‘Day of Dialogue’ Tries to Span Racial Gulf : Diversity: Across L.A., small groups meet to talk frankly--and to listen.

With widespread agreement across Los Angeles that racial rifts are widening, this divided city set aside Tuesday to discuss the un-discussable: the fears and prejudices that have run rampant in the three weeks since the O.J. Simpson verdicts.

At nearly 100 sites across the city--churches and synagogues, schools and workplaces, community organizations and public auditoriums--Angelenos of all races and ethnicities gathered in small groups from early morning until late at night and, supervised by trained mediators, tried to abandon platitudes and talk frankly about race and how it has disfigured their lives and fragmented their city.

The Day of Dialogue on Race Relations, as the citywide talkathon was dubbed by its originator, Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, was a hastily assembled event. But it nevertheless managed to attract thousands of residents troubled by the fissures of race and ethnicity that have plagued the city for years but have widened in the wake of the Simpson verdicts and the subsequent “Million Man March” last week in Washington.

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“If we don’t make it work here in L.A., we are in trouble,” said Father Pedro Villarroya, a Spanish-born official in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who turned out for bagels, coffee and strained conversation in the law library at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, one of the day’s host organizations. “I don’t know where World War III will start, but it may be because of race.”

Juanita Fleming, a neighborhood activist in Pico-Union who attended the same group, agreed.

“I feel sorry for us as a nation and a city,” said Fleming, who is of mixed Mexican and Filipino descent and married to a white man. “It is getting worse, not better, and if we don’t start interacting and communicating, we’re not going to get through this.”

Some of those who attended the discussion groups were liberal advocates or men and women involved in government and public policy, who acknowledged that they were preaching to the choir. But many of them said that even in their offices and social circles, the Simpson verdicts had unleashed racist remarks, flowing in all directions, rarely vocalized in progressive circles since the civil rights movement.

“The shock of the verdict caused a veneer to slip,” said Carolyn Webb de Macias, chief of staff to Ridley-Thomas. “People are saying things to each other that they wouldn’t have said three weeks ago.”

Along with the public activists at Tuesday’s discussion groups, there were neighborhood folks; along with the well-known ministers, anonymous parishioners; along with the city leaders, firefighters and clerks and college students at sites that included the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, Loyola Marymount University, Kol Tikvah Synagogue, the Watts Towers Art Center and the Victory Outreach Ministry, where Sen. Bill Bradley joined the gang members and ex-convicts.

“I believe the dialogue has to be deepened,” the New Jersey Democrat said.

Some participants in the day’s activities said that rather than racist talk, a heavier- than-usual curtain had fallen between the races in the wake of the verdicts. That was the consensus at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where 20 office workers spoke of the “uncomfortable silence’ that has reigned in the MTA lunchroom and in their neighborhoods in recent days.

“We were so afraid about what would happen to our personal relationships if we discussed those issues, because there are such deep feelings around them,” said Phyllis Tucker, an African American MTA administrator.

And silence breeds misunderstanding. “What you think we think is not necessarily what we think; we just don’t express ourselves,” said Patricia Helm, a white MTA worker.

Some of Tuesday’s exchanges were heated, which was encouraged by the mediators, local men and women trained by a Connecticut-based foundation called the Study Circles Resource Center, which has organized such racial round-tables in many small cities around the country, but never in a place so huge, complicated or divided as Los Angeles.

At the ACLU breakfast, for instance, two of the whites in the group, Laurrie Garner, an elderly neighborhood resident, and Capt. Nick Salicos of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, seemed out of sync with the Latinos and African Americans as to whether race and ethnicity even matter.

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Garner began the heated exchange by saying that she “loathed and despised” the need of some people to emphasize their ethnicity, to call themselves African Americans or Asian Americans. “That’s like saying, ‘We’re American, but . . . ‘ “ she said. “It’s all those classifications that are tearing us apart.”

She also blasted bilingual education and the tedium of translation from one language to another at various civic meetings: “If we don’t communicate in the same language, we can’t solve our problems.”

Salicos similarly complained about groups insisting on their own identity. “Within our organization, we’re all blue,” Salicos said. “I wish that were the view of people in L.A., because I see what happens when people clamor for their own racial identity. I don’t see why we have to get so hung up on background.”

The nonwhites in the group took quick and angry exception. Conrado Terraza, a field organizer for Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, noted that “my reality is that race does matter. You control the system. It’s your system. No matter how successful I am, no matter how much money I make, I am always a Latino.”

Then Sol Castro, a high school teacher, exploded. “Ma’am,” he said, directing his remarks at Garner, “I’ve seen some of our kids dye their hair blond to pass for white and wear tinted contact lenses to make their eyes blue. When I wanted to play the saxophone in high school, the teacher said my lips were too fat. Don’t tell us race doesn’t matter!”

The grievances of the various ethnic groups were consistent from one end of the city to the other. African Americans told tales of others shunning them, as if fearful that everyone of their race was a mortal danger. At a discussion at the Los Angeles Conservation Corps, Bernie Wilsdon complained that white women tuck their purses under their arms at the sight of him. Oscar Voner described white drivers seeing him at intersections and locking their doors. And Deona Tucker said that when she’s shopping, clerks follow her around the store.

The primary complaint among Latinos was that they felt absent from the dialogue in Los Angeles since the verdicts, when all the talk has been of black versus white. “You’ve left us out; you treat us like we were invisible,” said Juanita Fleming, at the ACLU group.

Whites, for their part, dwelt on the injustices of affirmative action and the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, who led the “Million Man March.” Typical of the first was Dave Rogers, a fireman who attended a discussion at a Downtown station house and said he had to wait three years to get hired while minorities found instant openings in the department. Typical of the second was an elderly woman at the Kol Tikvah synagogue in Woodland Hills who said it was “chilling” to hear that a man such as Farrakhan can rise to power.

Organizers of the day’s events seemed buoyed by the turnout and the candor. But no one was predicting that one day of talk would work miracles. “We won’t wake up Wednesday and say, ‘Hallelujah, it’s over,’ ” said Avis Ridley-Thomas, the councilman’s wife, who runs the Dispute Resolution Program in the city attorney’s office.

But miracles aside, there were small victories: One of the groups at the ACLU has scheduled a second gathering in a few weeks. One white man at a lunchtime discussion group at the city attorney’s office vowed to organize social events with people of other races, because his contact with them now is limited to work hours. And groups all over the city that were set to meet for an hour or two instead talked into the afternoon.

“I think people were ready,” said Councilman Ridley-Thomas. “And it’s long overdue, long overdue. Residents of this city don’t want to be stuck in this racial abyss.”

* Times staff writers Tony Olivo, Erin Texeira and Miles Corwin contributed to this story.