public education, which has shrunk steadily because of budget cutbacks. At the behest of University of California Regent Ward Connerly, the nine-campus UC system eliminated its affirmative-action admissions policies. In response, UCLA students and faculty, led by long-time Chancellor Charles E. Young, raised immediate protests. Among other things, the campus instituted an overview course on affirmative action.

If there is one bright spot in the whole attack on affirmative action, says UCLA English and Afro-American Studies Professor Richard Yarbough, it's that this issue has become "the most galvanizing among black students since South Africa." Alycee Lane, a Ph.D. candidate in English at UCL, agrees. "At least people are making it known that this is something we want to support," she says. "At least the dialogue is there."

Gene Hale, founder and president of the L.A. African American Chamber of Commerce, says the affirmative-action debate has been shrouded in myth and misinformation. "Without the big, white-owned firms, we would have zero contracting. You can't catch up on 400 years [of discrimination] overnight."

Melvin Oliver, director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty, co-authored the study, Two Black L.A.'s Social and Economic Bifurcation in the Los Angeles Region. In it, he found that while black women have had modest economic gains and have as a whole permanently moved away from low-level jobs such as domestic work, black men still struggle with not having jobs at all. "Those black men without education are really suffering," he says. "The days where they could get a well-paying, secure job with little education are gone. In L.A., the problem is exacerbated because if you have the money, you can live the dream. If you don't, you're stuck and you can't get out. A lot of people are in that position, and have been for a while. We saw some of the fallout from that in 1992."

J. Eugene Grigsby, director of UCLA's Center for African American Studies, says such action can't come soon enough. If affirmative action is struck down in public universities, he says, many qualified black students will wind up in community colleges and ultimately in lower-paying jobs. "Too many people, including blacks, are misguided and misinformed about affirmative action," he says. "In the meantime, it might be abolished and blacks will be more omitted than before. In California, that's going to exacerbate ethnic tensions a la Bosnia. And do we really want that?"