Human relations committee needed

We returned home from a week in North Carolina late in the evening on

July 8. While we were unpacking, I remembered that this was Newport

Beach City Council night. It was near 10 o’clock when we picked up

the proceedings on television, and for almost three hours -- until 4

a.m., our getting-up time -- we watched a city peel back layer after

layer of bigotry and hatred until a deeply troubling body was

exposed.

Don’t disparage this assessment by telling me that most of the

speakers who supported Nichols on that night were from other towns.

Many of them were. But to use that fact as a shield to hide our

home-grown bigotry would be to deny the lesson from this long, angry

night that we have plenty of healing to do here at home. And because

that awareness has been sublimated to dealing with the public

behavior of an antediluvian council member, I’m not at all sure the

lesson has been learned.

What we heard after we tuned in were people with gloves off. They

were expressing feelings melted down by emotional heat to core

convictions, suddenly made legitimate by the almost offhand bigotry

expressed by Dick Nichols. Most of these emotional speakers -- both

pro and con Nichols -- were locals, while the out-of-towners offered

up statistical and constitutional arguments that were mostly

irrelevant.

The number of Latinos -- legal or illegal -- entering the country

or in residence here was not an issue before this City Council. Nor

was free speech an issue. No one has tried to inhibit Nichols’ right

to speak out.

He has articulated his particular brand of inbred bigotry in this

community for many years and sees no reason for changing this pattern

now that it has gotten him in trouble when dispensed from a public

platform.

Instead of stepping back to take a breath, he has added to his

laundry list of obtuseness in recent weeks by calling a local

political appointee “questionable” because he is gay, describing

Orange County’s hallowed Lincoln Club as “not a bona fide Republican

group,” and even suggesting that the out-of-town speakers opposing

him before the City Council were conspiring to return California to

Mexico.

Nichols’ views are not going to change. That becomes a cause for

removal only if racism clearly influences his votes on public policy.

Thus, the core question is whether or not Nichols, in light of recent

events, can properly represent the people who elected him to the City

Council.

The resolution of the council demanding that Nichols resign if he

can’t abide by his oath of office offers no problem to Nichols since

he clearly believes that is exactly what he has been doing. And given

the tone of the public comments, both at council meetings and on the

Pilot’s Forum page, a successful recall would be no slam dunk.

So while the recall issue is being held in abeyance, maybe it’s

time to change our focus. As long as our attention is fixed on

Nichols, we can avoid addressing an issue that seems to me not only

more important but also more amenable to our efforts.

When I arrived in Newport Beach more than 40 years ago, we had a

congressman who told us a Chinese army was training in Mexico to

invade California, the John Birch Society was finding nests of

communists on our school boards, we sent a man to the California

Senate -- and later to Congress -- who believed that Dwight

Eisenhower was a communist agent, and we refused to let a group of

touring Yugoslav mayors attend a Newport Beach City Council meeting

-- among many other aberrations.

These are the philosophical roots that spawned Dick Nichols and --

from the sound of his supporters -- more than a few other local

citizens. All the layers of sophistication that have come about since

-- in education, in the arts, in the business world -- have papered

over these excesses. But Dick Nichols has exposed them anew, and if

we simply paper over them once again, we’ve learned nothing from the

Nichols episode.

I called City Manager Homer Bludau to ask if Newport Beach had a

Human Relations Commission. We don’t.

I asked if recent events don’t suggest that it might be a good

idea. He said he didn’t think we needed one and cited the city

clerk’s scorecard showing that local citizens who spoke out were 2 to

1 against Nichols. I don’t find a projection suggesting that

one-third of our citizens embrace the Nichols agenda very comforting.

If such a commission is ever proposed, I have a strong candidate

for chairman. He is an imposing African American resident of Newport

Coast who went directly to the heart of this problem with quiet

dignity when he told the City Council: “This is not a healthy place

for me. I don’t feel comfortable living in Newport Beach, but I’m not

leaving.”

I think it would be instructive for council members to know why he

doesn’t find Newport Beach a healthy place to live. I tried to help,

but the city clerk tells me he didn’t turn in a speaker’s card, and I

can’t find the name our reporter got from him in the local phone

book. I would strongly welcome a phone call from him (I’m in the

book) so I can pass this information along to council members,

whether they want to hear it or not.

Meanwhile, there are some heartening signs that the locals are

finding all sorts of creative ways to deal with the Nichols Syndrome.

Some of the letters to the Pilot have been of near literary quality,

and almost all have been thoughtful. And the best medication of all

-- humor -- showed up at a kind of grass-in at Corona del Mar beach

last weekend where an ethnic mix of people got along just fine, and

the centerpiece was a large cardboard sign that said: “Warning:

Mexicans.”

A fitting epilogue to all this appeared in a Los Angeles Times

story about a survey just done in Germany seeking to identify the

social roadblocks in the way of tolerance.

“Many Germans still believe in a cultural sense that Germany is a

country only for Germans,” the survey read. “As a result, we are

faced more urgently than ever with the unsolved cardinal issue of a

new culture of recognition for all who live in this society.”

So are we.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.