It S Our Turn Now.

With job opportunities dwindling and immigrants placing an ever-higher burden on public services, anxious Californians passed Prop 187 with a resounding 59 percent of the vote. But Prop 187 doesn’t begin to address the issues underlying the fractions race relations in poor, multiethnic cities like Compton. Blacks now dominate the city government, but Latinos, once a minority, have swelled to a majority (thanks in part to a large influx of immigrants in recent years), and they are increasingly vocal about perceived racial and economic slights. “What you’ve got here is a problem common to many urban settings,” says UCLA political scientist Frank Gilliam, “where the distribution of resources is finite, and groups fight about who gets what.”

The sense of aggrievement is apparent in the inflamed rhetoric on both sides. Some Latinos in Compton complain that they are worse off today than blacks were in South Africa under apartheid. Though they make up more than haft the city’s 91,600 residents, no Latino has ever held a seat on the city council. The 127-member police force has only 14 Latino officers. Pallan, a former council candidate, charges that Compton’s black leaders are interested only in preserving their own jobs in the face of changing demographics: “They hire people with our tax money. We subsidize our own discrimination.” Recent scandals, including the indictment of black U.S. Rep. Walter Tucker for alleged bribery and tax evasion while he was mayor, have further eroded Latino trust. Some young Latinos say they grew up watching blacks harass their parents. “This generation is saying, ‘Uh-uh, we’re not going to put up with it no more,” says “Victor,” a 25-year-old former gang member. “We’re saying, ‘You guys had your chance. You took us down with you. It’s our turn now’.”

African-American leaders are exasperated by the charges of oppression. They point out that few Hispanics bother to vote in local elections, so they are disenfranchising themselves. “African-Americans fought for the right to vote,” says Compton Mayor Omar Bradley. “Is it [our] responsibility to elect Latinos?” Black officials say Hispanics don’t grasp that African-Americans struggled for years to win power in Compton, or that city jobs are filled through the civil-service process. “I’d like to see more Latinos come in at whatever level,” says Police Chief Hourie Taylor. “But you don’t just walk up and fire people and place somebody else.” The bitterest battles have been fought over Compton’s schools. Latino students complain of being ridiculed and even beaten by black teachers and security guards. Last fall racially charged fistfights erupted in all three high schools, resulting in several injuries, arrests and suspensions. School officials blame turf wars between Latino and black gangs, but others say the fights merely reflect the tensions among adults in the community. “When you have Latinos and African-Americans telling each other they’re going to take over, something’s going to give,” says Gorgonio Sanchez, the lone Hispanic on the school board. Latino parents charge that the black-run school system is discriminating against Hispanics –and urgently needs more bilingual teachers. “I have children in sixth, seventh and eighth grade, and they don’t know how to read and write,” said Juana Garcia, one of dozens who protested in September. But the Compton school system is already bankrupt and under state control. Jerome Harris, the new black administrator appointed by Sacramento, says 100 of his 160 new hires are bilingual. “We haven’t done as much as we’d like to,” he says, “but we’ve done a heck of a lot more than in the past.”

Given Compton’s precarious condition, it’s not surprising that school officials feared the advent of Prop 187. The new law requires schools to identify, and eventually expel, any student suspected of being un-documented. State and federal judges immediately stayed the law, pending hearings on its constitutionality. Nevertheless, “People believe that immigration officials will be in front of their schools and their homes, waiting to take them away,” says Lorraine Cervantes of Compton’s Latino United Coalition. Other activists warn that if Proposition 187 is upheld and enforced, it could merely relocate the violence: “If they put kids out on the street, there’s going to be more crime,” says 22-year-old Sergio Magos.

Proposition 187 did have one immediate impact on Magos: it got him to vote for the first time. He wasn’t alone. Cervantes says about 1,000 new Latino voters were registered in Compton before Election Day. “We need to send [Gov. Pete] Wilson a ‘Thank You’ note” for arousing a docile Latino electorate, she says. For all the rhetoric about how Proposition 187 will make life harder for Latinos, Compton blacks could come to remember it as the issue that pushed them from political power.