The recent revelations about the South OrangeCounty Community College District\’s desire to offer a course that, inpart, blames the Mossad and the Anti-Defamation League for theassassination of President John F. Kennedy read something like a badclipping from the area\’s far-right past.
It\’s likely no statewide candidate today, including California\’s two Jewish Senators and gubernatorial rival Jane Harman, has culivated more ties to LA\’s Jewish elites than Davis.
Last week, President Clinton diverted himself from fending off scandal and defaming his accusers to denounce the Unzinitiative, Proposition 227, which is designed to end the currentsystem of bilingual education. In the process, he may have contributed to the growing, and potentially debilitating, racialization of Los Angeles\’ political scene.
For most of this century, Los Angeles has been a city of two elites — one predominately WASPish, the other predominately Jewish. Although they occasionally collaborated on projects such as the MusicCenter, the two worlds remained largely separate and indifferent to each other, living in a ruling-class version of institutional apartheid.
For generations of my own family, and many Jewish families, thegarment industry long has been a source of employment andentrepreneurial opportunity. Yet, in recent weeks, some local Jewishactivists, led by the American Jewish Congress, have been making theshmatte business and its workers once again the object oftheir heartfelt intentions.
Even here in Los Angeles, where the Jewishpopulation mushroomed over the last five decades to over 600,000,demographers tell us our numbers are stagnating — and likely wouldhave dropped — had it not been for the infusion of newcomers fromIran, the former Soviet Union, both Northern and Southern Africa and,ironically, Israel itself.
The recent revelations about the South OrangeCounty Community College District\’s desire to offer a course that, inpart, blames the Mossad and the Anti-Defamation League for theassassination of President John F. Kennedy read something like a badclipping from the area\’s far-right past.
Among these earlier settlers were many Jewish families, who, notinterested in joining the growing ersatz shtetl up in Boyle Heights,built their graceful homes in the tony new district.
It\’s hard to feel sorry for the Walt Disney Company, a multi billion-dollar mouse-forged empire that seems to own a part of most children\’s hearts, including that of my own 2 1/2-year-old. Yet, in recent weeks, the venerable Burbank entertainment giant has been subjected to two major boycotts, one from the right-leaning Southern Baptists and the other from Latino media activists.
Here we go again. For the third time in four years, Californians are about to be treated to another racially tinged slugfest, this time over bilingual education.
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