No Sign of the Spark to Rekindle a Love Gone Cold

The inquisitive graduate student was persistent in grilling the wise newspaper columnist. She wouldn’t let the scribe parry her with some casual answer.

“You said L.A. broke your heart and you weren’t sure that you could love the city again.” Rosa Maria Santana is working on a master’s degree in political science at the Claremont Graduate School and came by to see me the other day for my input. “Do you still feel that way?”

I didn’t want to answer her. I’m a loyal native son and I didn’t want to confront my earlier admission that the city had disappointed me.

“Well, do you?”

I hedged but I could feel her glare. Finally, I gave in.

“Yeah, I still do feel the same way.”

*

Sometimes, we don’t like to be reminded of what we said in the past. Just ask George Bush (“Read my lips. . . . “) or Yogi Berra (“When you come to the fork in the road, take it!”). I knew I’d have a hard time living down the admission, which I wrote in a front-page commentary for The Times shortly after the riots in 1992.

But I felt ashamed for my city because of the wanton killing and looting, and because of the acquittals of the four police officers in the first Rodney King trial in Simi Valley that triggered them. It was a double black eye that sullied my affection for L.A.

I hadn’t thought much about my municipal disappointment until Rosa Maria--who is doing her master’s thesis on how minorities were depicted by the news media in the coverage of the riots--asked me.

But when I was faced with it, I had to admit that my disappointment still lingers.

L.A. hasn’t won me back yet.

What gnaws at me, what prevents me from fully embracing this city again, is the issue of race and how it tears at L.A. It divides us. It angers us. It defines us. It hurts us. Pick an issue and see how it works:

* On the recent MTA fare hikes, Latinos and African Americans found themselves complaining that they were being forced to fund improvements that benefited whites and the well-to-do, and to pay for operating budget deficits run up by the agency’s management.

* It was evident in the fight over whether Police Chief Willie L. Williams is doing a good job. Many African American politicians and activists--joined by some Latinos and Asians--rallied to Williams’ defense recently after a white former deputy chief wrote a letter to the Police Commission repeating allegations of impropriety on Williams’ part and urging the commission to investigate.

* The fatal shooting of graffiti vandal Cesar Arce in the middle of the night by William Andrew Masters II. Despite his repeated denials that he is a racist, Masters was applauded by many whites for shooting two taggers he said he thought were “Mexican skinheads.” Latinos saw the Jan. 31 shooting as racially motivated.

* Dare I say it? Proposition 187.

* I don’t even want to think about the proposed initiative to repeal affirmative action and the debate, which has already started long before next year’s election, on whether affirmative action should remain our state’s policy.

* It’s even in the O.J. Simpson murder trial where, in the beginning, race didn’t seem to figure. From assertions that an LAPD detective is a racist, to the jokes last week about Si, senor-- the frequent answer of defense witness Rosa Lopez--the trial has become more of a statement of race relations in this city than the legal pursuit of the answer to the question of who killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.

As the bright-eyed graduate student listened, I said things I wish I didn’t have to say. I wanted to be optimistic and vow that the city I was born and brought up in would come back from the dark days of ’92. But I couldn’t. We’ve become a racially divided city.

As much as we try to improve things, events like the tagger shooting overtake us, defining us as a community afraid to look past the stereotypes.

“Things will get worse before they get better,” I told Rosa Maria.

*

At the end of our talk, Rosa Maria told me not to get discouraged. “Keep your head up and look for the bright things in Los Angeles,” she said.

I try, but it’s getting harder. There’s too much anger in the air, too much suspicion.

“Keep trying,” she persisted.

My problem, a colleague once told me, is that I’m addicted to my hometown. “Move away,” he told me. “You love this hole of a city too much.”

I can’t. L.A. is too much a part of me.

In the very first column I wrote in this space, I said trying to get the love back would be my mission. It’s been a struggle, and after 2 1/2 years, I discover that I’m no closer to regaining it.

I know, I know--keep trying.