Her changed status is a sweet irony, given that her job is to foster understanding among a jumble of ethnic populations people tossed into a huddle by the greatest demographic shift in a century.
Tregor's work isn't easy, not even within the open arms of San Francisco, where the liberal establishment promotes diversity and tolerance as bullishly as it does the city's winsome bay views.
``Scratch the surface in any neighborhood here and you'll find a lot of tensions,'' said Tregor, 41, executive director of the Intergroup Clearance House, which is trying to ease conflicts sparked by the rapid rise of San Francisco's Asian community. ``It's starting in the West, but it will eventually move east.''
The Golden State is the runaway leader in the mixing of America. The latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that no ethnicity is the majority in California. Thirty years ago, a blink of history's eye, the state was 80 percent white.
Folks like Tregor see plenty of lasting benefits in the trend, but they are struggling with its immediate challenges. And they say much of the West along with the immigrant gateways of Texas, New York and Florida should take a cue from California's evolving lessons in the collision of cultures.
``There are general suspicions and fears,'' said Ed Ilumin, 51, who monitors housing discrimination for San Francisco's Human Rights Commission. Complaints to the panel are up 50 percent this yearo about 900 and a quarter of them are rooted in race. ``You just don't throw people together like this.''
Not without expecting clashes between the newcomers and old timers as well as among newcomers, Ilumin added. His agency's caseload brims with allegations that ethnic-Chinese landlords, most of them recently settled in San Francisco, rent only to Asians.
The charges are as likely to be filed by black people, whose families have lived here for generations, as they are by Latino immigrants. ``There are real problems with the influx of Asians into housing that was Hispanic or black,'' said Ilumin.
Asians have their own grievances. Within a year, they will surpass whites to become San Francisco's No. 1 minority among minorities, according to census projections. That has made them the target of resentment in some quarters, feelings that have turned ugly on occasion.
Two weeks ago, cars in the city's Sunset district, a former Irish American enclave that is now largely ethnic-Chinese, were papered with anti-Asian leaflets. Several were also vandalized. Similar incidents have occurred over the past few years.
``There is a backlash,'' said Victor Hwang, an attorney for San Francisco's Asian Law Caucus.
California is a scarred veteran of backlashes. Memories still burn of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a reaction to the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black motorist. In the six years that followed, the state's voters approved a trio of racially polarizing ballot initiatives. The measures sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants, dismantle affirmative action and eliminate bilingual education.
Meanwhile, hate crimes in California have increased 11 percent since 1995, to 2,001 last year. Sixty percent of the attacks on people and property were racially motivated, and two-thirds were violent, including three murders.
``It is very sobering,'' said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for the state attorney general's office, which has stepped up enforcement of hate crime laws. ``There are five hate crimes a day. That really puts it into perspective, when you think how far America as a society and culture has come since we built the Statue of Liberty to welcome all immigrants.''
Today's heavy flow of immigrants from Latin America and Asia has reduced California's proportion of whites to 49 percent. California is the first big state to have a ``minority majority,'' joining the ranks of Hawaii and New Mexico.
Hispanics account for 31 percent of California's 33 million residents. Asians and Pacific Islanders total 12 percent. The three groups have grown by more than a third in a decade. Blacks and Native Americans have posted smaller gains, while the number of whites has declined by 8 percent.
The rest of the West has yet to replicate California's experience. Except for New Mexico, the other states on this side of the Rockies remain predominantly white.
The `90s, however, witnessed a wave of Latinos and Asians coursing into Nevada, Colorado, Oregon and Arizona. The impact has been most pronounced in Nevada, where the Latino and Asian populations ballooned by 144 percent and 123 percent, respectively.
Demographers say more of the same is in store for the entire nation. They envision a minority-majority United States by 2050. In their forecasts, the nonwhite population fans out to every corner of the land nd faces resistance along the way.
``This is just the history of the country,'' said Jeff Passel, a demographer for the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. ``Whenever there has been new population groups moving in, there have been tensions.''
Passel cited the harsh treatment of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, the era of America's last great ethnic shakeup. ``There was the perception that the new immigrants were too different to be absorbed into society,'' he said.
Now, it is often the descendants of immigrants who are uncomfortable with the claim-stakers from overseas.
``I'm not bitter about this, but I'm less than pleased,'' said San Francisco-born George Nikitin, 45, whose parents were Russian emigres. He was picking up a takeout order at Noriega Street's Peking Restaurant. The street, which slouches toward the windy bay, is part of the Sunset district's new Chinatown.
``Most everything coming in is Chinese,'' Nikitin said. ``Before, everything was mixed. The Chinese don't integrate they take over.''
Words like those sting Jane Ong, who runs a grocery on Noriega. Snapple shares space on her shelves with Chinese sugarcane drinks. The 30-something Ong, who demurred at giving her precise age, moved to San Francisco from China 15 years ago.
``I love it here the weather, the people, everything,'' she said. Her white neighbors are friendly, she added. ``Sometimes they come in and buy stuff.''
Two doors down is the Goal Post pub, a holdover from the area's bygone Irish days. The owner is Carol Jones, 35, an Irish immigrant. ``Eventually, it will be all Chinese,'' she said of the street.
A half dozen ethnic-Irish laborers were at the bar, sipping stout and beer in the dim light. ``People here get along fine,'' Jones said. ``But the Irish stick to themselves.''
Encouraging San Franciscans to mingle is Tregor's mission. Her agency is one of many that sponsor sensitivity workshops and classroom programs that seek to close the city's ethnic divisions. Success is generally charted in inches person by person, street by street.
``What the future brings will depend on what the economics of the state are,'' Tregor said.
Throughout California, the immigration surge has helped drive the state's racing economy, delivering cheap labor and foreign capital, experts say. Immigrants have launched thousands of small businesses from here to San Diego.
But as Tregor noted, when good economic times end, anti-immigrant passions can flare, especially among the jobless. ``You may have outright violence in some neighborhoods where people are angry about the economic gap,'' she said.
Tregor's clearing house, which occupies a second-floor walkup in the Sunset district, is taking preventive steps in the schools. At nearby Lincoln High, her staff counsels students to cut loose of their biases.
``There is a fair amount of stereotyping and labeling going on,'' said Kanwarpal Dhaliwal, 26, who heads the counseling program.
``Playgrounds are segregated by race and immigration status. It starts in middle school and is most stubborn in high school.''
The students themselves differ on the state of race relations within Lincoln's walls.
``I've never had a problem,'' said Thomas Komuves, 16, who was born in Hungary. His family moved to San Francisco six years ago. ``I have lots of Chinese friends. It's sort of nice to be in the minority here.''
But Philip Tam, a 14-year-old Chinese American, said Asian students are taunted by other Asians as well as white students with the slur ``FOB,'' meaning fresh off the boat. ``Asians stick around Asians mostly,'' he added.
Tregor has an even younger group of San Franciscans under her wing. The clearing house leases its ground floor to a preschool, whose tiny enrollees are as ethnically mixed as the city around them. Their innocent laughter echoes up to Tregor's office.
``It's my little testing ground,'' she said of the preschool. ``At that age, kids are unaware of race. We joke about getting a grant to have people just sit and watch them and learn.''
(C) 2000, the Dallas Morning News.
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