Racial Tensions Surface Among Los Angeles Homeless

Johnson has another fear now. She worries that the racial tension which last Thursday broke out into fights at Belmont High School, which her elder daughters attend, is something that's also on the rise throughout her neighborhood.

“It's scary out there,” Johnson says. “It's just in the air.”

From his 2nd floor office, Union Rescue Mission President Andy Bales looks pensively out onto the encampments on S. San Pedro, where he witnesses daily acts of violence.

Beatings, stabbings, “about a month ago, I'm driving home, and I saw seven Latino men around 7th and San Pedro beating a black man,” he says. “I pulled over and flashed my lights….and broke up the fight. I think things like that are happening every day [here].”

While violence is endemic in the homeless community, some of those working and living on Skid Row have begun debating whether there is an unsettling racial component exacerbating the everyday tension.

In December, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations released its 2004 report on hate crimes, which showed, while these crimes have decreased as a whole, in Los Angeles County, violence directed against Latinos and Asians increased.

At the same time, the conflict between Southland Latinos and African Americans also ticked up, with over 70 percent of attacks against African-Americans involving Latino perpetrators, and vice versa.

The statistics on 2005 are being analyzed now, but according to Marshall Wong, Hate Crime Coordinator for the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, “It's pretty safe to say that the problem will be with us for quite a while.”

But when it comes to the homeless community, it's not always clear what fuels a conflict.

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