Today’s Agenda

It’s not just a black thing, Black History Month. The month of February reminds us of the debt that other minorities in America owe to the black leadership of the civil rights movement. In Community Essay, Noel L. Serrano, a Filipino-American who was born and raised in the United States, cites the rejection of the word Negro by black people, an act that showed Asians the path for rejecting the label Oriental. And he notes that when he attended UC San Diego, Filipino-Americans were an affirmative-action group--one of the factors that helped make California’s campuses more closely match its population.

“Although I am well aware of the struggles of Filipino migrant farm workers earlier in this century, I realize that I walk in the footsteps of African-Americans in many areas that are often taken for granted,” says Serrano. And that, he says, is cause enough for kinship.

Southern California, despite its rainbow population, is still residentially segregated. The schools are another story--junior and senior high schools are often the first extended experience that kids have with other groups. Sometimes the result is unhappy--witness last fall’s black/Latino fights at North Hollywood High and a few other schools. But Glendale, defying an outdated reputation for intolerance, has managed to make its schools a model of multiethnic peace. In the Neighborhood explores how one town’s public schools worked hard to achieve harmony in an array of shades and languages.

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Just exactly what do individuals gain by contact with other ethnic and cultural groups? Well, says a Korean activist in Platform, he sees how Japanese and Chinese groups have broadened their sights to include broader issues like the environment and he hopes the new generation of Koreans will take note. A Mexican-American feels she’s learned a thing or two about child-raising from her European-American sister-in-law. And a Cambodian-born woman says that America’s mixed cultures gave her the chance to be a professional, not a “slave of the house.”

Did former attorney general nominee Zoe Baird and her husband provide the undocumented workers in their household with health insurance? Not likely, according to the experience of Dr. Ann Turner, who runs a clinic in South Los Angeles. “I’ve never seen anyone provide health insurance” to such workers, says Hunter in Testimony. She also sees women working 60 and more hours a week without overtime. Her conclusion: “If each of us took the responsibility to pay people a living wage, as well as providing them basic benefits, then we would have a much healthier society.”

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S tricter laws and tougher penalties against drunk drivers aren’t yet enough, says a former emergency-room doctor who’s seen too much of what alcohol and cars can do. In Modest Proposal, Kent Delong of Banning says that Alcoholics Anonymous requires members to take full responsibility for their acts, and the law should do likewise. That means no more loopholes, no more “hardship” exceptions that let drunks keep their licenses.