An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun on relations among black, Hispanic and Asian-Americans should have stated that there are two Californians of Asian descent in the House of Representatives. They are Robert T. Matsui and Norman Y. Mineta, Democrats, both of Japanese descent.
The Sun regrets the errors.
WASHINGTON -- Blacks, Hispanics and Asians, approaching parity as the three predominant non-white minorities in a new national racial balance, are cautiously testing "ethnic diplomacy" a means of reducing friction among them and creating a basis for cooperation.
Based on the 1990 census, what is being called the "equilibrium" of the nation's major racial and ethnic minorities underwent a radical transformation the last decade.
Black Americans, 12 percent of the nation's population, still constitute the largest racial minority. But a continuing explosion of the nation's Hispanic and Asian populations has raised these two minorities to 9 percent and 3 percent respectively -- enough to force all three groups to question whether their future relationships with each other will be competitive or cooperative.
A measure of resentment and hostility -- nothing new to the relationships -- not only continues but in some areas has intensified. However, interviews with black, Hispanic and Asian leaders indicated that they were at least in rhetorical agreement that cooperation and collaboration among them are essential.
Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, the leading Hispanic advocacy organization, acknowledged that "the new demographics mean a new era in terms of inter-minority relations. That's good -- and it is also troublesome."
Relations between blacks and Hispanics "have not been particularly wholesome or happy in the last 20 years," Mr. Yzaguirre said.
Billy Tidwell, director of research for the National Urban League, one of the oldest and best-known black civil-rights organizations, said the three minorities needed to "press for a domestic agenda of their overriding common interests."
"There will have to be some give and take," Mr. Tidwell said.
On this basis, the three minorities have undertaken -- albeit sporadically and gingerly -- efforts to prevent, or at least control, all-out turf struggles among themselves. These are the efforts being described as ethnic diplomacy.
The concept surfaced a dozen years ago when M. Carl Holman, then president of the National Urban Coalition, sought to bring together the heads of major black, Hispanic and Asian organizations to discuss issues common to them.
Some invitees from black organizations failed to show up; others came but quickly left.
Mr. Yzaguirre recently offered an explanation of why Mr. Holman's attempt was a bust.
"For many years, blacks were able to define minority concerns -- civil rights, affirmative action, poverty -- in black terms. Why bring the two other minorities -- us, the Asians -- into the fold at that time? There was no payoff for blacks in that -- then.
"If the situation had been reversed and Hispanics had been the dominant minority, we would probably have acted in the same way.
"In 1978, blacks perceived that Hispanics could neither help nor hurt them. Now the black leadership is beginning to understand that we have the capacity to do both. And that's beginning to pay off."
Last year S. B. Woo, then president of the Organization of Chinese Americans, probably the strongest Asian advocacy organization, invited Mr. Yzaguirre and Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to a meeting to discuss strategies for this decade.
Both Mr. Hooks and Mr. Yzaguirre showed up -- Mr. Woo has apicture of the three, arms linked, to prove it.
Afterward, Mr. Woo reported that "several ongoing joint projects" had been discussed, including "the development of minority small-business ventures and advocating fair immigration policies."
Mr. Yzaguirre called Mr. Woo very courageous for taking the lead on the meeting, but the Hispanic leader also described it as "very preliminary."
More extensive, in-depth meetings with a more concrete agenda are needed, he said, beginning with sessions between blacks and Hispanics, "who have got to work out some very serious issues."
Two such black-Hispanic sessions were held later last year.
One was a three-day ethnic diplomacy conference sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Research, a public affairs center concerned mainly with black issues.
Milton Morris, the center's director of research, said the conference resulted in two discoveries. The first, he said, was "that it is easy to sell [the ethnic diplomacy] notion in principle, but it's a lot more difficult when you start saying, 'OK, so what are we going to collaborate on? What are our common issues?' "
The second discovery, Mr. Morris said, was that the Hispanic and black communities "are very far apart on a number of basic issues. A lot of work has to be done to put the underpinnings of a cooperative relationship into place."
The issue of immigration is a prime example.
Hispanic organizations call for repeal of so-called employer sanctions -- federal penalties against employers who hire illegal aliens -- on grounds that the threat of sanctions provides employers with an excuse to discriminate against Hispanics in their hiring practices.
The NAACP voted last summer to support the repeal -- but only after some delegates to the NAACP's annual convention charged that undocumented Hispanic aliens were taking jobs away from blacks.
Blacks and Asians have their own differences that have created racial tensions. For example, blacks in New York City, angered at Korean shopkeepers over incidents they maintain showed lack of respect for black consumers, have led boycotts of the Koreans' stores.
Upcoming is a major political issue -- the "redistricting wars," as Mr. Morris called them.
California is a major battleground. The nation's largest and fastest-growing state, with nearly 30 million people, has 34.4 percent of the nation's Hispanics, 39.1 percent of its Asians and 7.4 percent of its blacks.
In redistricting to determine California's number of seats in the House of Representatives, the state, which has 45 seats, is expected to gain seven. Hispanics -- a quarter of the state's population -- say that the number of seats they occupy, three, should increase to seven. Blacks, 7.4 percent of the state's population, occupy four seats and are likely to have a fight to keep all of them.
Asians, nearly 10 percent of the state's population, occupy none of California's seats in the House and are just beginning to show signs of political stirrings, according to some analysts.
All told, blacks, Hispanics and Asians constitute 20 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. population. Their exact proportion isn't known because Hispanics, in addition to their ethnic classification, could also classify themselves racially as white or black or "other race" in the census.
Researcher Roman Ponos of The Sun's Washington Bureau contributed to this article.