Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in Urban America: Status and Prospects for Politics and Activism

This volume of essays by scholars and activists focuses on the political and social relations between blacks, Latinos, and Asians in key urban centers. Collectively, the essays examine the particular status of relations between these groups, the reasons for conflict or consensus, and the prospects for future relations. While a number of cities are examined, the book focuses on Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami as particularly instructive case studies. Urban eruptions in these cities are examined in terms of the nature of political relations between blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

These essays provide analyses within a sociohistorical context and offer the kind of political activism that might ensure consensus, rather than conflict, between these groups in urban America. As Luis Fuentes observes, This book should be read by all activists and scholars interested in changing the face of urban and ultimately, national America; for if communities of color can come together for progressive political action, then it will only be a matter of time before America finally begins to look like, and act like, what it has been preaching for generations.

JAMES JENNINGS is a Political Scientist and Director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, University of Massachusetts at Boston. He has lectured and published widely on black and Latino politics in the United States and abroad, and has recently published Understanding the Nature of Poverty in Urban America (Praeger, 1994). Among his earlier books are From Access to Power: Black Politics in Boston, The Politics of Black Empowerment, Puerto Rican Politics in Urban America (Greenwood Press, 1984), and Race, Politics and Economic Development: Community Perspectives.