Stories We Tell Connect Us in Community

CITYSCAPE
By Susan Lydon

June 28, 2001

A RECENT study says Californians feel disconnected from their communities, especially those where there is a diverse population and many recently arrived immigrants, but the telling and sharing of family stories strengthens communities and helps people feel connected to one another.

The study was conducted by the California Council for the Humanities. In a statewide survey, only 21 percent of Californians agreed that their city or town had a strong sense of community, while 67 percent said they knew little or nothing about the cultural backgrounds of people in their communities.

A previous nationwide study, the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, designed by the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard University, found that quality of life and happiness were highest in socially connected communities where residents trusted, socialized and joined with others. Conversely, the sense of social disconnectedness was strongest in communities that were ethnically diverse with many recent immigrants.

Sound familiar? Know any ethnically diverse communities with lots of recently arrived immigrants? Sure you do, if you live in Oakland.

It is a challenge for any Oaklander to find a cohesive way of describing our city. Our population is a poster child for ethnic diversity, with strongly representative groups of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Americans of European descent. Add in more recent arrivals from Afghanistan, Bosnia, India, Africa and every country of Southeast Asia, along with some groups I'm undoubtedly forgetting. Count us as part of the Pacific Rim, with strong ties to Mexico, and the end point of the westward migration across the United States. Don't forget the Ohlone Indian foundations of East Bay society.

Oakland comprises many neighborhoods, each with its own character, its own peculiar flavor. West Oakland, East Oakland, Fruitvale, the Dimond and Laurel districts, Grand Lake, Rockridge, Eastmont-Seminary, Maxwell Park, Redwood Heights, Fairfax, Jingletown, Oak Knoll and so on.

What could possibly unite such dissimilar groups of people spread out over such distinctly different geographical enclaves?

The answer is our stories. The CCH study found a surprising 40 percent of people surveyed believed California would be a better place to live if we were more aware of one another's histories and backgrounds. Families pass stories down through the generations, so younger members will know who they are. Every ethnic group has its culture and traditions contained and preserved in its stories. Neighborhoods have histories, as do individual places, and even the city itself is a repository of its stories.

I thought about this quite a bit when I set out to write this column, because I wanted to reflect Oakland back to those of us who live here. My goal was to paint a composite picture of the city, showing both its rich diversity and its struggles to achieve unity. I hoped to portray it as it is, warts, beauty and all.

I drew my inspiration from that poem about the disagreement between Mexican mural painter Diego Rivera and John D. Rockefeller, who had hired him to paint a huge mural for Rockefeller Center in New York. John D. was unhappy to see himself portrayed in the art he had commissioned as a robber baron capitalist. "I paint what I see," Rivera is said to have answered. Of course, John D. won in the end, because the murals were never publicly displayed. But Rivera was the hero of the story.

History has always been an interest of mine. I majored in history in college and ended up in journalism because it seemed like a history of the present. But I still like dipping into the past. I'd like to know how Oakland came to be the place we know right now. Who built it? Who contributed to its character, the particular mix we take for granted? How do the layers of what would constitute an archaeological dig a hundred years from now relate to one another? What legacy will we live for future generations?

I figured the best way to reflect Oakland was to tell the individual stories of its denizens. And the story of our city is changing. After the 1906 earthquake, San Franciscans came here by the boatload and never went back. During World War II, African Americans came here from the South to build ships in Henry Kaiser's shipyards and stayed to raise families, turning Oakland into a predominantly black city.

Now many of those families are cashing out and moving to the suburbs or back to the South, while rent refugees from San Francisco come here to snap up the last affordable houses in the Bay Area.

What will happen? Where will it end? That's a whole other story.

Cityscape runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. You can e-mail Susan Lydon at slydon@angnewspapers.com.