Back when I lived with my young family in Orange County, LA, US of A in '91/92 I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Who wouldn't? I'd left the UK in the teeth of a recession that was as grim as today. This was a time before globalisation and I had landed in a world that had never felt the chill of a downturn. There was no austerity legacy here. The experience really brought to life the contrasts between the UK and America that are most notably recorded in the book 84 Charing Cross Road.
We were living out beyond the canyons, nearer to Anaheim than Santa Monica, a suburb of LaLa land.
That was my first encounter with a truly multi racial community. It was the time when Rodney King was filmed being beaten up and Clarence Thomas was in trouble about his past. The media kerfuffle about all this was totally new to me. It was very different to my experience of race relations in the UK. I felt as if I was living in the future.
The media anguish about those figures back then has at long last been vindicated. It was this mental hand-wringing that delivered the uplifting, emotional scenes and rhetoric we witnessed on November 4, 2008. I only hope the USA has found its modern apotheosis in the person of Barrack Obama.
We were living out beyond the canyons, nearer to Anaheim than Santa Monica, a suburb of LaLa land.
That was my first encounter with a truly multi racial community. It was the time when Rodney King was filmed being beaten up and Clarence Thomas was in trouble about his past. The media kerfuffle about all this was totally new to me. It was very different to my experience of race relations in the UK. I felt as if I was living in the future.
The media anguish about those figures back then has at long last been vindicated. It was this mental hand-wringing that delivered the uplifting, emotional scenes and rhetoric we witnessed on November 4, 2008. I only hope the USA has found its modern apotheosis in the person of Barrack Obama.
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