Glimpses of King’s Dream

I knew we were entering a brave new world when, as newcomers to Southern California 20 years ago, we began our search for housing.

From our temporary digs at a motel in Van Nuys, my husband and I scanned the classifieds and made a list of promising rentals. “Air-conditioned, pool, garage, landscaped grounds. . . .” There were dozens to visit in the San Fernando Valley, where we’d chosen to live to be near our new jobs.

Our first day’s rounds unsettled us. Apartments bearing “vacancy” signs suddenly were declared unavailable. Doorbells went unanswered by folks who’d told us on the phone, “Sure, come by and see the place.”

From our years in Ohio, we were not unfamiliar with the lash of discrimination, with hostility borne of prejudice and fear. But we’d envisioned California as polyracial nirvana. And if that first day had cost us a bit of our naivete, our next encounter would strip it bare.

We were greeted warmly by the manager, an elderly white woman who’d lived for 20 years in this aging building in the Valley’s core.

The apartment was shabbier than the ad had promised, the carpet fraying and nail holes dotting the dingy walls. But the small complex was quiet and tidy, its swimming pool was sparkling clean, and bright flowers ringed the tiny front yard.

“You’d like this place,” she promised. “Safe, clean, quiet. . . .” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper: “We don’t rent to the Mexicans.”

We must have looked puzzled. Sotto voce, she explained: “Too many kids, too noisy . . . they park their cars on the front lawn.”

We stared and said nothing, momentarily struck dumb. Overnight, it seemed, we had ascended a rung on the social ladder, been bumped up a notch in status by the mere existence of folks deemed more loathsome, more foreign, than we.

I was caught, for just a moment, between competing reactions. Revulsion, certainly, at her bigotry. . . . But also an odd, misplaced sense of pride that I finally was no longer the “other,” that I’d been declared better than acceptable; allowed admission to the “us” that ran this place.

It was what I loved about California originally--this melange of cultures and colors that made the black-and-white of my hometown seem simplistic, stodgy and quaint. It’s what makes L.A. so vibrant and alive today . . . if, admittedly, so unwieldy and uncomfortable, too.

And it’s what makes so important the dozens of sessions convened in Southern California in the few days to talk about how we can navigate together in this mine-laden ethnic terrain.

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Groups have come together in churches, places of business, community centers and schools under the sponsorship of a group called Days of Dialogue, created after the O.J. Simpson trial revealed that Americans of different races view one another warily, across a bitter historical divide.

Now a nationwide organization, Days of Dialogue works behind the scenes year-round, hosting sessions aimed at teaching everyone--from students to chief executives--how to constructively discuss emotionally loaded issues from affirmative action to day laborers to gang violence.

Each year, during the week surrounding the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, the group sponsors a series of discussions on race. Talking about race relations tends to be more complicated in Southern California “because it’s not just a black-white issue, it’s black, white, brown, yellow . . . you name it,” says the local Days of Dialogue director, Lee Wallach.

Even within races, “there’s so much diversity--you’re a Mexican or you’re a Salvadoran. . . . And there’s such allegiance to specific groups that alienates us from one another.”

The organization’s program aims to get people talking about how they feel. So the black schoolteacher can realize how much courage it takes for the immigrant mother, who barely speaks English, to return a teacher’s telephone call. And the Iranian boutique owner hears from the black man who knows it might be paranoia, but he feels he’s being stared at when he’s shopping uptown.

“We need to listen to learn to understand and live together,” Wallach says, “rather than just pointing fingers and saying, ‘You know, we never used to have laundry hanging out on the line like that in this neighborhood. . . .’ ”

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There are times, I admit, when the cacophony exhausts and annoys me, when I grow tired of jostling for power and space in this ever-shifting ethnic tableau. Times when I see in me a glimpse of that old, bigoted landlady . . . in my longing for a world as it used to be.

But most days I look around and marvel at the mix and believe that Southern California has the makings of what Dr. King meant when he wished us to be free.

Like when I find an African dance class on the beach, taught by a Japanese woman, accompanied on drums by a fellow with a long, blond ponytail, attended by a white-haired matron from Pasadena, a couple of hip-hop girls from South L.A., a Jamaican tourist, a Swedish grandmother. . . .

And when my kindergartner tells me nonchalantly that her two new best friends are the same color as she . . . and they turn out to be not black but Indian and Korean.

Then I’m grateful for the blessings of diversity, for a land where we all must take our place as “others” in order to triumph as “us,” collectively.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.