Francisco Pinedo, founder of the Francisco Brothers Corp., checks fabric samples at his furniture factory in Los Angeles. (By Todd Bigelow for The Washington Post)

A Flurry of Activism

Many in South Central were convinced that Deadwyler would not have died that day if the neighborhood had had its own hospital. That galvanized a flurry of protest and activism that culminated in the construction of King and the adjoining Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Los Angles County may have built King, but for much of its history it has been run largely by blacks who view it as the fruit of their protest and subsequent empowerment. Now, to many others attempting to gain a foothold in the new South Central, that pride often resembles the racial bias that blacks so vigorously fought when it was being dished out by whites.

'Let Us Get Our Fair Share'

Balasubramaniam, who is from India, said his African American bosses explained that he had to hire a black vice chair because King is a "black hospital." But Balasubramaniam refused, citing the inexperience of the doctor hospital officials wanted him to hire, according to a 1995 Civil Service Commission opinion.

For that, he paid. Balasubramaniam was stripped of his title, which was given to a black doctor a few months later. Balasubramaniam's duties remained the same, but he was passed over for numerous other promotions. Finally, in 1991, the hospital hired a veteran white surgeon to be its first permanent chief of emergency medicine, but only after he agreed to groom a young black doctor to eventually assume the post.

Eventually, the white chief was removed and a black doctor took his place. Balasubramaniam was never considered for the job he had held for years because hospital officials said he was "unqualified."

Balasubramaniam filed a complaint with the county's Civil Service Commission, which found that King followed an "unwritten policy of reserving leadership positions for blacks, to the exclusion of non-blacks."

This was one of a series of discrimination complaints, including several by Latinos, that eventually led a federal agency to order the county to increase its recruitment, hiring and promotion of Latinos across its health care system.

"What they found as far as Latino workers go is similar to findings you'd have found in Alabama years ago to how African Americans were treated," said Alan Clayton, a researcher for the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association. "We're not trying to replace anybody. We're just trying to say 'let us get our fair share' [of county jobs]."

Others have filed successful complaints against King. And many of the rulings in favor of Latinos and other non-blacks who worked at King have left some African American officials fuming. They say that Latinos finger them for discrimination but ignore similar treatment at the hands of whites. They point to statistics showing that other county hospitals, including the sprawling County-USC hospital in heavily Latino East Los Angeles, have overwhelmingly white physician and management staffs – yet that fact, they say, draws little scrutiny from Latino leaders.

"Blacks have bent over backward to accommodate Latinos, but we remain easy targets," said Clyde Johnson, president of the Los Angeles County Black Employees Association. "Blacks are open-minded, very caring and sympathetic people." But, he added, "We don't think [Latino] progress should come out of our hides."

'We Don't Understand Each Other'

In 1990, Francisco Pinedo launched Cisco Brothers Corp., a manufacturer of upscale, upholstered furniture. The factory began in a garage and had only three employees. But as business picked up Pinedo quickly expanded, almost exclusively hiring people he knew or people referred by his employees.

After several years of stunning growth, he had a large work force, but one that was almost entirely Latino. "A lot of the hiring they did was word-of-mouth," said Yvette Nunez, director of operations for the Community Development Technologies Center in Los Angeles. "That is something we found in doing surveys with a lot of the manufacturers that have almost entirely Latino work forces. They hire through personal networks."

At the urging of economic development officials, Pinedo began advertising some of his openings in the newspaper. But, while his 15-person management team has three non-Latinos, virtually all of the 100 manufacturing jobs in his South Central plant are filled by Latinos.

"Pretty much the entire upholstery industry is 99 percent Hispanics," said Pinedo, whose firm now does $10 million a year in sales. "I put ads in, but don't get much response from African Americans. Besides, it helps to hire people who someone knows. It gives you more references. You don't have to worry about not knowing who these people are."

The tensions between racial and ethnic groups are often compounded by the fact that residents of the area do not even share the same base of information. Greater Los Angeles has more than 50 foreign language newspapers and television shows broadcast not only in Spanish but in Mandarin, Armenian, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

"We don't understand each other because of the cultural and language barriers," said Kapson Lee, an editor at the Korean Times, a 100,000-circulation Korean language daily. "And the mainstream press has no ongoing relationship with us. They just come here when some unfortunate incident happens and scramble for a sound bite or some piece of information out of nowhere. It is disgusting."

In 1991, when a Korean shopkeeper fatally shot a 15-year-old black girl in the back of the head during a dispute over a $1.79 bottle of orange juice, the Korean and black press handled the story in distinctly different ways. Korean papers ran a stream of stories about the daily harassment faced by Korean merchants. At one point, one Korean paper kept a running tally of the number of merchants who were assaulted in their stores.

The black press ran stories about the suspicion and general disrespect law-abiding customers often faced when they ventured into Korean-owned stores in their own neighborhoods.

And when the shop owner was convicted of manslaughter but got off with a light sentence of probation and a $500 fine, the reaction was predictable: many Koreans applauded the sentence, while many African Americans saw it as another example of the injustice that they endured for years to the benefit of whites.

"People don't see their common purpose," said Wakabayashi, of the county human relations commission. "It seems like everybody has a different bad guy."