An Introduction to Opening Lines of Communication

There were several ways to conduct L.A.’s Day of Dialogue about race. In most of the estimated 60 discussion groups scattered across the city, trained facilitators guided the talk, hoping to focus on how to deal with the prickly issue. Long-winded personal anecdotes were nice but discouraged.

Also, personal introductions should be kept short; after all, the generally accepted time limit for each group, which rarely exceeded 25 persons, was only two hours.

But in the session I attended at Hebrew Union College near the USC campus, the personal introductions of all 25 people lasted nearly the whole two hours. Rabbi Lee Bycel, the college’s dean and the group’s discussion leader, thought it was the best way to go.

He was right. Before we can talk, we have to know who we’re talking to--something we haven’t done very well around here. In the simple act of introducing ourselves, the effect that race has had on us was clear. It’s made us fearful, frustrated and, at times, afraid to speak out.

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Bycel started the discussion with references to the works of African American professor and author Cornel West, of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel, and with an apology to Salam Al Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who was taking part in this group.

He was apologizing because in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, when Islamic extremists were briefly suspected, Bycel, the president of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said he thought to call Al Marayati to express his solidarity, but didn’t.

“I apologize for that,” Bycel told him. “I should have called.”

Carolyn Webb de Macias, chief of staff for Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, said she fears what her children might face in L.A.’s widening gulf over race and ethnicity. She is black, she is married to a Latino and their children have been brought up to consider themselves both black and Latino.

“The discussion about race hasn’t progressed,” she said. “It has regressed and it frightens me personally. Children will be put in the position of choosing up sides.”

Eastside activist Lydia Lopez was indirectly referring to Bycel’s quoting black and Jewish writers when she repeated the complaint frequently voiced by Latinos these days that they are being cut out of the discussion of race because in the minds of many, race is merely a black and white issue.

Latinos, she pointed out, don’t all neatly fit into certain categories, and pointed to her own life to illustrate the point. “I’m a Baptist” in a world where nearly all Mexicans are Catholics, she said.

When it was her turn to talk, Joanne Kumamoto came right to the point. “I’ve lived with racism all my life,” the consultant on diversity issues told the group.

She faced it as a child after her parents were sent to an internment camp during World War II. She was reminded of it when she taught diversity courses in Japan. There, the management types admired America’s different races and told her so. But it seemed to her that Japan, the land of her forebears, wasn’t ready to tackle the subject in a meaningful way.

With Jews making up about half of the discussion group at Hebrew Union College, one would have thought Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan would have come up in the introductions. But he wasn’t mentioned once.

That surprised me; surely he is a focal point for Jews because of his anti-Semitic remarks. But there was another, more important point that many of the Jews in the room wanted to make: at least for purposes of discussion, they didn’t consider themselves to be white. To themselves, they were just another minority group.

After the introductions were done, someone noted that “Anglo Americans” were missing both from the room and the discussion.

At that moment, U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Democrat who came to town for the day to observe the talk about race, walked into the room, prompting raucous laughter. Everyone was thinking the same thing: here’s a white guy! After joking about it, Bradley settled down to share the talk for a few minutes.

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Spending two hours just on introductions showed that each group in L.A. has to spend more time doing just that--making itself known. When it came time to talk about how to do that, almost everyone mentioned one group that’s very successful in getting its message across: the Christian Coalition.

Afterward, one man told me what many in the group were thinking. While he dislikes the right-wing message the Christian Coalition promotes, he nevertheless admires its media savvy.

“I personally think the Christian right is spewing hate but it would be justice to use their focused lobbying and use of TV to promote a more positive message,” he said. “What better way to do that than by using the ways of the people you love to hate?”

That’s quite an introduction on how to fight racism.