It Can't Happen Here

I'll say immediately that this is not widespread. Racially motivated murders by Latinos against blacks are very rare by any measure. But, like lynchings, the fact they happen at all is disquieting. The gang tensions at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and the turf wars they engender isn't surprising, nor is the fact that people get caught in the crossfires. But the last victim was so out of the realm of the gang monde, so clearly targeted because of his color and nothing else, it raises specters of KKK-like, get-out-of-town terrorism that's haunted America for too much of its history. That the perpetrators would be Latinos who are often viewed as an ethnic scourge themselves is a deeply painful irony.

His name was James Shamp and he worked at Canoga Park Bowl in a once-idyllic area of the west Valley. Shamp was 48 years old, an Army veteran and a family man with kids. He maintained the Bowl like it was his own house and made the regulars feel good. Three days before Christmas, Shamp was emptying trash in the dumpsters in an alley when he was shot in the chest and killed by a group of Latino gang members. The three guys arrested for the murder were charged last week with murder and conspiracy to commit a crime because of race. Unnamed police sources in the Times story say that the incident is part of a broader campaign by Latino gangbangers in Canoga Park to harass and threaten blacks in the area. Some of those blacks are rival gang members; some are not.

I have to say, my biggest shock was not the senselessness of the Shamp shooting, but --good God, Canoga Park? It's a long way from South Central. I know gangs aren't new there, but Canoga is hardly place synonymous with gangs. It's even less known for overt racial harassment and violence, though the uber-suburban Valley as a whole certainly has had its share. Still, I always saw the insulated Valley as neutral ground, a geographic respite from the inner-city troubles over the hill. Reading yet another tragic story about a life lost to guns and gangs involved brown and black, I sadly relinquished my own stubborn bit of naivete that most of us in L.A. harbor in one way or another. Can't happen there? It can. It does. Racism respects no boundaries.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user swishphotos. It was used under Creative Commons license.