"I have gained a higher sensitivity to racial remarks: ones that bugged and offended me before but over time were calloused and not noticed. The [experience] in
essence, pulled off the scab and each subsequential (sic) remark I hear is like salt on an open wound."These are the words of Bill Rowley, a Santa Ana high school student, who was part of an innovative
program designed to put into practice the contact theory described in the April/May CAHRO News article, "Cooperative Learning: Hope for Harmony in Our Schools."
The Los Angeles office
of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) created a program in 1992, "Children of the Dream," to dispel stereotypes and to challenge African American and Jewish American teens to see each other anew. Black
Jews (young Ethiopian Jews who had fled discrimination in their native land and now live in Israel) traveled to Los Angeles' ethnically diverse schools to trigger discussions about discrimination and about the refuge
experience.
The program's success led to its being reversed. Local students of color traveled to Israel to reunite with their new friends and see another culture firsthand. The program planners
sought to expand the program's duration by crafting a component, the Dream Dialogue, designed to create a sustained relationship between teens who would not normally come into contact--especially on an equal status
basis--and, in pursuit of a common goal. The planners recalled Gordon Allport's admonition: "contact must reach below the surface in order to be effective in altering prejudice....It is the cooperative
striving for the goal that engenders solidarity."
This February ADL staff brought together the ethnically diverse students who had traveled to Israel and local Jewish students who had been
nominated by rabbis or educators as young people who could benefit from and contribute to an ongoing intergroup relations project. We now had a core group of students who came together across ethnic, racial,
religious and class lines.
The students met on a monthly basis. Initially, the meetings were structured around anti-bias activities used in ADL's A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE program. As the students
came to know each other and to develop some familiarity with each other's cultures (one session was spent visiting the touring exhibit of the slave ship, Henrietta Maria), they began to build strong friendships.
As Era Thornton, a Los Angeles high school student, said: "I have always been told never to judge a book by its cover...[now I want to learn] about everyone, no matter, race, color, or ethnicity. It's
sort of funny because I've never really seen the whole picture; I've always seen half, now I notice everything."
The next phase was for the students to determine what programming they would like to
undertake. Because we are in the backyard of Hollywood, it should come as no surprise that the students decided that what they would most like to do was to create a video that portrayed the types of bigotry that they
saw in their day-to-day school experiences. They felt that such a video would give them a vehicle to use to reach their peers.
We were willing to attempt to meet the challenge. Networking led
us to a member of the Directors' Guild, Sally Stringer, who had a profound commitment to providing opportunity to young people who might not have other chances. Sally who would accept nothing less than excellence
from the students, soon had them creating vignettes and learning how to "story board" them. To their great delight, they learned about pre-production, they tried out for parts, rehearsed, were filmed,
and then became involved in the post-production.
The video was entitled, "Stop the Hate," and was composed of three vignettes. The vignettes they reached consensus on focused on issues they
knew many students have to deal with continuously. The first deals with the effect of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti upon a student in a high school bathroom and is designed to lead students to explore
appropriate responses. The second focuses on an interracial couple who must decide whether it is worthwhile maintaining their relationship in the face of the criticism they receive. In the final vignette, a
student makes an ethnic joke at the expense of his classmates and the impact of ethnic jokes is presented dramatically.
Although much of this extraordinary effort was made possible by donations and in-kind
contributions, there was still considerable expense. ADL received funding from the U.S. Department of Education for a national, four site pilot project to reduce bias on school campuses.
Once the
video was produced, the students needed to prepare to become trainers who could use the vignettes in classrooms and facilitate discussion with their peers on how to respond to bigotry effectively. A weekend
retreat funded by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles provided the setting for intensive discussions of race and ethnicity and for training in how to facilitate challenging discussions. Our goal was to
have others benefit from Martha Orellana's insight when this Los Angeles high school student said that now, "I see people in different ways. Instead of getting mad because of someone's racist remark, I try my
best to educate them."
The year-long Dream Dialogue experiment has ended and many of the students have left the area for college campuses. Next month a new class of "Dialoguers" will be
initiated into the program. They will choose their own project--anything but a video (wonderful for the students; too much for the adults). But their program will include facilitation skills and they, too,
will have the opportunity to facilitate the "Stop the Hate" video. If you are interested in having these peer leaders facilitate a discussion of differences at your school, please call Bette Weinberg at
(310) 446-8000.
