Hate in the High Desert

When I was in Lancaster a year ago, two of its most dedicated boosters told me that a big problem with their city was that it had no image. Well, it has now.

Ever since two black teenagers were attacked by suspected skinheads shouting racist slogans earlier this week, the perception of Lancaster has been less than glorious.

People who don’t even know exactly where the place is have been calling me to say that it ought to be taken over by the National Guard before an American Fuhrer comes goose-stepping out of the high desert.

That isn’t what the two boosters, George Runner and Vern Lawson, had in mind for the city in which both were born. They wanted Lancaster to be looked upon as a place that flashed a big, loopy, happy-face smile to the world.

Then along came the skinheads.

The very phrase “hate crime” rings an emotional gong not unlike a fire alarm in a powder plant. I’m not saying it shouldn’t. An attack on any group is an attack on everyone because it strikes at the essence of our humanity.

But to describe Antelope Valley as an open-air asylum for neo-Nazis is a perception I can’t buy. There are an estimated 100 skinheads in the entire area, and while that’s 100 too many, it doesn’t exactly constitute an army.

Given their modest IQs and clumsy tactics, they’re no more effective as a group than house cats trying to pass as tigers. There’s just no roar there.

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I was in Lancaster last July during the height of its promotional campaign to attract tourists and businesses. A 60-second radio commercial featured a lot of cheering and the suggestion that maybe it was time to move out of the big cities and into paradise.

Since there isn’t a lot of reason for tourists to go there, the emphasis was placed on luring businesses to its new industrial park with employer incentives and housing discounts.

Runner, who was Lancaster’s mayor then, and Lawson, who is still director of its Economic Development Corp., practically did a duet singing the praises of the place they’d lived in for all of their 42 years.

They bragged about a relatively low crime rate, good schools, a performing arts center and--sung fortissimo--a new Black Angus restaurant! Well.

I hadn’t heard such enthusiastic boosterism since San Diego dedicated its outdoor toilets and proclaimed itself the Paris of the West.

Runner and Lawson believed that Lancaster was the city of the future . . . and they still believe that.

I telephoned both of them this week to ask if the dream of a Greater Coexistence Sphere with Palmdale was still alive, and they replied with the same kind of gusto that characterized their attitude a year ago.

Runner, who is a Republican state Assembly candidate, denied that Lancaster is anywhere near being “hate city,” and Lawson blamed the media for casting Antelope Valley in the wrong light.

Then Lawson added in the Pentecostal tone of a corner preacher: “There’s so much positive going on here.”

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Runner, Lawson and the current mayor, Frank Roberts, insist they’re doing everything they can to celebrate the area’s cultural plurality and to deal with the “human cockroaches” who worship Adolf Hitler’s evil ghost.

Roberts points out that even though the most recent racist attack was only the fourth in 17 months, they aren’t taking the whole thing lightly. A diversity council has been established and seminars are being held to teach the importance of multicultural values.

“Lancaster,” he added firmly, “is not going to hell.”

The tendency is to think of a community languishing among the tumbling tumble weeds as a haven for mindless rednecks who hate anyone who isn’t fair skinned and blue-eyed.

That may have been true once, Lawson says, but it’s not true anymore. Good people moved to places such as Lancaster because property was cheaper and they thought that by abandoning a big city they could escape its calamity.

What they’re realizing now is what they’re learning in small towns all across America as black churches burn, white hoods are donned and Hitler sanctified: racial hatred festers as much in Podunk as it does in Metropolis.

Lancaster isn’t so much a paradise lost as it is a village awakened. As those who sought refuge in the high desert are discovering, it’s not going to do a lot of good anymore to flee from calamity.

Baseball pitcher-philosopher Satchel Paige warned us once not to look back, something might be gaining. But maybe it’s time to turn and face what’s behind us, because what’s there is a Hydra called hatred, and it’s getting closer all the time.

Al Martinez can be reached through Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com