Racial tension between blacks and Latinos may be a fact of life in some Los Angeles neighborhoods. But racial violence isn't.
Despite what you may have heard or read, it remains the case that the great majority of people who are murdered in the L.A. area are killed by someone of their own race.
This was the finding of a study by a team of UC Irvine scholars that was released earlier this year. It mirrored findings by The Times and accounts from detectives in the field. Last year, in the four Los Angeles police divisions with the highest homicide rates -- all places where blacks and Latinos share neighborhoods -- 90% of the homicides involved suspects and victims of the same race.
This year, a random sample of 212 homicides in Los Angeles, Inglewood, Long Beach and portions of L.A. County yielded a similar result: About 87% of Latinos and blacks who were killed were murdered by suspects of their own race.
The real news story is that there is no news story -- or at least no clear trend of cross-racial murders.
This is surprising. L.A.'s Latinos and blacks have ample opportunity to kill each other if they want to. In huge swaths of the county, they are integrated block by block, house by house. Many of the places with the highest homicide rates also have the greatest degree of racial mixing, with blacks and Latinos present in roughly equal numbers.
Take Watts. The neighborhood is split about 60% Latino, 40% black. But so far this year, just one of the area's 37 killings is confirmed to have crossed racial lines. Why?
This is the kind of question that we don't ask enough about homicide. Dazzled by trend stories, seduced by endless suggestions of some new menace on the horizon, we overlook the old boring truths that tell us the most. This one tells us that homicide is more about intimacy than it is about opportunity. Relationships and interdependence -- not just proximity -- are preconditions for its occurrence.
There are, of course, some purely predatory homicides. (A number of cross-racial killings this year, for example, have been robbery-murders.) But a majority of killings are less about predation than they are about people interacting
Most homicides involve the most basic human conflicts. Even the ones we call "gang homicides" tend to stem from arguments about women, money, insults, peer-group status, unredressed grief or business dealings gone wrong. There's no more murderous situation than one that involves an attractive woman or a party. Homicide in L.A. remains primarily intra-racial because blacks and Latinos still tend to mostly mix with members of their own groups.
