Since the entire city turns out to be dissecting secret recordings of the Los Angeles City Council in search of hate speech opposed to almost every single demographic, let me intervene.
About the Armenians.
Among the many casual insults uttered through several high-ranking Latino Democrats in our city in a secretly recorded verbal exchange about redistricting, there were some mild ones directed at a former City Hall staff member and my fellow Armenian American, Areen Ibranossian.
A veteran of Los Angeles politics and local campaigns, Ibranossian worked as chief of staff to City Councilman Paul Krekorian before becoming a political representative in 2018.
In the recordings, he is described as “the guy with an eyebrow” through Nury Martinez, who resigned as city council president on Monday after the Times broke the story Sunday. Then someone speculates about his last name. Finish with i-a-n, I bet,” says one advisor.
To despise someone’s facial features is impolite and immature. And guessing that the call of an Armenian American ends in i-a-n is the intelligentsia of calling wet water. No duh.
It’s true that this rudeness is in the same league as Martinez describing Councilman Mike Bonin, who is gay, as “a little bit,” describing his son, who is black, as a monkey, or calling brown-skinned Oaxacans who have settled in Koreatown ugly.
But it underscores the miserable clandestine character of these Latino leaders, and their evident confidence that who is not like them is a game to be trampled on in the search for political strength.
The recordings were posted on a now-defunct account on social media Reddit. Over the weekend, my colleagues David Zahniser, Julia Wick, Benjamin Oreskes, Dakota Smith and Gustavo Arellano worked to authenticate the recordings and translate them if necessary, well aware of the provocation. implications of history for race relations in Los Angeles.
In addition to Martinez and De Leon, the strategic consultation also included Los Angeles City Councilman Gil Cedillo and Ron Herrera, president of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation. On Monday, Herrera resigned from his post. The verbal exchange focused on dividing and dicing the maps of city hall districts to develop Latino political strength and dilute black political force.
It’s pretty bad. But the informal outpouring of hatred directed at blacks through some of the city’s toughest Latino officials is precisely the kind of spark that can ignite unrest and, yes, violence.
History has morphed into a full-blown civic crisis, with calls from many walks of life, long-time allies of the 4, to step down. On Tuesday, Martinez announced he would be absent from the meeting.
Ibranossian is naturally reluctant to die in the dust when I contacted him on Monday.
As someone with an Armenian surname and heritage, I am well aware of anti-Armenian sentiment and wondered if he bothered at Martinez’s characterization.
“I’m a 40-year-old man,” he told me. I have a wife and two children. It’s something that worries me. “
After some thought, he said via email Tuesday that he was embarrassed. “This kind of representation of Armenians is not unusual and is too tolerated,” he said. “It’s anything that we, as a community, are used to, unfortunately. “
Armenians, victims of what is occasionally called the first genocide of the twentieth century, at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, are well aware of ethnic animosity. (Hitler cited genocide approvingly in 1939, when he said, “Who, after all, is talking today about the annihilation of the Armenians?”)
Ibranossian told me that his circle of relatives had lived in Torrance for several years after immigrating from Iran to the United States. In this predominantly white suburb, he uttered names like “” and “camel jockey,” racist insults that are doubly stupid because they have no basis in reality. Armenians do not wear turbans and there are no deserts in Armenia.
After his circle of relatives moved to Glendale, a city with one of the largest concentrations of Armenians outside of Yerevan, the Armenian capital, there was nothing new about being Armenian. He graduated from high school at the turn of the millennium just before a turbulent time in Glendale, when the city was plagued by ethnic clashes between Armenian and Mexican teenagers.
“These were two ethnic teams that came here combined into a predominantly white community,” Ibranossian said. It’s less about racial animosity, he said, and “more about locating your space. “
When my father grew up in the Central Valley in the 1930s and 1940s, anti-Armenian prejudice was a daily reality. Armenians were the new immigrants, the feared minority, which was soon replaced by a growing number of African-American and Mexican immigrants.
At that time, the insult of the day for Armenians “Ash Indian”.
Earlier this month, at a birthday party in memory of my father, who passed away two years ago, my older sister told me a story she had never heard before: When I was a teenager in Fresno, our father had come to a girl’s space to choose from and he invited her on a date and heard a neighbor say to his parents: “You guys don’t let your daughter go out with an Armenian, do you?This unforeseen wound left him with a scar for life. “
But Armenians are also nothing more than an extended family. And racism between ethnic teams flows both ways.
During the summers, for example, my grandmother would suggest that her children stay away from the harsh midday Fresno sun.
For what? For some embarrassing reason. She didn’t need other people to take them for Mexicans.
@abcarianLAT
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Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He writes about existing issues, politics and culture. His columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays. Twitter: @AbcarianLAT
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