At its council meeting last week, the Compton city council tried as evenly as possible to describe its position on the ongoing fallout from the ghetto-themed party at UC San Diego dubbed the 'Compton Cookout.' It wasn't easy. That ill-fated fete, organized by some of that university's fraternity brothers in 'honor' of Black History Month, exploded into a national story about the enduring potency of racial stereotypes that's taken on a life of its own. Of all the pieces written about the matter, few have explored the state of the city itself, probably because Compton has been shorthand for 'ghetto' for such a long time, it didn't seem all that necessary. Even those most outraged by the modern-day minstrelsy promoted by the cookout didn't really think of Compton the actual place has having a reputation to protect.

Wisely, someone else did the acknowledging for them. The council listened solemnly as Daniel Widener, associate professor of history at UCSD and head of the Black Studies Department there (also my cousin), read an eloquent statement apologizing for the incident and for the ignorance and insensitivity that had led to it. It was fitting that his father (yes, my cousin as well) was in the audience to hear it--Michael Widener, a retired history professor of black studies at Compton College. Mayor Eric Perrodin thanked Widener--father and son--and said he was ready to collaborate with the council on some kind of action to counter this latest round of circumstantial bad press that's not about what anybody in Compton did, but about what Compton is.

But calling attention to what you don't want anyone to think about--that Compton is a low-class place--is tricky.

Before that, I spent a lot of time in Compton ten years ago when I was writing a story for the L.A. Weekly about its flamboyant and controversial then-mayor, Omar Bradley. The first thing Bradley did, over my objections--he did most things over people's objections--was take me on a tour of Compton in his own car, with his beefy security guard riding in the back seat. It was a surreal experience in which Bradley alternately pointed out all the good he'd wrought in town and railed against the evil white media (of which I was a part, in his mind) that refused to see Compton as anything but a gang-infested ghetto. I had my issues with the mayor, but I sympathized with his view about the media. Compton was only the most egregious example of how papers routinely portrayed any black neighborhood in L.A. as a ghetto first, anything else second. That this was more or less the birthplace of gangsta rap, that musical genre that both repulses and enthralls white America, didn't help matters.

How fitting, then, that I went to City Hall this past week to support the city's efforts to respond to a recent, ugly attempt at character assassination that's still unfolding. Last month at UC San Diego, in 'honor' of Black History Month, members of a Greek fraternity sent out Facebook invites to a ghetto-themed party that it dubbed a "Compton Cookout." Partygoers were encouraged to show up with gold teeth, cheap hair weaves, bad English, that sort of thing. The invites sparked outrage amongst black students, who make up only 2% of the population there. Racial tensions mounted and more campus incidents followed: a noose was found, and a Klan hood fashioned out of a pillow case. Compton itself kept quiet initially, but then decided to publicly address the matter at its council meeting. I went to hear that and to hear the remarks of Daniel Widener, a history professor and head of the Black Studies Department at UCSD (full disclosure: he's also my cousin).

On the way to City Hall I had to admit that Compton felt different than it felt a decade ago. Much has been written about the turnaround that's happened here in the last several years, pieces I dismissed as patronizing in a white middle-class kind of way--the city gets a few more cops and a Starbucks, and suddenly everything is looking up? Please. But things had changed, and not just because of Starbucks (and Target, and a host of other retail outlets). Compton felt more alive, less isolated and to itself. The atmosphere was less tense and more relaxed. City Hall had a facelift that included a giant mural of Barack Obama, that new touchstone of black uplift. The discourse in council chambers was civil, almost dull, where it once was routinely combative when Omar Bradley was in charge.

And what became of Omar? (Around town he's always been known by his first name, like Prince or Madonna.) For all his indignation about the negative public perception of Compton, the fact is that Omar's antics only added to that perception. After being voted out of office in 2001, he was convicted of misappropriating public money in 2004 and served some prison time. He's been out of prison a good while, but can no longer hold elected office. After the council meeting, I asked one longtime local activist about him. She shook her head. "It's sad," she said. "He's got nothing to do. He sits all day in Starbucks talking to himself and telling anybody who'll listen that he got a bad deal. Imagine that."

Maybe it was the threat of bad weather, but black leather jackets were out in full force at Angela Davis's appearance in Watts on Sunday for Black History Month.

This being L.A., let's get to the important point: Davis has aged well. She still has her trademark big hair, though not quite the iconic afro, and it's gray now instead of the fierce black that resembled a rain cloud and inspired others to sport rain clouds of their own . But she still has a youthful voice that's more musical instead of strident, and she is given to grinning with a kind of delight when she makes serious points. That doesn't mean Davis has lost the mettle that has made her such a heroine to so many. But she has acquired a certain serenity to go along with it. In the same pleasant tone she used to introduce herself, she blasted the cancer of incarceration, especially in California, and the fact that despite the facts that blacks "won" the Civil War, they never experienced a black Reconstruction that might have made the freedom from slavery mean something. After the war it took a hundred years for the reconstruction question to be raised again in earnest. And let's just say that the matter still isn't settled.

Naturally, the Davis faithful asked her what could be done in these times to rouse people of all colors out of their consumerist, focus-group, post-Obama election stupor and get involved with (real) change. One woman wanted to know how folks could be more like Davis herself. Davis replied that change is never accomplished by one person, but by a community of people; knowing that, she said, is what has always kept her from apathy, or even worse, despair. Not exactly a revival-tent meeting, but a sermon worth taking home.

I'm not doing Valentine's Day. Not in the commercial sense. For me and my husband, the winnowing of essential gift-giving down to zero started back in September, before our anniversary (I had some weeks to get used to it), and at this point it feels entirely normal. The mutual agreement not to buy is mostly driven by the recession, the real uncertainty of work for both of us, and the fact that we really can't spend like we used to.

So what takes the place of such a ritual? What's a high expression of love in a post-stuff environment? In a word, or two words, doing and being. On Sunday I'll likely take a walk somewhere with my husband and three dogs in a place that we like but don't often visit in a leisurely way, a place like Larchmont or El Segundo or the walking trail above the 405 in the Sepulveda Pass that I always forget the name of. We'll go, allow ourselves to be transported by the place and the togetherness and the time--Valentine's Day, after all! Then we'll come back home and re-settle into the love of place that really matters. It hasn't always been easy accepting where I live; I hold Inglewood at arm's length as often as I embrace it. I walk it daily with a certain pride, I retreat behind locked doors when trouble erupts, I tolerate it when I should be holding it to the ideals that make any place more than just a place to live. I am disappointed by it, then indifferent to it (though I'll take disappointment over indifference any day). I toggle between seeing the city as I'd like to see it, and how the outside world sees it: I always strive for the former, but too often I get distracted by the latter.

Love is tough. Especially when there's nothing--no stuff, no obvious notion of a gift or reward --to get between you and it. But really, you would want it any other way?

As usual, the King holiday left me speechless. Or more exactly, wordless. Far too much has already been said about the man, which doesn't mean his legacy has been laid to rest or agreed upon--that's why we all continue to talk about King and to haggle over what he meant, and to whom.

With all of the above in mind, I spent this past Saturday doing something I'm certain King would have approved of: going to the first public meeting held by a nascent enterprise called the Black Workers Center (full disclosure: I'm on the planning committee). One of the troubling racial statistics overshadowed by Obama but made clear by the recession/depression is the dreadful state of black employment and the urgent need to do something about it. The worst hit are black males who are ex-felons, but the pain is radiating all the way up the economic and educational ladder. In other words, blacks with few skills and a record are going nowhere, but the famous middle class is losing its way, too. It's like Dr. King said, none of us can be free until all of us are free. At this point I'd settle for 50 percent.

One of the big ideas behind Saturday's meeting is that blacks are all in this work crisis together, an idea that frankly hasn't enjoyed much currency since the days of King and his ill-fated Poor People's Campaign. Black cohesion is an idea whose time has returned, just in time for the era of Obama. Some might call a Black Workers Center retro. I call it justice that starts--as it always must--at home.

This image was taken by flickr user webmacster87(flickr). It was used under the Creative Commons License.

But I have to say, I was proud of my handiwork. Walking the block each morning with my dogs, I re-inspected the decorations, admiring the red and silver uniformity of it all that made our block appear much cozier and more cohesive than it really it is. I quickly loved the illusion, reveled in it. I protected it: when the post-storm winds tore some of the foil from the ribbon that was supposed to keep it in place, I immediately went out with staples and thumb tacks to repair the damage. I constantly compared the trees on my street to the decorated trees on other streets (there's more El Segundo/Beverly Hills in Inglewood than I tend to remember) and thought our look was more subtle, yet more festive. I started to feel downright superior.

And then it was time for all the stuff to come down and for our block to turn back into an autumn--a seasonless-- pumpkin. The only consolation I felt was in the fact that taking all that foil off was a hell of a lot easier than putting it on. At the block club meeting that convened just before the end of '09, the usual handful who came applauded me loudly for the "beautiful job" I'd done decorating the trees. The praise was somehow surprising. But it was undeniably warming. It felt like real winter all over again.

And then the logjam broke. County decided that John was in bad enough shape to get admitted to the hospital, and the treatment process became official. The first order of business was a 7-hour surgery to repair the damage done to John's spine with bolts and pins and the like. He was moved to the intensive care unit to start recuperation. And then...he was discharged.

What? I'm not a doctor, but I've never heard of anybody being discharged directly from ICU. I thought it simply wasn't done. John was as surprised as anybody, but not unhappy about going home and being in his own bed again before Christmas. Still, he wondered about post-op complications in the middle of the night and the ordeal of having to be readmitted. That seemed to be less of a concern to the hospital staff that John overheard talking about the need to free up ICU space for more incoming wounded. Understandably, John didn't argue; he left

So far, the discharge is looking like an awfully big risk for the right person. John is up and around at his house in South Central and looking almost normal. He's moving about slowly, but he's moving. Being at home in the grand old place he grew up in, among his music and books and the many projects he had to drop when he got sick, is fueling him, I can see. He's actually looking forward to starting cancer treatment, which has to wait until he recovers from the spine surgery. At this pace of recovery, it'll be sooner than the five weeks the doctors at county predicted. Really, what do they know?

The panel that followed the "Fight Back" showcase, an assembly of gang interventionists and concerned citizens, made a similar case for changing the dynamics of gang violence by changing the story of the violence itself . Gangsters are not some creatures living on a distant planet programmed to kill innocent earthlings, they said; Gang members are somebody's sons and grandsons. They live amongst us. They are us. It felt like a first but enormously important step toward recovery of an addiction to racial fear and loathing that most of us in that theater had felt at one time or another. In the end, "fighting back" meant "going towards." I emerged out of theater back into the balm of the afternoon thinking that realization is the ultimate gift. Merry Christmas.

For the last month, the movie "Precious" has taken up more of my discussion time than any movie in recent memory. Normally a film opens to peak buzz, which fades in about two weeks, and then it's on to the next thing. Not this time--the themes and questions "Precious" provokes just keep on growing. Below is a slightly edited version of a lively Facebook exchange I had with a friend and distinguished screenwriter, Matthew Wilder. He's white. I'm black. He didn't like the movie, I did. Read on.

Matt, like you and the rest of the racially conscious set, I was prepared to NOT like 'Precious.' The images in the previews alone were enough to make me start dusting off the picket signs. But when I saw the movie itself, I was led right through the heart of those scary images into a real story about a real girl who happened to be black, fat, poor and saddled with a terrible family situation. Precious was the middle of the movie, she controlled it, not the images we tend to recoil from. They didn't dictate what I saw or felt. That was a power balance shift I hadn't experienced before, and it was an epiphany.

Matthew David Wilder:

Well, I guess here is the beginning of my objection to the arguments of "Precious" lovers...many of the arguments I've read suggest that those who dislike the movie are in some way "in denial about" ghetto reality. They seek to only have "positive" images onscreen (not especially enhanced by Armond White extolling "Akeelah and the Bee"). My belief is: represent the negative all you want...the problem is the POINT OF VIEW on that. And to me, the director Lee Daniels' view is extremely complicated, ugly, and, I suspect, unconscious.

Yes, the movie asks us to feel sorry for this girl and all the horrors visited upon her. But unlike in Spielberg's "Color Purple"--a movie completely dismissed by 90% of all thoughtful film watchers--our relationship to the lead character is not entirely one of sympathy, or empathy. It PARTLY is. But there is also another point of view, one that I believe is imported from reality TV. It's the "Ewwwww!" factor. Precious is pitiable, but also freakish and gross. Her home life is horror-movieish. The scenes of her and her mom chewing pig's feet, smoking Newports and watching "The $10,000 Pyramid" seem like something out of "Saw IV." We are not meant to sympathize but to giggle and cringe like we were watching Flavor Flav make out with Brigitte Nielsen on "The Surreal Life."

But you really need to ask yourself: why is Precious freakish and gross to you? Because she's big and black and outwardly dumb? Are you sure your judgment here isn't poisoned by the fact that you think ALL black people like her are reality-show cartoons? I'm not accusing you of any racial malfeasance. But I'm suggesting that because of our very freakish and gross American history with race, we give more weight to black images, good or bad, than we do to the substance of black people's lives. Black poverty is a very real problem and a very real way of life. It is not a cartoon. It is not a source of entertainment, though it is too often represented as such. I don't believe Lee Daniels' intent was to entertain us, but to get at a story that could only be gotten at through the awful context, because the awful context IS part of the story. That's the brilliance of the movie. He puts two things together that usually never touch.

Precious IS freakish--there are not movie protagonists like her. Female protagonists in movies look like Anne Hathaway--or, if you want to stretch it, they look more like Paula Present or Halle Berry. I think that is the point of the movie--you can't believe that this girl, so obese her facial features are crowded into inexpressiveness by her sheer girth, is the lead in a movie.

There's nothing wrong with being a freak--that's no judgment. It's the point of view that's the disaster. For example, take Charles Burnett, a filmmaker I know you respect. In "Killer of Sheep" he took ghetto images that had never, or almost never, been seen on film before, and created out of them one of the most rhapsodic, haunting works in all of American cinema. But you don't have to be that high-minded. Spielberg took a "Precious"-like litany of horrors and made the humane (if melodramatic) "Color Purple." I frankly would rather see the Tyler Perry version of this story!

What offends me is the "doubleness" of the movie. Yes, it wants you to shed tears for this girl, or at least pity her from on high...but there is an unmistakable contempt for how life is lived in the ghetto that, if it had come from a white filmmaker, would be viewed as judgmental and condescending. But because Lee Daniels does his "gay black striver beatin' the odds" shtik in the press, it is viewed as sympathetic...and I think it is not entirely sympathetic at all. I don't mean to play Lee's shrink, but I think much of it is self-loathing.

Contempt for life in the ghetto? Who the hell doesn't have contempt? Have you ever lived there? So why can't we hate the ghetto and love Precious? This is my point about putting two concepts together that don't usually touch. They SHOULD touch, especially in black movies, which is why so many black films feel devoid of complexity and feeling and art. In a film like "Coal Miner's Daughter," it's understood that the coal mine is a rat hole, but we don't hold that against Sissy Spacek. Your animosity seems misplaced. I think you're reacting more to the idea of a stereotypical movie than to the movie itself. By the way, let's be careful about assuming some universal notion of a black ghetto. 'Killer of Sheep' was filmed in Watts, a poor black neighborhood that's a frigging paradise compared to Harlem. California is a totally different context - much more hope and a different set of expectations than exist on the East coast. Nor would I dare to compare the early 20th century rural poverty of 'Color Purple' to that of Precious. Plus the story of Celie was really quite different all the way around.

Assume not, Walter Matthau told us, lest you make an ass outta you and me! I have lived in ghettos, some wicked ghettos...though I never ate pig's feet and threw a TV at anybody's head. Or saw any combination thereof. What do you think, Erin, I grew up chomping a silver spoon?

I think you are right to suggest that all ghettos are not created equal. But we are talking here about what is analogous in movie terms, not identical in sociological terms.

Here's the bottom line for me: what bugged me is that Daniels knew that just playing the sympathy card wouldn't work for him commercially, so he goosed up the horrors of Precious' home life--and I mean stylistically, not just in terms of how horrific the crimes against her are--knowing that that extra frisson of ickiness would put the movie over commercially, separate it from all the wholesome, uplifting black fare out there. He knew that giving it that E! Channel yucky sauce would make it commercial in a way all those well-intentioned movies aren't. And that to me is a damnable cynicism.

Make a lurid freakshow in the gutter if your gut tells you to: I certainly enjoy John Waters wallowing in filth. But then don't garland that campy grossout wallow in Piety.

Hm, I think your assessment of Lee Daniels' motives is a stretch. He didn't have to goose up any of the horror--did you read the book, "Push"? Let's at least blame Sapphire here. (By the way, I never ate pig's feet either, though I saw lots of people eat em...chicken feet too. Now that would really set Armond White off). I don't think he laid on the extra frisson of ickiness for freak-show value, I believe he wanted us to see the freak show, then go deeper to look at the girl living in it, the girl at the bottom of the well, so to speak. And even if Daniels had laid on the yuck of his own accord,, that would hardly guarantee a hit--people like their black ghettotainment with all the trimmings, i.e., hip hop score, snarling gangsters, etc. "Precious" has none of that. I'm sorry, but any story centered around a young, obese black girl with a grade average of 1.0 is doomed to pop-culture oblivion. Unless, of course, it has a heart.

Bottom line is, I'm rather sad that you see this film and its environs as "filth" and a "freak show" with no humanity to speak of. That is our biggest difference here. You know I respect the hell out of you and that you and I tend to see heart in the same films. But I think in case you are artificially dividing your opinion of movies from your opinion on sociology and how it ought to be shown on screen. It's just how we've all been trained to see and judge, and pre-judge, black movies. I hope "Precious" has shifted us all a few degrees north of where we've been.

I think it's fair to ask...of Daniels...or Sapphire....is it REALLY likely that any household would have ALL the horrors that are described herein? Maybe half...maybe 2/3...but ALL OF 'EM?

And even if Lee and Sapphire swear on a stack of bibles *they saw it all and worse,* okay: it's up to them to dramatize that. Make it plausible.

I will just leave off with this. My problem is not at all with WHAT the picture represents (though I think Lee Daniels has stolen many a page from Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream," another everything-but-the-kitchen-sink grossout) but rather HOW he depicts it...which is partly empathetic but partly "yucky-funny" and partly just plain "ewwwwww!" I would ask you to look at how the father-rape scenes, the mother-violence scenes, and, most distasteful of all, the mom-hanging-out-at-home scenes are shot and edited, and I would ask you to tell me if the tone they create doesn't swing between Grotesque Comedy and Straight-Up Horror Movie. That seems to me a cheap way to give the (largely non-ghetto) audience a thrill, and keep them involved in what would otherwise be, yes, a boring movie about, literally, homework.

My point is: don't make fun of this girl, don't make her an oogy freakshow. I feel the movie does that behind her back. As opposed--for example--to Uncle John Waters, who would have us laugh our ass off at Precious and her Newport-Pigfoot Mama for the first ten minutes, then encounter our closeness to their humanity for the subsequent 80.

That, to me, is a lot more honest.

We didn't even get into the "black monsters bad, enlightened light-skinned people good" aspect of "Precious"...a dichotomy so extreme that if, say, Ron Howard pulled it in a movie he'd be flayed alive, and rightly so. Let's be frank: why are Paula Present and pretty Lenny Kravitz in the movie? Because Lee calculated that the audience would say, after all those Precious-and-Mom scenes, like the hero of Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" after a long day of BET auditions: "I don't want to see anything blllllllack for a month!"

Being the gentleman that I am, I am more than happy to give you the last word, and words, and paragraphs; and in the end, we will let Justice Mariah Carey decide.

(If Janet Jackson had been the Each One Teach One Nutritionist, the movie would be perfect!)

Who you calling light-skinned? Okay, that does it, I'm tired of black people lighter than a Trader Joe's bag being demonized as the angelicized black 'other.' It's suddenly way too faddy. Yes, there is a color dichotomy in the film, but there's a much bigger dichotomy in real life, trust me. And even though Paula Patton is lighter than the average bear, isn't her hair pressed? Does she have that good hair that Precious dreams about and that REALLY separates black from blacker, or is she faking it? People, please. While I totally get the field slave/house slave thing--I've lived it--in another, more criticial sense we're all just interdependent negroes trying to get over and save our asses from the total obscurity America has laid on us for generations. Ms. Rain does it teaching, Precious does it however she can. I do it writing impassioned blogs I don't get paid for...but that's another exchange, oui?

What else can I say, Matt, we don't agree. I don't see Precious being made fun of. She isn't yucky or funny or eww. I suspect there's no way she can be made palatable to you as a dramatic heroine, and that's the real problem. The John Waters treatment? Well that wouldn't be a drama, that'd be a freak show along the lines of "Napoleon Dynamite" (a film that I had some racial problems with). And p.s., I don't see Mo'Nique as freak show at all--that cold fury is something I've seen up close, and it's scary. Of course the fury is not exclusive to welfare mothers sitting at home watching TV. It's in other black women in all kinds of situations. But it speaks to something very real that black people rarely talk about, let alone put on screen. Maybe our different views on "Precious" come down to what we've seen in our lives, and/or want to see. My existential question remains, though: how do you portray black ghetto poverty, which is very real, without offending all of our imaginations? Is that possible, or artistically feasible? Yes, imagination can be more important than reality. But there are times when it should just shut up and listen.

I got it. Not through any hard work of my own. I got it through my husband's teaching job, or retained it when I left my own job for the wilds of freelance writing in '05. Our new single-stream insurance went along like most insurance, minimally used or even thought about much until it suddenly became the be-all when my husband was diagnosed with cancer a couple years back. Despite a few bureaucratic glitches, treatment was swift, comprehensive and aggressive, and my husband recovered. The path to that recovery was lined with doctors and specialists who all focused on my husband and his condition as the driving force of their action plan, the reason they were there at all. Frightening as the whole experience was, I had no doubt my husband was always the most important person in the consultation room.

]]> Now let's talk frightening. On Thanksgiving I talked to a friend, John (not his real name), who was recently diagnosed with cancer. He lives in South Central and has no insurance, and so has been going to County-USC hospital. John found an alarming mass in chest earlier in the year, and has been trying to get a clear diagnosis and course of treatment ever since. He's still trying. He has found out some things: he has cancer. The tumor has invaded his spine and degraded a vertebrae to the point where sitting and standing at length is uncomfortable. That makes the hours-long waits he has to endure each time he goes to County that much worse; on more than occasion, he left before his number was called. When he does get called, he doesn't get the same doctor he saw before, and has to start the process of getting seen and taken care of all over again. He's managed to get a few procedures--a CT scan, a biopsy--but they haven't added up to any action. That's because John is not really considered a patient the way my husband was. He's a problem, a to-do item to check off a list, if not today, then maybe tomorrow or the next day. As well-meaning as County may be, it just can't spare the attention that John and his disease needs. To me, this is the last thing that insurance means, or even health care.

In the meantime, the tumor is growing, or it's not getting any better. Time is of the essence. The cancer has weakened John's right arm and limited his range of motion, which forced him to give up a conducting gig with a youth orchestra in Pasadena. John, you see, is a musician, involved his whole life with arts nonprofits; he's also civic-minded in too many ways to count. In other words, he's not the layabout or desperado most people associate with black men living in South Central. Just a decent citizen like millions of other Americans who try and take care of themselves but who get caught up in the terror of not having insurance when catastrophe hits. For John, any health care reform that reduces his wait time--and that phrase is looming larger and larger--can't come quick enough.

John lives alone and has little family. He got invited out to Thanksgiving dinner, he says. He planned to go; he showered, shaved and got dressed. And then, he says, he just couldn't get out the door. Getting somewhere has became an oppressive concept. I hope that changes very, very soon.

This image was taken from the Anoto Group under the Creative Commons License.

Who knew that Inglewood has a burgeoning arts scene in the northeast corner of the city?

Of course I did, but I have to admit, I didn't give it much thought. Not nearly as much thought as I've given lately to police misconduct, development, homelessness, tagging wars or even the incidence of stray dogs that directly correlate to the rising number of foreclosures and otherwise empty houses popping up in my picturesque neighborhood like dandelions. Nearly every day, I check the curbside lawn outside my local 99-cent Store to see if people will forego throwing trash on it for once; if it's relatively free of plastic bags at the end of the day, I notch a victory. Silly stuff, overly NIMBY stuff, but in my ongoing psychological battle to keep Inglewood normal (for utter lack of a better word), these are the aesthetics I obsess about. My concern with visuals has been limited to clean lawns, paved streets and graffiti-free walls--concern with what isn't there versus what is. I feel I have no choice. Real art is lovely and welcome, but I didn't see it as a solution to anything. It could wait

As impressive as the mix and breadth of art is the mix of the artists themselves: young Otis grads and more grizzled vets who've been laboring obscurely in Inglewood twenty years or more. Black and white artists who seem genuinely united in their efforts to jump-start a scene they see as they belonging to them all. At the Saturday reception at the 703 gallery on Hyde Park Boulevard, I certainly felt like I belonged, as did my non-Inglewood resident friends and everyone else in the room who stood sipping wine and happily noshing on catfish and Jamaican fritters. Normal? This felt way better than that. Empowering, even. Better than I've ever felt looking at even a spotless lawn in front of the 99-cent store. Art, indeed.

This image was taken by flickr user Roadsidepictures. It was used under the Creative Commons License.

At first glance, nothing. Last week marked the gentlest transition of LAPD police chiefs in my lifetime--Bill Bratton to Charlie Beck. That was partly because tensions between the cops and the black and brown neighborhoods they police (and sometimes terrorized) have eased notably during Bratton's tenure, partly because crime has dropped by many percentage points across the city.

I won't argue with improvement. But improvement is not the same thing as success or full justice. The game is not over. Bratton promised more transparency, especially in the case of controversial police shootings; let's just say he has both given and taketh away. A master of PR, Bratton got ahead of public anger after police cut down 13-year-old Devin Brown in 2005, but he ultimately found that shooting in policy. And while crime may be down, racial profiling continues to be a huge problem in the city; of the hundreds of complaints filed against the LAPD in the last several years, none have been sustained by the department. Post-racial? Depends on what side of the blue line you're on.

But what disturbs me most is how the black establishment, notably the black press, has succumbed whole hog to the Bratton charm offensive. A recent exit interview with Bratton in the L.A. Sentinel could find no fault nor mount any challenge to the chief or his history here. Over at the Wave, a weekly columnist/watchdog who has been a fierce critic of the LAPD since the '65 Watts Riots dropped that stance completely after Bratton asked for a public audience with her. When I asked her about the change of heart, she groused that my problem was that I needed to be more optimistic--this from a woman whose professional demeanor could never be described as optimistic.

But is keeping public servants accountable to their constituents incompatible with optimism? To the contrary; one can't exist without the other. All I'm saying is that we need to keep up the scrutiny even as we applaud. Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, a Bratton advocate, issued a post-Rampart report on the department in 2006 that warned of an occupying-army, us-against-the-streets mindset that still persists in the rank and file. That was three years ago. Just because we've stopped looking for that mindset doesn't mean that it's gone away.

This image was taken from flickr user kevindean. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

I don't know the man's name, like I don't know the name of so many other people at the El Segundo dog park. My icebreaker question a month ago was what was the name and breed of his dogs; I didn't get around to asking his (name, not breed). That isn't considered rude in the tiny social bubble of the dog park, where canines are the real news and objects of interest and humans aren't that important. Still, this man stood out for me. I'd know his mussed white hair, ruddy face and hearty, gravelly voice anywhere. I figure he's Irish; he lit up when I told him my first name, calling it a fit one for an Irish girl.,

Yes, I told him. My mother had a thing for Irish names. Lucky me.

I'll just call him George. Last Sunday I saw him, per usual. After an upbeat chat about college football and the progress of my rescue pup, Honey, he paused, like he wasn't quite sure how to say what he was going to say next. "I'm trying to figure out your shirt," he said.

My shirt? I glanced down. I was wearing a t-shirt with a logo that read, "Black Girl, 'Nuf Said." One of a hundred t-shirts I wear to the dog park on Sundays. It's self-explanatory to me, if maybe a little cheeky, like most logos and bumper stickers. What was he asking? I felt an instant tension, a familiar racial wariness and human distance that I did not want to feel. Not at the dog park. Although now that I thought about it--now that I had to think about it--this was El Segundo, famously white and cloistered, population sixteen thousand, nice little burg by the ocean that people like me couldn't venture into after dark for decades, let alone live in, or even walk a dog through..... "Figure out what?" I said, cheerfully.

George kept smiling and went on to say that perhaps my shirt was saying that being black was all there was, and I was excluding other things about me that were also important? I fought more tightening and wariness. No, I said evenly, not at all. But being black was certainly as important as anything else. He nodded, satisfied, or done with his questions for now. We drifted apart to search for our animals, came back together, talked a bit more about Honey and her terrible allergies and what to do about them.

I warned him about a volatile dog owner who had lost his temper a few days before and roughed up my golden/shepard mix, Toby. Picked him up by the collar and threw him in the dirt.

George looked shocked. "That's terrible!" he said. "Who was this guy? What'd he look like?"

I almost said, he was white. I wound up saying, young and blondish. Seemed okay on the surface, smart and all, but he wasn't. Dangerous. You know the type.

George nodded. More than 'nuf said.