The Myth of L.A.'s Race War

J.R. has spent 12 of his 28 years behind bars for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm, among other things. His broad back is covered with tattoos of women, marijuana leaves, cars, guns. The images were etched into him with a tattoo gun made from a Walkman motor, a guitar string and a single needle. Like the majority of men behind bars in Los Angeles County, J.R. was a gang member. Which gang, he declines to say.

The calculated intimidation factor of his tattoos and his gangbanging past were necessary for survival during his years on the streets and in prison, and are now necessary for his job. Amidst the brightly colored buildings of Hispanic East L.A., J.R. works as a motivational speaker for Homies Industries, a cornerstone of L.A.'s community of gang intervention organizations. He has been rehabilitated, not by the system but by the combination of parenthood, religion and the realization that gang life almost inevitably leads to prison or death. In the neighborhoods he works, kids are more likely to listen to tattooed ex-cons than cops or teachers, and this ex-con is hoping to steer kids away from gang life and toward education and jobs.

J.R. is not alone in this mission. Over the last couple of decades, a cadre of reformed gangsters has created a community that exists in a netherworld between law enforcement and gang life, working to prevent crime and simultaneously keep the trust and respect of gang members. Along with Homies Industries, there are organizations like Unity One, Unity T.H.R.E.E., Homies Unidos, Amer-I-Can and NO GUNS, which negotiate ceasefires between rival gangs, and provides tattoo removal, job training and life skills classes. The gang intervention workers know what goes on in the streets, jails and prisons better than pretty much anyone else. And recently, they have felt a sense of familiar wariness at the news of the violent, racially charged riots that erupted in L.A. County's jails.

Credit: AFP/Robyn Beck

For more than two weeks, headlines have been telling the story of sporadic violence inside the jails that has led to two deaths. The first articles reported that so-called brown-on-black violence began when the Mexican Mafia greenlighted Latino gang members to attack African-American inmates. Later, the sheriff's department said white inmates began the attacks on a black inmate, Wayne Tiznor, the first man to be killed. Though the stories about what sparked the riots have changed, the race war hype stuck.

"When you're on the outside looking in, you are looking for a political answer. And calling it a race riot is the quickest political answer," says J.R., who is Latino. It's both a sensational and digestible way to frame the crisis. "It's like 'Ten o'clock tonight! Mexicans killing blacks! Only on Fox 11 News!' That's what grabs people's attention." But really, he says, "it's about power, money, and dope."

The race-riot narrative simplifies and masks a much more complex tragedy in which racism may be the result of violence, but not its cause. L.A.'s sorely inadequate jails are the setting for a story that has many more antagonists than heroes. And it is a tragedy that begins and ends in the neighborhoods where many of L.A.'s inmates come from -- Compton, Boyle Heights, Inglewood and East L.A. -- where gang intervention workers like J.R. are working to calm the waters and dispel the destructive myth of a new black-Latino race war.

Power and insignificance

Feb. 4: "In rioting triggered by racial tensions, more than 2,000 inmates went on a four-hour rampage Saturday at a maximum-security jail in Castaic, leaving one prisoner dead and nearly 50 others injured." --L.A. Times

"This is more about power, not about whether Latinos hate blacks. It's about who gets to decide what's on television," says Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homies Industries and is a highly respected leader of gang intervention in L.A. "I think this has very little to do with race." Father Boyle's statement may sound dismissive, but it is true that the flames of large scale violence behind bars are often sparked by seemingly insignificant things.