Roundtable Takes Aim at Prejudice, Stereotypes : Thousand Oaks: Group of women, who use games and discussions to bring about cultural understanding, hope to go before community forums.

The game was simple, a tried-and-true icebreaker.

You plucked a slip of paper from a hat. You read the scrawled half-sentence. You wandered the room, interviewing strangers, trying to find the person whose paper best completed your sentence.

A straightforward get-to-know-you game. But this particular version had a nasty twist.

Half the scraps contained sweeping categories: All Arabs are. . . . All Jews are. . . . All New Yorkers are. . . . The other half held angry adjectives: Uptight. Ugly. Stingy. Nuts.

No one could hope to form a politically correct sentence.

And that was exactly the point.

The 16 women playing the game represented many different cultures: Indian, Japanese, Costa Rican, Armenian, African American, Jewish and more.

Together, they formed the Roundtable on Diversity, a new group dedicated to busting stereotypes, battling prejudices and urging understanding in Thousand Oaks.

“We want to make this community better,” said Elena Garate Eskey, an administrator at Cal Lutheran University who considers herself a blend of Cuban, German and Swiss heritage.

Playing the sentence game helped Roundtable members confront their own prejudices.

After reluctantly writing derogatory sentences, the women brainstormed to come up with positive spins. The match “All Californians are crazy,” for example, turned into “All Californians are free-spirited and innovative.” Still a stereotype, of course, but a slightly more palatable one. And the exercise proved a valuable education.

“Everybody’s willing to pigeonhole everyone else,” Eskey said, summarizing the lesson. “But when it comes down to it, we’re just people.”

To spread that message, the Roundtable women hope to take their games and discussions into community forums.

Eventually, they may expand their membership to include men. For now, though, they have decided to allow women only, “because women really are the change agents,” Eskey said. “I don’t think that’s a stereotype--women have always had the burden of change, all around the world.”

This particular group of women will be busy this summer, trying to persuade the Thousand Oaks City Council to establish a multicultural commission with power to mediate disputes, investigate complaints and educate the public.

“I see (the commission) as a place where people can get a handle on changing ethnicity in this city,” organizer Shoshana Brower said, digging into a breakfast of saffron rice, sushi rolls and potato kugel at a recent Roundtable meeting. “If there’s a problem, the commissioners can jump in and help avoid or manage conflict.”

If the commission is established, its first step might simply be to spread the word that Thousand Oaks--despite its reputation as a homogeneous bedroom community--has grown increasingly diverse.

The most recent census found that Latinos account for fully one-tenth of the city’s population. The 1990 survey also noted small but growing Asian and black communities, which together make up nearly 6% of the population.

And diversity in Thousand Oaks goes way beyond the census figures.

Students representing 33 countries, and 30 distinct languages, study side by side in the Conejo Valley Unified School District. A Japanese junior may confer with a Peruvian senior while a Guatemalan classmate reviews algebra nearby. A Mayan tutor may help a Taiwanese immigrant learn English while Mexican students pore over a beginning grammar text.

“To all those people who think of us (in Thousand Oaks) as absolutely negating diversity, I say, come with me for a day,” said Claudia Spelman, director of pupil services.

Within the district, high school students have formed their own mini-roundtables, gathering immigrants from various countries to discuss discrimination and alienation. Sometimes, they ask students born in the United States to participate as well.

But despite some outreach efforts, “we’re like outsiders,” said Gabriel Vazquez, 18, a Westlake High senior who emigrated from Mexico two years ago and plans to attend Cal State Northridge in the fall. “They don’t always talk to us, and that’s why I feel so sad.”

Thousand Oaks’ schools have largely avoided the racial strife that has sparked fights on some campuses elsewhere in the county, including Ventura and Oxnard. Yet three Westlake High students were recently injured in a fight that pitted white football players against an Asian student allegedly backed by out-of-towners.

And in the city as a whole, Roundtable members see no cause for complacency.

They point first to a burst of hate crimes in Thousand Oaks over the summer. In the most widely publicized case, vandals three times spray-painted swastikas and racial epithets on the home of the Rev. Kenneth Bushnell, a black Seventh-day Adventist minister.

Those incidents mirrored a flurry of anti-Semitic graffiti on Conejo Valley synagogues in late 1990 and early 1991. Temple Adat Elohim was among the hardest hit, as an arsonist set fire to the school building several weeks after religious slurs were spray-painted on the synagogue.

In more recent episodes, police have this year investigated several attacks described as racially motivated. And hate literature has been found stuffed in boxes at local drugstores.

Of course, the problems in Thousand Oaks, consistently ranked one of the nation’s safest mid-sized cities, seem minor compared to the violence that daily rattles Los Angeles. Because the city has enjoyed relative harmony, some question the need for a multicultural commission.

“I have seen absolutely almost zero ethnic tension in this city in my years as a resident and council member,” said Alex Fiore, who will retire this fall after 30 years on the City Council.

“This is not Los Angeles or Chicago or New York,” he said. “This is Thousand Oaks.”

But Mayor Elois Zeanah, who has been working with the Roundtable since early March, considers Thousand Oaks ripe for some sort of multicultural commission. “We’re trying to get in at the front end, rather than waiting for (racism) to become a problem,” she said.

In Ventura County, the closest model would be Oxnard’s Commission on Community Relations, which monitors and investigates discrimination complaints.

Over the years, the commission has evolved into a general clearinghouse to help people cut through red tape at City Hall. But the group does focus especially on those who “feel they don’t have a chance to be heard because they’re from a minority,” said Paula Reach, a member of the Oxnard panel for 12 years.

Even more than intervention, many Thousand Oaks Roundtable members are interested in education--both for immigrant newcomers and for 30-year residents who may be bewildered by the multitude of languages they hear around them.

By introducing residents to their new neighbors, and by holding forums or writing pamphlets to explain cultural differences, Roundtable members hope to ease the transition on both sides.

Although she spoke perfect English, Anita Bapat could have used some support when she arrived from India 4 1/2 years ago. She found her neighbors friendly and welcoming, but couldn’t get used to some of their customs--like shaking hands and even hugging at every meeting.

Raised to behave more circumspectly, Bapat considered Americans brash and forward. Her neighbors pegged her as aloof and rude. Bapat would like to see such misunderstandings averted through some kind of outreach and education effort.

The multicultural commission should serve as an “ambassador of goodwill,” Roundtable member Karen Livesay agreed. She would also like to use the panel as a platform to educate people about diversity within each distinct ethnic group.

A local management consultant, Livesay laughs when people seem to see her blond hair and fair skin as belying a Latino heritage. In reality, she grew up speaking Spanish, eating tortillas with nearly every meal and celebrating her Costa Rican heritage.

“It amuses me but also bothers me,” Livesay said. “It shows that we haven’t done a good enough job of making people aware of our heritage.”

Roundtable members recognize that some Thousand Oaks residents--proud of their relatively homogeneous community--might resent a multicultural commission designed to highlight diversity.

“Because of the economic distress around the world, people are a little less accepting these days, and they always need a scapegoat,” said Spelman, the school administrator. “But that makes the committee’s work very important.”

Livesay agreed: “Though it may not be comfortable, change will take us in a better direction. We’ve got so much opportunity to be a model community. Why not push the envelope of our internationalism and go beyond what we may appear to be?”

Thousand Oaks Population by Race White: 94,333 Hispanic: 9,871 Mexican: 6,924 Asian or Pacific Islander: 4,925 Chinese: 1,588 Black: 1,346 Japanese: 821 Asian Indian: 649 Korean: 570 Filipino: 535 Guatemalan: 371 Vietnamese: 347 American Indian: 310 Salvadoran: 303 Colombian: 186 Cuban: 166 Puerto Rican: 159 Nicaraguan: 121 Peruvian: 95 Ecuadorean: 83 Hawaiian: 73 Guamanian: 47 Panamanian: 47 Tongan: 42 Aleut: 20 Thai: 18 Samoan: 18 Honduran: 17 Other Hispanic: 994 Other South American: 340 Other Central American: 65 TOTAL RESIDENTS: 104,352 Source: 1990 U. S. Census

Language Spoken at Home English only: 82,749 Spanish or Spanish Creole: 6,679 Chinese: 1,191 German: 1,043 French or French Creole: 582 Indio: 529 Arabic: 460 Italian: 420 Korean: 341 Tagalog: 301 Scandinavian: 286 Japanese: 261 Vietnamese: 241 Polish: 182 Hungarian: 161 Greek: 109 Yiddish: 59 South Slavic: 59 Russian: 49 Other Indo-European language: 1,233 Other/Unspecified: 289 Other West Germanic language: 180 Other Slavic language: 84 Source: 1990 U. S. Census