Group Fails to Figure Out Racism, but at Least It’s Trying

The gymnasium could have used another 10 degrees of heat, and the metal folding chairs had all the comfort of metal folding chairs, but then, neighborhood association meetings have never put a premium on creature comforts. If they did, the participants wouldn’t be there in the first place; they’d be home in their easy chairs chortling over “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

So there the hardy neighborhood activists, 40 or so, sat the other night in the Santa Ana YWCA on Broadway, talking about, of all things, racism and how to establish some level of harmony in a county increasingly fragmented.

In case the suspense is killing you, they didn’t figure it out.

I’ve been going through my notes from the meeting, though, and what’s frustrating upon my reflection the next day is how “onto” it the group seems to be. That is, while they raised all the right questions, one wonders if the answers lie in some giant void beyond the grasp of us all.

For instance, the whites in the room sounded genuinely interested in getting Latino families into the fold of their neighborhood groups. But how to do that? Will common issues, such as neighborhood improvements, bring adults together? On the other hand, why should the emphasis be on getting Latinos into what have been white-dominated organizations? Why don’t whites join the Latino groups?

More from my notes:

One of the leaders of a group called Orange County Together said flat-out and without rancor that racism is the county’s biggest problem. If left unattended, he said, it threatens to blow up in our faces as it has in Los Angeles.

A white woman, however, saw the language barriers as a critical problem. Another white man also questioned the racism tag, saying: “It’s not all racism. It’s also education. I think the people of the U.S. have come a long way, frankly” in racial tolerance. If his company turns away minority people, he said, it’s because they lack job qualifications.

The group kicked around the bilingual issue. I think it’s safe to say that many whites in Orange County think immigrants, whether from Latin America or elsewhere, rebel against learning English.

That’s a myth, said activist and attorney Alfred Amezcua.

“We need to make clear that there’s not one family that doesn’t want to learn English,” he said, adding that 95% of the students in Santa Ana schools are Latino and all are learning English.

A white man said a common language would enhance America’s chance of social and economic success, citing Japan’s language solidarity. A young Latino man agreed but was concerned about people being forced to speak English and risking losing the heritage of their native tongues. A young white man said he used to scoff at learning another language until he studied abroad and saw the value of bilingualism.

A middle-aged Latino man agreed that Latinos sometimes claim racism when it doesn’t exist. He’s an advocate for more assimilation by Latinos into mainstream American culture and cited the judge who, after granting citizenship, told immigrants that they were “not Mexican anymore,” but American.

A Vietnamese man, who brought his young son to the meeting, said Asians in particular had to survive “culture shock” when they came to America. He said the younger generation of Asians would “probably change quickly” to American customs and said Vietnamese children will do well in school. As for cultural diversity, he said: “Give it time. Open the communication channels to all ethnic communities.”

This recitation from my notes sounds like one vexing hodgepodge, I know.

Good. It should.

That’s the intent because any discussion of how cultures get along--and one speaker said Orange County will lose its white majority status by the year 2000--requires grappling with complex and conflicting bits of information.

The purpose of the Y meeting was to discuss stereotypes and talk frankly without either self-censorship or censoring by others. The group showed it can be done. When it comes to race relations, it must be done.

But how to get 2.5 million people in a changing county to talk openly about fears and prejudices and then advance toward common ground and a workable future is going to take a lot of nights at the Y.

So, yes, I’m frustrated, because I’m convinced these people know how to get at the problem; I just don’t know if they can solve it.

One last thing about the people in the gym the other night--whether white, Latino or Vietnamese.

Call them dreamers if you want, but these are the spiritual and philosophical descendants of people who sat in frosty New England churches 300 years ago and cramped Midwestern schoolhouses 100 years ago, all trying to figure out how to make their societies more livable. Maybe the fact that these meetings are still being held in 1992 proves that no one is ever going to figure this stuff out.

But let me leave you with one of my favorite cliches: At least they’re trying.