The Pacific News Service has a very interesting article on the leading candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles and how each of their campaigns addresses the city’s complex racial/ethnic issues. To make a long story short, demographic changes in recent decades has led to Latinos becoming the majority population (although not yet a majority of voters) and they are increasingly looking to flex their emerging political power.

Further, as Latino power has increased, the political efficacy (along with the population size) of Blacks has declined and they are trying to hang onto the last vestiges of power. And of course, the power base of Whites continues to slowly decline as well, as White flight into surrounding suburbs has increasingly led to calls among many White residents to split the L.A. school district so that, as the article notes, more affluent White schools are not forced to subsidize poorer and underserved urban schools.

Interesting, the article does not mention Asian Americans at all, despite the fact that as of the 2000 Census, Asian Americans represented 10% of Los Angeles’s population and have surely increased that proportion since then. In all likelihood, Asian American have already surpassed Blacks to become the second largest racial/ethnic groups in the city. Unfortunately, it looks like another case of Asian Americans again being treated as the invisible minority.