We have been talking about the cultural awareness that goes along with living in a multi-ethnic city. Not just the faceless big corporations with overseas trade, but the everyday face-to-face that we experience. When I go to a restaurant, a theater, just doing my daily work, the faces I see are Korean, Chinese, Japanese, African, Indian, Native American, Mexican (I could go on and on) as well as white caucasian.

I was in a restaurant the other day in another city and felt uncomfortable. Something was wrong. I had felt this way all day. I realized that I had not seen, since I got up, one person of color except the maid who made up the hotel room. In Los Angeles it would be extremely odd to have any group all-white; in that city where I was visiting, I saw few non-white faces and they were all in the lowest economic places. I am used to seeing people of color in all places, top to bottom.

[By the way, I refuse to call them minorities, since where I live and work, people of color greatly outnumber white caucasians. And I feel the word "minority" has a negative connotation.]

The daily contact with "others" in this city gives us an international view--the daily presence of one world, one globe, one humanity, not abstract but in the flesh in living color. Can you imagine how weird it would be to live in a white ghetto?