It certainly sounds like Compton, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, has changed in lockstep with population trends over the decades.
What other city, for example, could claim that white actor-director Kevin Costner lived there as a child in the 1950s and early 1960; then become a centerpiece of Black culture, producing tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams along with the rappers N.W.A.; and now has a nearly 70% majority Latino population that has a growing eye on its share of political power?
The Washington Post, reporting on the political battle to come, said Compton’s population was 74% Black in 1983. But the city, just like it did in the 1960s when whites left, has undergone another massive population change.
The Post said Black families began leaving the city as far back as the 1980s for wealthier, safer areas as Compton’s crime rate rose.
Population shifts are expected in a mobile country like America, where the white population is declining, Black population is stagnant and Latinos continue to add numbers.
What’s interesting is that some members of Compton’s former population majority clearly are not ready to give up their influence.
“Some Black residents say they fought too hard for political power to relinquish it just yet,” the Post reported. It also quoted an activist and filmmaker as saying, “We have to keep this power. We have to keep the little bit that we have, which is all we have. And we’re not giving it up.”
Seriously? “We’re not giving it up”? There is more than a little bit of George Wallace in statements like that one.
The Compton people who are unwilling to bow to demographics sound an awful lot like the whites in the South in the 1950s and 1960s who were just as determined to resist the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling and other Black demands for proper treatment, such as the right to vote. We all know how that worked out.
In fairness, it is understandable that any group of people that has political power will fight to keep it. Who willingly gives up control of tax dollars and other resources?
Black residents, even those in California, surely learned that lesson well over the past century, though usually from the minority side rather than the majority.
It’s just unexpected to read about the determination to keep Compton politics Black despite the city’s massive population shift. But this resistance may succeed for a while longer.
Many Latinos in Compton and elsewhere are not registered to vote. But once Latinos who live in Compton recognize their outsized power at the ballot box, the composition of the city council and school board is going to change.
Mississippi residents know all about this topic, having lived it for decades. The population changes. Some ethnic groups increase, others do not. The residents of Compton should prepare for the certainty of what lies ahead.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
