A FORUM FOR COMMUNITY ISSUES : Today’s Agenda
This is the inaugural appearance of Southern California Voices--two pages of community commentary to appear on Mondays in this space.
These are reader pages--outside “experts” need not apply, only members of our many Southern California communities who have voices that deserve to be heard, views that need to be explained, recommendations that needs to be considered, admonitions that may merit observance or questions that need to be officially, accurately and helpfully answered.
Like a community bulletin board or a town meeting, Voices is the place where people meet, exchange views and seek to resolve differences--or cement ties.
In today’s Voices, you will see both modest and ambitious efforts to do just that. Lark Cratty, a 15-year-old Korean-American, writes movingly in Youth of the experience of being born in Seoul, raised in Los Angeles and lumped into one big and largely meaningless category: Asian-American. How many Southern Californians can identify with that?
Coping with stereotypes is also the topic of Making a Difference. This new, graphics-style feature today outlines a highly praised program for educating very young children about race and gender bias before it is too late. As you will see, Louise Derman-Sparks, who developed the anti-bias curriculum, is not enamored with traditional anti-prejudice approaches and believes there’s much to be done in our schools. Do you agree with her?
Traditional approaches certainly do not impress Louis R. Negrete, a Chicano studies professor at Cal State Los Angeles. He believes that communities can, and must, push ineffective politicians aside--but that’s not enough: All politics abhors a vacuum, he suggests, and the community needs to fill any resulting void with dedicated and well-organized family-based organizations. Negrete, in the new feature In Dispute, names a handful of them that work hard to make our community better--but he would be the first to admit that his is by no means an exclusive list. In the weeks and months to come, Voices hopes to hear from many more of them.
It’s a mistake to discount the importance of public officials, of course. Many are dedicated, and some are quite adept at cutting through bureaucratic red tape to get something done or get the answer to a citizen question. Such is the mission of Getting Answers. Today, our thanks to INS regional administrator Rudolph Valadez, who answers a reader’s query about citizenship and marriage.
No doubt Southern California is changing rapidly and the effort to keep up with all of the diversity of opinion won’t be easy. But Platform--the feature that started two years ago on our regular Op-Ed Page, which steps up to a larger format on these pages--and Second Opinion seek to accommodate as wide a range of opinion as possible.
What do you have to say? That’s what Voices is all about.