The economics of black L.A. go from bad to worse: Watts is poorer today than during its 1965 rebellion.

The economics of black L.A. go from bad to worse

Watts is poorer today than during its 1965 rebellion

In Third World Los Angeles, black Angelenos may find themselves fallen even further out of the economic mainstream, displaced from many jobs and neighborhood retailing by immigrants.

Black Los Angeles burned its way into the national consciousness in the summer of 1965, when the community of Watts and nearby neighborhoods burst out into what some call a "rebellion" and others a "riot."

Bail bond doyen Celes King, 68, who grew up on Central Avenue in South Central and became a Tuskegee Airman in World War II, calls the summer a "fiasco" for the economic tailspin created in its wake.

"You know, there used to be pubs in South Central, where you could talk to people after work, get a feel for the community," says King, who holds a masters in planning from Pepperdine. "Now they are gone, we have given all that up, because basically you don't want to be out on the streets after dark."

Unemployment today is pandemic in South Central -- three times county averages, and more than 50 percent of black youth by one estimate -- and gang warfare has become a staple of the nightly news. About one in four black Angelenos is poor, according to federal standards.

In the neighborhoods just southeast of the USC campus, median household income is $14,782, according to U.S. Census data. That compares to $75,001 for the Westside neighborhood of Pacific Palisades.

Says James Johnson, sociologist at UCLA, "We have people that have become economically marginalized. We have given up on a generation."

The smaller, nonunionized manufacturing plants that have moved into Los Angeles County in recent decades -- garment shops, furniture manufacturers and small plastics manufacturers -- tend to hire Hispanics, according to labor officials and scholars.

The big factories, the old steel mills and tire plants have left.

Too, immigrants are taking unskilled service jobs, as most clearly seen in the janitorial trades, now dominated by Hispanics but once a preserve of blacks, according to union officials and others. "The jobs were menial, but we used to have them," says King.

At the same time that blacks have lost middle-class factory jobs to offshore production and unskilled jobs to immigrants, bail bondsman King says, cultural differences between blacks and immigrants make it difficult for blacks to successfully operate some types of small businesses in South Central.

Black Americans have adopted the same standards as white Americans, says King, in that they are willing to work hard -- but not in endless successions of 16-hour days, in the fashion of immigrants establishing a foothold in America.

"By and large black folks have merged into the American way, and accepted American standards. It is difficult to compete with the Asian merchants, who focus a larger fraction of their time on the business. The Asians can take fewer people and effectively operate their businesses," says King.

To be sure, to be born in Watts is not to be consigned to economic oblivion.

Vickie White, 28, grew up in Watts, attended local high schools and today earns more than $40,000 a year teaching at Washington High School for Los Angeles Unified School District. White's husband makes a like amount working for Santa Monica-based RAND Corp., the think tank.

Yet even White has felt the impact of immigration. "The street where I grew up, and where my mother still lives, is now largely Hispanic," she says.

Teaching at Washington -- which she selected because it is known as South Central's "black" high school, as opposed to Manual Arts and Jordan, formerly black schools now predominantly Hispanic -- has raised issues for her.

"I became a teacher because I wanted to help, to teach black children," she says. "But enrollment figures from elementary schools show greater and greater percentages of Hispanic children." Already, Washington High, the "black" high school where she teaches, is 20 percent Hispanic, up from 10 percent when she started five years ago.

White emphasizes she has adapted, is studying Spanish and is enthusiastic about teaching all children.

Yet for the remaining black residents of South Central, economic prospects remain bleak, according to bondsman King. "There has been nothing magical that has happened to bring back into the inner city the jobs that were lost in the 1970s and 1980s," says King. "And the middle class has moved out."

PHOTO : Teacher White: Learning Spanish