Prometheus 6

I wonder if Erin Aubry Kaplan knows she's a leader.

The semantics of the anti-ism coalition are such that members act as though the coalition is the full expression of the relationship between members. Ms. Kaplan has written quite a bit about Black/Latino relations in L.A., simply giving voice to the somatic aspect of the relationship.

Nobody black expects Latinos to solve our problems. But we are tired of implicit calls for us to be "reasonable." Given our crazy-making history, is it surprising that we are a bit paranoid, that we react less than ideally to things like demographic shifts in our communities? Especially when those communities feel like the only currency we have left?

Yes, we've devalued that currency by leaving communities too eagerly over the years. Unlike the Irish or Italians or Jews of another era, we didn't naturally evolve as a group out of our ghettos. Quite the opposite. Some blacks — the relative few who could afford to do so — have fled the ghettos that remain.

That fact, more than anything else, accounts for the anxiety I feel as I watch the trucks and vans pull up, and the lights go on, in that house down the street. "Ghetto" is far too strong a word to describe my neighborhood, by the way — it's much more than livable. Let's just say it has abandonment issues.

That's all I want the new arrivals to know. I'll get over my anxiety; I have no choice. I will almost certainly like my neighbors, unless they run roughshod on my lawn or play music too late at night. But it'll be fine because community is something I'm good at, something I know — or knew once — very, very well.