Race Issue

Set against today's heightened sense of racial divide, the irony in tonight's HBO movie, "The Affair," a World War II-era drama about a tragic interracial liaison, is inescapable. In this "inspired by true events" saga, a black G.I. stationed in a small British town suffers injustice and betrayal, paying the ultimate price for his love affair with an unhappily married white woman.

With only days remaining before the Beverly Hills city election, challenger Trisha Roth issued her campaign poster, an acid-rock-inspired graphic denouncing the evils of alcohol. City Councilman Max Salter turned over nearly $20,000 in contributions to the city's schools, short of his goal of $70,000 outlined in a campaign promise. And fellow incumbent Robert K. Tanenbaum trudged door to door on Bedford Drive, speaking of his achievements at City Hall.

In the first test of the city's slow-growth land-use ordinance, Ventura voters will decide Tuesday whether to approve a church's plans to construct an auditorium, classrooms and playing fields on 25 acres of agricultural land. In addition to Measure C, Ventura voters will choose three City Council members from a field of 12 candidates. And they will decide whether to return both incumbents to the local school board. In Santa Paula, voters will consider Measure B, a $2.

As major environmental organizations grow larger and more detached from grass-roots issues, the battle against polluters increasingly is being waged by thousands of smaller and more racially diverse groups targeting threats in their neighborhoods. These newer activist groups began proliferating about five years ago and are rapidly changing the character of the environmental movement in the United States.

A state constitutional amendment barring political parties in California from supporting or opposing candidates in election races where candidates run without party labels will appear on the June ballot. The proposal, which passed the Assembly last August, was approved by the Senate 31 to 6, despite criticism that it would violate federal constitutional guarantees of free speech.

Things have quieted down around here lately. The mayor is sleeping at home again. The yelling and name-calling have all but faded into memory. The barricades have even come down at City Hall. It's hard to say things are normal, though.

For most of his term as president, John F. Kennedy was necessarily preoccupied with international events, despite the fact that the people were at war with themselves over the contentious issue of race. However, by midterm, events involving race had become so tumultuous that Kennedy could no longer escape his obligation to lead the American people in seeking a solution to the issue of civil rights.

Democratic presidential hopeful Albert Gore, justifying his blunt criticism of Jesse Jackson's foreign-policy stance, declared, "There is no reason that Jackson should be treated differently than anyone else." The fact that such a statement is newsworthy--and is even considered courageous--helps explain the mess in which the Democratic Party finds itself. For months the white aspirants for the Democratic nomination have cut and slashed at each other.

Reporters will again be forced to deal with the O.J. Simpson murder trial's complex racial aspects now that the defense has begun presenting its case. Race, of course, has been an undertone from the beginning. But it has been ignored in the past few weeks as prosecutors presented their forensic evidence--hair, fiber, blood and DNA.

Two Southern Democratic governors, Arkansas' Bill Clinton and Virginia's L. Douglas Wilder, Saturday painted a somber picture of a nation weakened by outmoded economic policies and divided by racial tensions as they sought backing for their presidential candidacies from state leaders of their party from around the nation. Yet both also concluded on a note of vigorous optimism for the country and for Democratic hopes of regaining the White House in 1992.