Interesting personal take on recent California history. But the latent racial anxiety that is an important part of this story (and is ironically captured by the title of this piece) would be outrageous if it wasn't so comical. The author glosses the racial and ethnic diversity that makes California special and he seems like a good guy. But he ignores the ugly racial politics that still lurks in a diminishing but active part of the electorate. This headline from earlier this year, as much as anything, sums up the "darkness" that colors much of the nostalgia expressed by nostalgic Californians, especially those of the author's and author's parents' generation:

"It's official: Latinos now outnumber whites in California"

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-census-latinos...

One of the things I love most about California is its racial and cultural diversity. But a lot of that transition from the "agreed-upon, commanding" version of "modernist California" to the "post-modern phase" was embodied politically by a white flight impulse among people like my grandparents who beatified FDR then in the 1950s and 1960s started voting for conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan when he was elected governor and ended up reliably supporting a Republican establishment that sanctified Prop 13 and championed funding cuts for the public institutions that formed an important part of the foundation of the California dream. They got theirs and they were loathe to pay it forward for a state that they felt was being overrun by people who didn't share their values and were not like themselves.

With the election of Jerry Brown and the dominance of Democrats in the legislature, California seems to have turned a corner fiscally and a lot of the doom-and-gloom headlines that gleefully pointed to the deficits of the previous decade have faded away. California still faces a lot of challenges. At least it is facing up to them.