American Notes

Last week a black rookie policewoman shot and wounded a Hispanic construction worker, touching off the worst rioting Washington had seen since Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. Police say Daniel Enrique Gomez, 30, had been drinking in public and lunged at the cop with a knife. Bystanders said Gomez was handcuffed and unarmed. Enraged, Hispanics spent the next two nights burning cars, breaking windows and looting stores in a melee joined by some blacks and whites. Calm returned only after Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon declared a curfew; by then, two people had been injured and 42 arrested.

The riot illuminates long-simmering hostilities between Washington's Latino underclass and the black power structure. Many African-American residents were shocked to learn that Hispanics have a list of grievances against them that mimic black complaints about discrimination by whites. Hispanics complain that they hold only 1% of the jobs in local government though they constitute 5% of the population. They also say they are routinely harassed by the mostly black police force.

Blacks resent Hispanics, says Edwin Lopez, a career counselor, "because we are potential competition." Some blacks, meanwhile, are struggling with the notion that a minority suffering from racism is capable of discriminating against another ethnic group.