TPPM Watts: (24) EYOA (or: Smile and look white)

[Paul Nightingale]

"Bizarre, confused, ever in flux, strangely ineffective ... all of it
confirming the Watts Negroes' already sad estimate of the little man.
The Negro attitude towards E.Y.O.A. is one of clear mistrust, though
degrees of suspicion vary ..."

Notoriously ineffectual, judging from the few references I've found, the
EYOA is described here as "the flower of [Sam Yorty's] consciousness";
perhaps this combination of a conservative mayor and a welfare programme
not short on fine-sounding (LBJian, of course) rhetoric was a recipe for
disaster.

In fact this passage, introducing a lengthy description of the poverty
war, has been a long time coming. The question to ask, therefore, is why
now?

Cf: "... the young lady in charge [of the Negro Teen Post] expressing
the wish next morning that she could talk with the malefactors, involve
them, see if they couldn't work out the problem together."

Or: "The neighbourhood may be seething with social workers, data
collectors, VISTA volunteers and other assorted members of the
humanitarian establishment, all of whose intentions are the purest in
the world. But somehow nothing much has changed."

Or even: "...the inadequacy of Great Depression techniques applied to a
scene that has long outgrown them ..."

And then--having noted "a measure of the people's indifference that only
2 per cent of the poor in Los Angeles turned out to elect
representatives to the E.Y.O.A. 'poverty board'--the text describes
"outposts of the establishment drows[ing] in the bright summery smog",
workers/volunteers "wondering where the 'clients' are".

Redundant political reformism, of course--in stark contrast to the
vibrant popular culture described elsewhere.

One might also observe the purpose of this passage in opening up the
text. Following on the deconstruction--or demystification--of "The Man"
the passage dealing with the E.Y.O.A. rediscovers "the power structure"
in an attempt to co-opt black people in Watts: "I'm just tired of The
Man telling you, 'Now it's OK, now we mean what we say.'"

At which point the class dimension is introduced, in the form of "the
well-adjusted, middle-class professionals, Negro and white, who man the
mimeographs and computers of the poverty war here". For the first time
"the humanitarian establishment" is explicitly identified in such a way
as to indicate that class, rather than race, is the key.

Cf, inevitably, from the SL Introduction: "It may turn out that racial
differences are not as basic as questions of money and power, but have
served a useful purpose, often in the interest of those who deplore them
most, in keeping us divided and so relatively poor and powerless."

A critique of political reformism has run through the essay from page
one, as illustrated by the passages cited above; however, it's only
after the careful description, from the perspective of blacks, of
black-white interactions in everyday life that we finally make it to
those "outposts of the establishment" characterised by inactivity, the
absence of traffic. As the text notes, such "professionals" have
invested much in the system they serve: "Their reflexes--especially
about conformity, about failure, about violence--are predictable."

For example, the counsellor who "had a hell of a time with this one
girl" notes: "We finally got her to come around." The goal, therefore,
is enforcing conformity.