In Defense of Simi Valley : Prejudice: A native son remembers a tolerant town that history has dealt a bad rap.

I have a confession to make: I am from Simi Valley.

I live in Washington these days--the mecca of the stateless, where party conversation inevitably leads to the innocuous question: Where are you from? Simi Valley used to draw a blank on nearly everyone’s face; now it elicits raised eyebrows and smirking jokes.

I haven’t lived in Simi Valley for a decade, but by virtue of my hometown, I’ve become a target in a war of escalating racial tensions. In short, I’m a victim of prejudice. Of course, things could be worse, but the problem is that I don’t see things getting any better. How did we get to this point?

Simi Valley in the early 1960s had more citrus and walnut groves than houses and was decidedly exurban when my parents moved there from Boston. For a large family with one paycheck, it was a case of segregation by income. Simi Valley, far from Los Angeles and not yet linked by freeway, offered the best value for your buck in houses and, with a small down-payment, you could have yourself a mortgage--regardless of race. As the community grew, so did its diversity, and my circle of friends encompassed Latinos, Asians and African-Americans. Contrary to popular belief, Simi Valley never became racially exclusive.

Los Angeles continued to sprawl in the ‘70s and ‘80s and Simi Valley became engulfed in the creeping suburbanization, quintupling in population in a little over two decades. By 1991, things started to happen that would really put it on the map.

Simi Valley gained international attention for the first time when it hosted the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. The significance of the fact that four of the five presidents gathered were Republicans was not lost on anyone and underscored the conservative character of the populace. Then, somehow, the Rodney King trial was assigned to the court in Simi Valley, and my hometown was catapulted to international notoriety when, in the wake of an unjust verdict, the bloodiest racial riots of this century erupted.

One year later, the acquitted officers are on trial again on federal charges, and we stand braced for the possibility of renewed explosions of racial tensions.

Have we learned anything in the interim? Given my own small experience with prejudice, and given the continuing racial tensions and the discrimination and increasing violence against gays and lesbians around the country, I am hard pressed to say we have. In fact, little seems to have changed since the then-bloodiest racial riots shook Detroit and New York in 1943--exactly 50 years ago.

Reflecting on those events, James Baldwin wrote his powerful essay, “Notes of a Native Son” which speaks to us strongly and eloquently today. Baldwin said that we have to take life as it comes, injustice and all, but we cannot be complacent; we must fight injustice with all our strength, while keeping our hearts “free of hatred and despair.” In these times, those are difficult words to live by, but what is the alternative?

Ironically, in my mind, Simi Valley serves as an example of how things can go right. I recall the Simi Valley of my youth where, however unwittingly, a multiracial, peaceful community was forged by decent people. Now, when I visit my parents in the house I grew up in, our Latino, Asian and African-American neighbors still seem part of the family, and I wonder why it has to be so difficult in other neighborhoods. Somehow, we all have to learn to live together, to fight injustice and to keep our hearts free of hatred and despair. We have a lot ahead of us, but as Maya Angelou said in her poem at the Inauguration: “History, despite its wrenching pain/Cannot be unlived, but if faced/With courage, need not be lived again.”

As for Simi Valley, though it will probably always be best remembered for the debacle of the Rodney King verdict (and perhaps for a “library” that has no books in sight), I hope that the record will also note that it was a community of peaceful people. And maybe someday I will again be able to openly and proudly say: I am a native son of Simi Valley.