Better Left Unsaid? : Not discussing race may allow us to avoid unpleasant situations. But some wonder if we can ever move forward without confronting our fears.

There are no manuals. No widely syndicated columns offering tried-and-true advice, no well-worn para digms from which to trace a trail. If Thomas Brothers commissioned a clear map of the territory, retail-outlets--the country and world over--would struggle to keep it on the racks.

Many wander through this maze--foggy as it is forbidding--and it often seems impossible to find the way out. Stumbling free, one hopes never to repeat the trip.

For all the well-meaning attempts to build bridges, the discussion of race remains, even now, taboo--off-limits like personal finance queries or religious discussions among strangers.

Race is the crashing crystal at the well-appointed dinner party at dusk. The only difference is that, afterward, seldom does anyone offer to help clean up the mess.

*

In San Francisco’s North Beach, shortly after 5 p.m., five women install themselves at a cocktail table. The drink is wine; the topic, women’s issues. Conversation blooms surprisingly exploratory, commensurately emotional.

One shares details of her rape, more than a dozen years past. The others are compassionate, holding the speaker protectively in their collective gaze. Until, that is, she mentions that her attacker was black.

Conversation careens into a wall of silence. Eyes shift to goings-on outside or are suddenly transfixed to the table’s water rings. The women--two black, three white--shift in their seats until one voice (a black woman’s) gingerly pulls them from silence.

“I felt prickly all over my body. I felt slapped, personally chastised for bringing it up,” says the woman, who is white. The experience has permanently altered the way she tells the tale. Since it was never discussed, she can only ponder the details, the roots of silence:

“My perception was that the discomfort was about something I said. I guess they felt that I was feeding a stereotype.” Not harboring race-based resentment, she says, she was simply blindly grabbing at details, filling in the picture. “I made (all the women) uncomfortable and I felt bad for bringing it up. It had the effect,” she says with a leaden laugh, “of the sinking of the Titanic.”

Altering a few details, this scenario is probably uncomfortably familiar. Maybe you were there, maybe you spoke the words. Or maybe you were on the receiving end. If so, you’ve probably had time to ponder the possible outcomes and decide which is worse: A storm of words or a blanket of silence?

Slogans of peace and harmony that haunt the recent past ring hollow, sometimes inspiring a cynical chuckle. The reticence to broach matters of race and have adult--and, quite possibly, charged--discussions only underscores a nation’s failings and the arduous work ahead.

“The inability to talk about race in anything resembling honest terms compounds the very misunderstanding that renders silence necessary,” writes Ellis Cose, contributing editor and essayist for Newsweek, in his book “The Rage of a Privileged Class.”

“For those blacks and whites who come into closest contact, it stands as a huge barrier to their ever truly accepting one another or finding common ground.”

Like a tumbleweed, the subject of race gathers all sorts of cast-aside delicate issues in the course of its travels: class or privilege, or an exact definition of who and what is racist. People prefer not to have that tense, if not unpleasant conversation. Instead we walk in circles; talk in metaphors. The avoidance at times is as intricate and showy as a modern dance phrase.

“There are no social graces when race is concerned,” says Patricia D. Johnson, 35, a counselor who specializes in interracial/multicultural issues. “I know when I walk in a room and start talking about it, people bounce off the walls or the room goes silent. But I realize that is so unconscious. . . . People just are so afraid.”

The fear manifests in various guises, finds roots in fertile ground. There is fear of committing a faux pas; fear of the consequential reprimand--just for starters.

And some feel most uncomfortable tackling the subject in racially or ethnically mixed groups, fearful they lack not just the knowledge, but the language to do so as well. In his collection of essays, “Race Matters,” professor and theologian Cornel West says most Americans “remain trapped in the narrow framework of the dominant liberal and conservative views of race in America, which with its worn-out vocabulary leaves us intellectually debilitated, morally disempowered and personally depressed.”

Still others ponder whether they may harbor deep-seated racism that might leap from their lips at an inopportune moment, or that a comment may not be perceived as “politically correct” enough.

More and more often, well-meaning souls are afraid to step into that fraught arena, Johnson has found. For some, the tentativeness is so great, they subconsciously choose not to address, let alone recognize, the matter. Rather, they deny its very existence.

“It’s just really scary to talk about it,” Johnson says, “because emotions run so high when you do. I (see people) going out and attempting to do (race-related) work who still have some reservations about dealing with the subject. The repercussions can be a strong incentive not to touch the issues.

“There are days where I don’t want to deal with it. It’s hard.”

*

In the midst of the dramatic sidestepping, it’s easy to lose sight of precisely what is being avoided, what needs be discussed.

Much of the necessity for dialogue about race deals with enhancing one’s education and broadening a social or professional circle. It requires working to demystify the “other” through contact and education, thus shattering blindly accepted stereotypes.

Given the level of anxiety over even broaching the subject, the solutions aren’t as unfathomable as they might seem. Bridging the chasm mostly requires a little patience and common sense.

“We could really move (the discussion) forward,” says performance artist and gay activist Luis Alfaro, “but that only happens when you take that mask down. We come to this thing with very mixed feelings about language, about community. . . . (You) have to hear people talk about resentment . . . about rage and anger. We’re not going to get over that unless we are going to deal with those things. And there really isn’t any criteria for this.”

For some Angelenos, April 29, 1992, served as an impetus. Not waiting until the smoke cleared, the events of three days forced the issues of race and class not simply to the front page, but to the dinner table, cocktail party and locker room as well. For some, it made it that much more difficult to formulate questions and opinions; for others, it provoked a long-couched dialogue--often for the better.

Others believe that the avoidance of this abstract, now given flesh-and-bone import, is lodged somewhere at the root of what turned into L.A.’s--pick your term--civil unrest, riots, disturbances.

The feelings that lie behind the language we use (or choose not to) are clouded by a patina of euphemism. Forced to look at our inadequate language, at insensitive jokes and sarcasm often standing in place of probing conversations about issues of difference, it is difficult to predict a future trajectory. Rhetoric and platitudes are easy. But can they bring about change?

*

The old routes are well-traveled, and those most accustomed to them take their directions by reading the winds. Silence, and the codes embroidered within it, have long dominated. We have become conversant in signs that masquerade as language. Some call it antennae, others say it’s common sense.

“I remember this one guy, whose name was John. He was white,” says Byron Bonner, 34, an African American who grew up in L.A. “The only thing that John and I had in common was that we liked to build model cars. It was cool for him to come over to my house. . . . But me going over to his house? No. I had to sneak into his bedroom window.”

Bonner says they never discussed the ritual, and he never questioned it. Nor did he examine how he felt about it: “His parents didn’t like black people. . . . I don’t know why or how (I knew). Anytime you have to crawl through the bedroom window, that pretty much lets you know.”

Bonner has long since abandoned silence. He found that by not addressing issues when they arose, his anger grew into something larger, more difficult to define.

Racial slurs or sloppy assumptions about “just who and what is black” prompted him, instead, to fortify his walls: “In college, I was ‘Mr. Militant’ . . . (now I realize) I could have handled it a lot better, instead of walking around evangelizing and preaching. I was really . . . pissed off.”

Balancing pride and tolerance, a mellowed Bonner believes, is an education unto itself. And deciding when to don the teacher’s mantle when it comes to the issues of race takes more than social savvy. It takes, he says, a diplomat’s skills:

“I’m not shy about raising it if it needs to be. And it really is about educating people who don’t really know a lot. There is intentional (racism) and there is stupidity. . . . I don’t claim to know all the answers. I know what I know. And it all depends: Do I feel like telling these people what I know? Do I feel like arguing with them when they challenge my knowledge?”

This enervating process, Bonner notes, doesn’t ensure plaudits: “I can’t remember the last time . . . when I walked away feeling, ‘I think that person really learned something.’ At this age, I think people pretty much are set in their beliefs and all you can do is try to . . . catch them in an open-minded moment. . . . (But) if it’s not a high priority it won’t get done.

“I think people know what to do. They’re just too lazy to do it.”

For some, the wager is far too high: emotional fireworks, public embarrassment or loss of a friendship. People of color say they find themselves exhausted by the effort of explaining, while many whites fear saying something that will brand them racist--forever.

At 28, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, of Puerto Rican descent, feels frustrated by the psychological impasse: “Even though I have white friends, I feel as though there is a wall between us that will never come down.”

When race-charged issues arise, he also saves his words for those he believes will truly hear: “I have some white friends who are aware. Some of them understand. And there are others (with whom) I know it is pointless to discuss these issues . . . because they are so myopic. But I don’t want to just ‘preach it to the choir’ either.”

This selective approach, however, doesn’t stop him from honing in on particularly egregious remarks, then administering something a bit more severe than a verbal wrist-tapping. “People of color (are) going to talk about this now . . . like it or not,” he says. “And the dominant culture is not used to us speaking up.”

Such confrontations, Kuiland-Nazario notes, are more often than not met with hostility, defensiveness and anger.

Unfortunately, it is often impossible to quell the rage and move to reasoning, he says: “(People) get really angry because I’m challenging a belief that they’ve held for most of their lives. . . . It’s like I’m telling them that they are never going to get married, or that they are never going to have an orgasm again. . . . People are just really angry. People don’t like to be wrong.”

*

Essayist Pearl Cleage calls them “weird race moments”--the almost tangible limbo that exists between instantaneously regrettable words and the dreaded reaction. One minute that feels like five hours, or a bomb that blasts in a nanosecond.

Janet Fitch can’t forget hers.

“I remember going to my first sleep-away at ‘Y’ camp. I must have been a second-grader,” says Fitch, 38. “You know how kids make fantasy games . . . I was into exotica at that time, Cleopatra movies . . . and I remember telling a girl whose bunk was above mine, ‘Let’s play Cleopatra. I’ll be the queen and you’ll be the slave.’

“She, a black girl, hit the roof (and shouted) ‘I’m not your slave!’ I had a moment of epiphany. Gee, I was really sorry. Because my conception of ‘the slave’ was someone with a fan. . . . I certainly never put it together. . . . And that was a shock.”

Fitch, who grew up near the Crenshaw District and now counsels teen-agers at Foshay Junior High, says she’s still cautious wandering down certain avenues of conversation: “They (the administrators) say to ‘try and talk to kids about their feelings,’ but I’m very . . . hesitant to talk to them about race. I don’t know about the theories or the current philosophy of how ‘politically correct’ people deal with the subject.

“The (student body) is just black and Chicano, and we never do talk about race, because I’m very conscious of being this white person, ‘coming down’ to help. I am helping these kids . . . but as somebody who was raised in the ‘60s, the image of the ‘white bleeding-heart liberal’ going down to the ‘ghetto’ to help these ‘poor kids,’ was drummed into me at the time as so offensive.”

The whirlwind that has developed around race, without the language to explore it, has rendered people not just cautious, but silent, too timid to take risks or wander out on a limb.

“There is an element in the black community that is very anti-white,” Fitch notes, “and there is an element that says, ‘Let’s more than get along, let’s see where the other is coming from. . . . But as a liberal white person, you never know whether you will be appreciated, tolerated or they wished you’d stayed home.”

Yet, she says, “You don’t know unless you do it.”

Fitch believes that 1992’s civil disturbances served to rebuild, as well as to reinforce urban fear, the after-images wreaking havoc on interpersonal dialogue: “I think nobody expected that it would have such a long-term negative reverberation on people who had been doing pretty well. That fear element came back.”

It simply has added another complex layer to an already prickly matter. Listening to people unwittingly make sweeping generalizations about different races, she says, makes one ask: “Has this generated a new emotion or is it uncovering an emotion that was always there?”

*

Although priming discussions about race initially may be difficult, they’re almost impossible to quell once they’ve gathered steam. Endless anecdotes unfold. One memory births three. Although it may begin with a hesitant stutter or a couched inquiry, there seems to be a real desire to try to get things right.

This basic inability to talk affects the real work, just as backstage concern moved out of the abstract for those at Rebuild L.A.

“We live in a society where we define politeness in a way that encourages avoidance,” says Jackie Dupont-Walker, 47, RLA’s senior project director and manager of urban development/housing.

“So it is impolite to confront a reality that may be unpleasant for a moment, even if we realize that it might bring us to a better situation ultimately. I think it’s very difficult in L.A., where there is such a large number of subcultures, for us to really avoid it without creating problems.”

Not recognizing and discussing differences, and not addressing flagrant acts or remarks, she says, is precisely what has lowered the volume on discourse: “So, for example, if I’m in a work setting and somebody happens to say something that is particularly insensitive to me as a black person, I don’t make them feel uncomfortable by pointing it out. I just kind of go along and say later how awful it was.

“There are ways to deal with that. And yes, there might be a moment of discomfort. But what we’re talking about is creating the kind of sensitivities that (will help us) learn to respect and love each other differently.”

Dupont-Walker looks at RLA as a microcosm, its membership--like the city’s populace--realizing that these long-cordoned-off zones of difference must be examined. A community could not mend physically unless attention was paid to its spiritual welfare.

“So we had a Racial Harmony Task Force that was fairly diverse,” she says. “(In) their initial days, they found they had to deal with personal pain before they could deal with community pain. Some people were not willing to go through the personal pain. So while a large number of people signed up, when they started to deal with those kinds of issues, people tended to go away.”

Antonia Hernandez, 45, a task force co-chairwoman, recalls the arduous process of scaling interpersonal walls: “People we’re sort of posturing in the beginning . . . finger-pointing, playing (their) roles. But unless we went beyond the posturing, the committee wouldn’t exist. The (task force) wasn’t going to be a vehicle for just a lot of haranguing. We had to respect one another and listen, no matter how out-to-lunch you thought someone was.”

The Asian community “felt very hurt, the African American community felt hurt. We just kept working together. . . . We tried to listen to all of the anger and really talk . . . to respect and understand the difference,” she says. “I don’t know where RLA is going as an institution, (but) I do know that there are more people with goodwill in L.A. The city needs to deal with this issue. We are the most multicultural community in the world. And if we don’t make it here, we won’t make it anywhere.”

Dupont-Walker allows that the task force is not unlike many other bicultural dialogues that optimistically started up, then ultimately lost their thunder:

“Having participated in some of them, I am of the opinion that they refused to deal with the tough issues. I think we have this history of setting up something that appears to accomplish a goal, without really struggling with the goal. . . . When we got to those issues that were troublesome, we tended to run away from them.”

*

The real question, says Larry Fondation, 36, of the South Central Organizing Committee, is whether you can move from just talking about issues to action.

Given the city’s diversity, it seems silly not to confront race issues, says Fondation, who is white but often finds himself speaking to black and Latino congregations, preaching the import of various grass-roots issues--from housing to liquor laws.

“I try to be conscious and sensitive of how I’m dealing with people. And I don’t always succeed,” he says. “You just try just to continue to be open, and ask other people to be the same in return.”

For some, he believes, there is “sort of automatic comfort being around others of the same background. But it isn’t realistic. The city will be largely Latino and there are those . . . who are not looking at that. So when people ask me . . . what I’m doing here, I tell them I think (these issues) affect all of us. If I can (communicate) that successfully, I do it. If I can’t, I’ll move on. And try to find somebody else to talk to.”

For others also attempting to forge coalitions, mining for the common bond is often bandied as the glue. The push is to connect similarities rather than linger over the differences.

Luis Alfaro, however, warns against blind idealism.

A common bond doesn’t always ensure unity, especially if racial and cultural issues are swept into the corners. A member of the Gay Men of Color Consortium, Alfaro, 32, says he too was initially much more idealistic: “I thought we were going to create this sort of very interesting rainbow, (but) what’s been really apparent to me is our differences. I think we know what the common goals are. But we don’t know how to talk to each other. It’s really, really hard to talk and not offend, and to stay conscious. And you cannot come into it with all of this baggage.”

Since the riots, he has also noted a growing cavalierism, a sort of verbal countercurrent that devilishly plays fast and loose with the subjects of race and culture. But this strain of candor isn’t always constructive, he says, and the bulk of it is informed racism.

“This is the time to heal,” says Alfaro, wincing at the cliche. “It is the time to bring it out in the open, lay your cards on the table. But really, it hasn’t been that at all. It’s been people sorta laying their racism on the table.”

Racism’s sting aside, he says, the communication process brings enough pain: “You can’t make the opera if you don’t start with the street theater. And the process of understanding each other, and negotiating each other, sort of gets thrown by the wayside.

“Activists are offended by the lack of process. We’re just supposed to love each other, we’re supposed to just understand each other and the truth is that it is just a very complex issue . . . and when you start to get into those territories, you really have to start to figure out all those little things that come into play. Expression is not a very valued commodity. And until then, ‘proper expression’--whatever that is--is not going to be allowed to come to fulfillment.”

Counselor Patricia Johnson says that fulfillment--with all its rosy connotations--comes from raising the shade of denial. She hopes to help people face fear and anger, to uncover what lies beneath.

“For those who really want to try and understand and open up . . . I try and start to help people deal with their own emotions--the anger, their own rage,” she says. “I just allow them to talk about their experience . . . to express how they feel, because I really don’t believe that unless we are willing to look at our own stuff, we can’t go out and point a finger.”

Once people identify the roots of the more dramatic emotions, then sift through what is indeed a racial issue and what is personal, it is easier to disengage from the conflicts when they arise, she says: “Some people are easier to move there than others. And I don’t move them. It’s their willingness to move. I think people really do want to have intelligent, informed conversations about these things.”

*

Some think the solution is a conundrum for children to ponder; others look to the sages. But much of it, most agree, will come from breaking out of self-segregation, wandering unfamiliar territories. At the heart is understanding the pain of the process and the importance of forgiveness.

“We all need education,” says Phyllis Moberly, 44, a local publicist. “If I make a faux pas, what I wish is that the person I am talking to could have some faith in my goodwill and take the opportunity to educate me--even if it is with some anger. . . . I live in fear of saying something stupid or that’s going to hurt someone’s feelings. I don’t want to do that. But what happens . . . is that it makes it easier not to even try.”

Moberly, who is white, speaks of constructing bridges as an antidote to uneasiness. “I think that people need to find a context, a place where they are involved with people of other cultures. . . . Some sort of community or artistic event . . . where you have a reason to become acquainted with . . . people, so conversation can happen.”

Janet Fitch says people don’t have to go to Florence and Normandie to contact the “black community”:

“You have more in common with people who are in the same neighborhood or who have the same interests as you. To go down to Martin Luther King and Vermont and say: ‘Here I am, I want to be friends with you!’ . . . is a joke.”

Because opportunities tend to shrink as one matures, broadening one’s monochromatic circle can take a little work and lots of creativity. The first attempts more than likely will be awkward.

“The race thing is not unknown waters. It’s just a tiny effort,” Fitch assures. But a half-hearted effort is easily unmasked: “Just going to a black club isn’t going to change you in any way. I know people who have more than a little problem with racism in their head or . . . (who say) ‘I marched in the race day parade, but I still don’t have a black friend who I can have a beer with.’ ”

One of L.A.’s premiums, says Anjali Raval, “is that you can actually live someone’s culture without leaving the country.” Raval, an Indian born in Kenya, is experienced in cracking cultural codes and understanding the importance of racial sensitivity.

“I don’t hesitate to ask questions and I would hope that nobody’s hesitant to ask me,” says Raval, 28. “I don’t put out a vibe that I would be offended if anybody asked me what the dot on my forehead or my nose ring means. There’s a difference between being ignorant and just innocently not knowing.”

What knowledge cannot be attained through interpersonal communication and experience is thus left to other, larger channels. That too takes a commitment.

“I think the media has been fanning this fire for a long time,” Marcus Kuiland-Nazario says. “And media (needs) to be responsible--for real. Not that hogwash ‘60s stuff. Not a two-minute (public service announcement). But a town hall meeting with Clinton up there.”

He admits that he holds no easy answers, “but I am here to push the button real hard. There are other people who need to do their work. I think everybody needs to make a commitment to try to change things.”

Each day we walk out the door, he says, “we put ourselves out on the limb. I think if you are going to enter this dialogue, it’s not about your expectations. You have to just see what happens . . . be open to the experience. And it’s a challenge. It’s the biggest challenge of our time.”