WHAT'S A SCHOOL TO DO ABOUT HATE, a dialogue

newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opfocus5938830nov23,0,6928477.story
Newsday.com

WHAT'S A SCHOOL TO DO ABOUT HATE?, a dialogue

As the shadow of a slain Ecuadorean looms over a high school, a conversation about tattoos, critical thinking and culture

November 23, 2008, pages A52-A53

All seven teenagers charged in the fatal attack of immigrant Marcelo Lucero are students at Patchogue-Medford High School, raising questions about what role schools should play in teaching about racism.

A panel of activists and experts on training and counseling about racism and bias crimes is discussing this issue, and other aspects of the story, at newsday.com/opinion. We've adapted part of the conversation here.

Andrew Malekoff, executive director and chief executive officer, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center:

I am going to take this question and ask another series of questions related to the situation at hand. . . . Can we take a step beyond curriculum-driven bias education and violence-prevention training and the like, for just a moment, and just imagine how a situation should be handled in real time . . .

Let's say a high school knows that an individual had a tattoo of a swastika printed on his body. Let's say that it is a fact known by some adults and some students in the school. The tattoo is not displayed regularly, but it is exposed when the student changes his clothes to compete on a lacrosse team.

How should this be addressed? Or should it? And is the message that it sends important to the student body and . . . the school culture? Finally, how should a principal, a teacher, a coach, a team and/or a fellow student handle this situation, and what are the implications of each of these person's actions?

Omar Henriquez, community organizer:

Facilitate the process by which members of the black, Latino and immigrant community can fully participate on the school's programs and initiatives. Most of the school board members . . . are white. This has got to change. School boards must reflect the members of the community. Once people of color begin to participate, ideas on how to deal with this and other issues will begin to flow. PTAs must be inclusive. Minority staff should include not only the janitorial, but administration as well. In other words, curtail the discrimination and racism that already exist at that level. It would be a beginning.

Jeffrey L. Reynolds, chief operating officer, BiasHELP of Long Island:

I do think the schools should play a role, though parents, communities, houses of worship, etc., all play a central role as well. Exposure to others makes it somewhat harder to dehumanize and demonize others, so activities that encourage cross-cultural communication are important. And they shouldn't start in high school.

Schools at all grade levels can and should do a variety of things: 1) Ensure diversity among school board members, faculty and staff; 2) Require annual cultural competence trainings for board, faculty and staff; 3) Enact a detailed, written policy on bullying, harassment and violence; 4) Create and facilitate well-integrated (into all subjects) age-appropriate exercises and lessons - heck, encourage kids to help figure out what works and what doesn't; 5) Partner with community-based organizations and law enforcement to help deliver critical messages; 6) Release annual reports about violence, acts of bullying, harassment, etc.; 7) Create new ways for kids to report incidents or seek help in a confidential and maybe even anonymous way, and 8) Come up with a crisis-response game plan that can be put into play following a critical incident.

Some schools are doing some of these things really well. Others not so much. ... Here's the bottom line: Marcelo Lucero was allegedly killed by Jeffrey Conroy, but there's more than enough blame to go around. We need a fresh look at what passes for diversity education - it ain't a "multicultural day" - and we need to hold those educating our kids more accountable.

To address Andrew's tattoo query: I think a conversation should have happened between the student, his parents and school personnel to explore why he felt compelled to adorn his body with a hateful symbol. Beyond that, the student shouldn't be barred from sports but perhaps should have been barred from displaying the tattoo in the locker room or elsewhere.

Andrew Malekoff:

I like Jeffrey's approach to the parents, to explore this issue and to reinforce not baring the tattoo. In Jeffrey's recommendations, he says: "Create new ways for kids to report incidents or seek help in a confidential and maybe even anonymous way." So, someone reports the fact that this kid has a swastika tattoo and says he and others are very uncomfortable with this fact, and that there are adults in the building, who know that he has told, who just shrug. What next? This is now a part of the life of the building. It is not a dramatic, highly publicized news event that gets lots of attention and even a blog on Newsday. Rather, it is a simmering reality in the life of the school that is being ignored.

Yeah, the kid comes in with the parents, and it is addressed and the tattoo is concealed for the most part. But it is alive in the school that J.C. has a swastika on his leg, and it reflects a subculture in the school that is predisposed to such things as "beaner-jumping." This is spoken in whispers, but it is real. What next?

There is a well-known expression in the field of alcoholism that has been generalized beyond the field and that is known to much of the public. It goes like this, "There is an elephant in the room." It represents something that is known to all, that all have deep feelings about, and live with but refuse to confront in a forthright manner.

Not to beat a dead horse (as I ungracefully mix metaphors). But when there is something alive in the culture of an institution, and not in the abstract as in, "XYZ is a racist school or community," for example, but when there is something real in the everyday life of the school or institutional community, like a kid with a swastika, and that same kid with a following, how do schools keep this reality ... from being known but ignored, acknowledged yet accepted in silence?

The insidiousness of something like this either reinforces a sick culture, unsettles a benign culture, or challenges a healthy culture. I am interested in what suggestions there are for how schools (or other institutions) can confront something real like this, not something in the abstract and not something that has been exposed through the media. Because I believe that it is these seemingly minor everyday realities in the life of a school that shape the culture. Where is the counterforce, and what should it look like?

Jeffrey L. Reynolds:

If I ran the school, I'd make sure that the student with the tattoo and those around him got a series of really clear and vivid lessons about the Holocaust and the history behind the swastika. I think your best counterforce are this kid's peers, who should have reacted with horror when seeing the tattoo for the first time. Odds are that, instead, the other kids laughed or said nothing, yet probably had some reservations about it and him. If those kids fully understood the history, they might have been more likely to speak up.

Andrew Malekoff:

I think also that the swastika is a symbol that, in its current use, goes well beyond its origins in Nazi Germany and has morphed into a broader symbol of hate. A history lesson is a good start. And the wish that better educated and more sensitive peers will stand up is one that I share, although I think the standing up part is rare; rare among adults as well. This discussion must also address workplace issues; that is, what happens in the workplace for its employees when such behavior and symbols are forced underground by apathy or fear?

The school is a community made up of children, youth and adult employees who all must be included in the equation. Schools need the capacity for ... confrontation that addresses issues and problems in a direct, caring and forthright manner. When the school or workplace replicates the oppressive or prejudicial behavior of society, caring adults and peers must skillfully intervene to raise consciousness, stimulate interaction, foster understanding and motivate change.

Easier said than done, I know. A school can start with this as a value and goal and then be dedicated to figure out how to get there. No school should be pressed to transform its culture in a day. A gradual and earnest process is a good place to start; relying on one another as well as outside experts. The outsiders can help, but quite often it is in a hit-and-run sort of a way. If outsiders are going to be involved, choose a community-based agency with a track record, that you know is willing to stay for the long haul and not come and go. Choose a life partner for change, not a fling.

Michael O'Neill, Sag Harbor Anti-bias Task Force:

It will take the schools to bring home the experience of this trauma, which will help our young both try to understand and to deal with the inexplicability of the evil that haunts us. It is the young that are most amenable to change.

There are now widely used programs thatwere well developed and finely tuned over the decades for the schools to use that are quite familiar to them. They teach tolerance and fight hate. Programs from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Jewish Committee, among the many out there, help children recognize anger and triggers of hurt and conflict, meanness, name-calling and acquiring the sensitivity and respect needed to overcome learned bias. When these programs are instituted by school districts and are implemented in the curricula throughout the school year, they are effective.

Unfortunately, it often takes a trauma for school districts to recognize their need. It will take the wisdom accumulated through the mediation of all of the community's institutions to fashion year-round "teaching moments" that will move us forward in the progressive political sense of our shared fate, and the recognition of our interdependence that sustains our very life.

Jeffrey L. Reynolds:

Our educators conduct programs in schools across Nassau and Suffolk, and there's a notion that a 45-minute workshop once a year will fully address these issues. In most cases the schools want more but feel pressured by educational mandates - so much so that issues like violence prevention, HIV/AIDS education, pregnancy prevention, substance use prevention often take a backseat to the three "R's." Nobody wants to be the school at the bottom of a test score list in Newsday. Of course, now Patchogue-Medford's kids are on the cover for several days, so perhaps schools will finally take a second look and find innovative ways to better integrate violence prevention messages and lessons.

Michael Meyers, executive director, New York Civil Rights Coalition:

That schools have an educational role in extirpating base prejudices is certain. But it is not a proselytizing role. Encouraging critical thinking, students' examination of stereotypes, giving students accurate information, a deep understanding of history and current events, and the tools to debate, to see and refute misinformation - [these] are vital to the educational process. But one of the chief examples of wrong-way education is encouraging "tolerance." People who are of so-called "different" races or ethnicity or sexual orientation do not want to be "tolerated." They want their humanity respected and their rights protected.

Individuals are just that, not groups. All blacks do not look alike. Ditto for Hispanics.

Blacks and Hispanics and Asians do not belong to different races from whites. We all belong to the same race, scientists assure us; we are all members of the human race. Indeed, "race" as a social construct is just that. It is a social invention, and it surely does not help educate anyone when our schools and teachers perpetuate myths around "race" - myths such as "white culture" and "black culture." The textbooks our children are reading are profoundly errant.

In this vein, schools should stop paternalistically presenting lessons about "the Negro," or "the African-American" (especially during Black History Month). There is no such thing as "the Negro" or "the African- American." Just like there is no such thing as "the white American" or "the Jew" or "the homosexual." Or, for that matter, "the woman."

Andrew Malekoff, executive director and chief executive officer of the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center

Omar Henriquez, community organizer

Jeffrey L. Reynolds, chief operating officer of BiasHELP of Long Island

Michael O'Neill, Sag Harbor Anti-bias Task Force

Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition

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