Many Blacks in L.A. Study for Bilingual Future

Ron Hart enjoys life as an undercover Spanish speaker, surreptitiously listening in on strangers’ conversations and then surprising them with a few choice phrases. Deborah Reese believes that mastering Spanish will help her land a new job. Jimmie Beasley hopes to be able to chat in his childhood friend’s native tongue. And Lovie Mayhorn simply wants to converse with neighbors beyond the usual buenos dias.

For these and many other African Americans from South-Central Los Angeles, where blacks and Latinos live side by side yet often have trouble communicating, the future increasingly depends on becoming bilingual.

Traditionally, it has been up to the newcomers to blend in. But as the city’s surging Latino population alters the landscape economically and culturally, African Americans are turning to Spanish.

Although there are no statistics to document this shift, there is a growing recognition among the primarily black English-speaking population of South-Central Los Angeles that to get jobs--particularly lower-level service positions requiring contact with the public--Spanish is an essential tool. Increasingly, African Americans talk about studying Spanish in night school or forming study groups in churches.

In recent years, as racial tensions have increased, the Los Angeles school district has sought state funding so it could offer free adult school Spanish classes. However, the plan was turned down by the Legislature.

“The perception of the Legislature is that foreign language is one of those nice things you take because you’re going on a trip to Europe or Mexico,” said Jim Figueroa, who heads the district’s division of adult and career education. “That’s not the case in Los Angeles. We need to offer Spanish to people so they can communicate in our city. It’s more of a survival type of thing.”

In Erma Bell’s adult Spanish class at Main Street Elementary School near 53th Street and the Harbor Freeway, nearly 40 students--all but one African American--meet two days a week for three-hour sessions. They outnumber the Latinos who are studying English in an adjoining classroom.

“Nowadays, if you are bilingual the world opens up for you in many ways,” said Bell, who has taught Spanish to adults in South-Central for 20 years, and also teaches classes at Crenshaw High School and at a senior citizens center. “You meet people, it’s easier to get jobs, and if you already have a job it’s important for advancement.”

Bell speaks seamless Spanish with careful attention to pronunciation, leading many of her students to speculate on her nationality.

“You must be from Panama, or Cuba or one of those islands,” a student insisted one day.

“If Texas is an island, then I’m from an island,” Bell answered in an accent revealing her Southern roots. “I’m just a country lady.”

Once a month, Bell’s students participate in a joint class with the English students next door, pairing off in small groups, conversing in each other’s second language about subjects such as preferences in colors, foods and family size.

“It throws you off at first, trying to speak to someone who answers you in another language,” said Deborah Reese, 36, a nurse who is studying Spanish to make herself more valuable to hospitals. “But you get used to it and everybody is equal. No one has an advantage.”

The exercise energizes the students and cuts through some cultural isolation.

“There is a tendency to stereotype people from other groups,” said Hart, the Spanish eavesdropper. “But after you sit down and start talking face to face, you find you have a lot of things in common. Then, instead of being just immigrants, they became individuals.”

During one session, Hart conversed with a couple from Guatemala whose high-school-age children were preparing to go to college, as his daughter was. “We had the same problem: How do we pay for it?” he said.

It is not unusual to find such common ground in neighborhoods where ethnic groups appear to exist on separate tracks.

Jimmie Beasley is motivated by memories of growing up with his best friend, Rudy.

“We grew up in each other’s house and I always felt he had something on me, something special,” Beasley said. “Now I’m determined to learn it.”

Beasley, 43, plans to surprise his lifelong friend. He also hopes to use the language to one day become a court interpreter.

Esperanza Lara, one of the English students, credits her son’s African American friends with teaching him English when he came here three years ago from Mexico. “After he learned the language, then he helped me. Now I want to learn more for myself,” she said.

When the students from the two classes get together they invariably talk about which language is mas dificil-- more difficult.

To Lovie Mayhorn, the mother of several grown children who plans on eventually rejoining the work force, Spanish seems backward.

“We say ‘the red dress,’ but in Spanish you say ‘the dress red,’ ” she said. “It’s weird.”

She said contact with fluent Spanish speakers has given her the courage to hold more conversations with Latinos in her neighborhood.

“You can’t be worried about making a mistake,” she said. “Once I said ‘good morning’ to a man, but it was after 12. He politely corrected me, told me I meant buenos tardes and we continued with the conversation.”

Mayhorn studied Spanish in high school, but like many onetime students of the language, she found that without practice she forgot much of what she knew.

“It’s not like riding a bike,” she said. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Similarly, Hart believes that he is getting a second chance to redeem himself.

“I was a poor student in high school,” he said. “My Spanish teacher liked to throw things at students who didn’t participate. Let’s just say I had a lot of things thrown at me.”

So it was with a certain pride, on a recent shopping trip to Mexico, that Hart encountered a store owner.

“She asked me if I spoke Spanish and I said, ‘Yes, a little.’ Her expression changed. It seemed to please her that I took the time to learn her language.”