As the Elian Gonzalez saga grinds to its tense conclusion, an issue-weary South Florida mulls, ''What's next?''

 Long after the media have trundled off to cover the next crisis, Cuban and non-Cuban Miamians will still be neighbors. We'll still share the highways, restaurants and schools. We'll still have a community to run.

 In one respect, Elian's fate is an issue about which reasonable people can and do differ.

 But when opinions appear to split along ethnic lines, a special problem arises. Despite 10,000 years of ostensible refinement, human nature still turns primitive when a difference of opinion is seen as tribal in character.

 Old ethnic animosities are brought to the surface and rubbed raw. Stereotypes -- inevitably simplistic and cruel -- replace sober analysis.

 Will intercultural bitterness linger in the South Florida air, a bad odor that ruins all other aromas?

 It need not. But we'll have to put forth a deliberate effort to heal.

 A good start would be to dispel foolish misconceptions that may have insidiously crept into our views.

 Here are a few I've noted:

 Many Cuban Americans are laboring under a false belief that those who want to return Elian to his father are pro-Fidel Castro.

 Accurately described, the sentiment of most non-Cubans is that Elian should be with his father regardless of where the father happens to live. Their desire to reunite father and son has nothing to do with Castro.

 For me, the relevant question is, Who should make decisions for a 6-year-old -- his lone surviving natural parent, or more-distant relatives? In recent weeks, I've asked numerous parents: ''If you were suddenly widowed, would you allow anyone else to decide your children's future?'' I have yet to find anyone -- Cuban or otherwise -- who would.

 Many non-Cuban Americans have failed to note that, despite periodic threats of civil disobedience by some exile leaders and politicians, the protesters outside of Elian's Little Havana home have been peaceful and law-abiding. The time when demonstrators pushed past police barricades, while it made for good television, hardly represented mayhem.

 As long as rallies remain nonviolent, the exiles are exercising a traditional, valued American right.

 A lot of exile demonstrators remain sadly misinformed about the tactic of civil disobedience.

 When plans to organize a slowdown of traffic into Miami International Airport briefly materialized Friday, protest organizer Ramon Saul Sanchez said it was intended to ''send a message to the government that we want Elian to be heard.''

 He said this with practically every news organization in the Western world camped across the street from Elian's residence. The exiles no longer need civil disobedience to get a message to anyone -- they already command the world's attention.

 Non-Cubans would rightly view new civil disobedience as nothing more than a punitive strike against uninvolved citizens. It would further alienate the very people from whom exiles are seeking sympathy.

 Non-Cubans should recognize that while Elian's Miami family has utilized virtually every conceivable tactic to keep him in Miami, they haven't broken any laws.

 I don't believe they will. They've fought a good, clean fight. If they comply with the federal government's imminent final order to surrender Elian, they would exit as untainted heroes. If they defy it, they will be soiled outlaws whose altruism could be legitimately questioned -- and they'd lose Elian anyway.

 The family's choice to avoid a confrontation over Elian's custody would yield one other benefit: Miami would be spared the trauma of a community torn asunder.

 And that would make the relatives heroes in everyone's eyes.