By Jessica Davis , JTNews Correspondent
On March 12, about 360 students, teachers and facilitators attended the Reducing Adolescent Prejudice (RAP) conference, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, the Seattle Human Rights Commission and Tully’s Coffee.
About 35 schools participated from such places as Seattle, Tacoma, Snohomish, Kitsap, Peninsula, Puyallup and Enumclaw. Schools varied from public schools to religious and alternative schools.
After registration, the morning started off with welcoming remarks by Brian Goldberg, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, and L. Charles Jones, chair of the Seattle Human Rights Commission. Following the welcome, keynote speaker Catherine Johnson, a lesbian advocate and faculty member at Bastyr University, discussed with the attendees how gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people are discriminated against in schools and society. Johnson said she grew up in Indianapolis, Ind., where she entered high school in 1969, when the Stonewall Riot started the gay rights movement.
“I wasn’t interested in dating boys,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
Johnson said when she went to The Evergreen State College in the 1970s she stopped feeling “weird.” For 15 years, she avoided telling her father that she was gay. Then, 13 years ago, she told him.
The GLBT population is still openly discriminated against, she said. Just four years ago, Matthew Shepard was murdered in Laramie, Wyo., for being gay. Only 30 percent of the U.S. population knows someone GLBT, she said. Only three percent of the U.S. population is openly gay, and one in every three openly gay people will be a victim of a hate crime in their lifetime. Gay teenagers are the highest-rated group for adolescent suicide.
Johnson encouraged audience members to introduce themselves to each other and say what they thought of her speech.
“Exposure in large groups is tough,” she said.
Audrey, a woman in the audience, spoke up, saying that she went to school in Iowa when people on her school’s campus were “coming out.” Her school started having gay dances and those who were gay started becoming more accepted.
“It’s true we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go,” said Johnson. “Get to know some gay people.”
The GLBTs are the most significantly harassed group, said Johnson. She said that when she is out with her partner in public, she often avoids holding her partner’s hand.
“Each of you can make a difference,” she said. “One voice can make a difference, each one of you can make a difference.”
This was Johnson’s first time to participate in the conference. She said she felt honored and a little nervous to speak. Johnson said she hopes to participate again.
The students met together in mixed groups for activities and discussion on quotations about activism and bias language. The groups talked about the meaning of such words as “stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, scapegoating, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and heterosexism.”
Those in attendance watched the movie “Skin Deep,” about a group of students from various backgrounds who were brought together for a three-day retreat in Northern California to talk about race. The students in the movie commonly felt uncomfortable associating with people of other races because of how their family and friends might react. The ending note of the movie was that you have to take action to make everyone equal. One example of taking action, one student said, is to go to a function with people of other colors and stay there.
After the movie, students met in their groups to discuss their reactions to the movie and fill out a personal checklist to rate their commitment to diversity in a variety of areas.
“Everybody has a heritage. Everyone comes from somewhere,” said one of the students in a group discussion. Another student said that racial problems were harder when he was younger, but things are starting to change. Now that he is in high school, he said people are starting to grow together.
Other people’s cultures should be celebrated, as well as each person’s individuality, said a participant. Several students of color mentioned that, at school, they were pressured to self-identify in certain groups. Many were called “white” because of their personalities, not their skin color. So, they were unsure of which groups to associate with in school for acceptance.
At lunch, keynote speaker Richard Jones, King County Superior Court judge, talked with the participants about what it was like for him growing up in Seattle and studying to be a lawyer as a man of color. He said there is a huge misperception of him as a black judge. He said there are only 12 black judges in the entire state of Washington. When he was hired as a Superior Court judge, Jones was only the eighth black man in history to be appointed to Superior Court. He said he often gets criticism on his judgments because of his color.
Jones said that he once met a group of white people on an elevator, on his way to officiate at a wedding. He had his judge’s robe draped on his arm and the group proceeded to guess why he had a robe. They asked him if he was a singer, reverend, etc., but never guessed that he was a judge.
The best way to get past prejudice is to get an education, said Jones. When he went to Seattle University during the Vietnam War, one of his first assignments was to write about a real-life experience. That day, his bus detoured from its route because there was a riot in the Central District. People were on rooftops with guns and police were in the streets with guns. Jones also recalled a protest at Garfield High School where a helicopter shot tear gas from above the protestors. People in his neighborhood were chased into their houses if they were on their lawns past curfew. Jones wrote about these things in his school paper and received a low grade because his teacher thought he had made everything up.
Jones said when he was about to graduate from law school, he received a call for a job interview. He was told that his job references were so good that he would get the job. But when he met one of the employers, he was told that he could not be accepted for the position because the firm was unsure of how their clients would react to having a black lawyer. He considered suing, but the black lawyers whom he met with said if he sued, Jones would always be known as a black man who sued a white firm for a job.
Later on, Jones ended up becoming the only black lawyer in a firm of 200 lawyers. Compared to the white lawyers, he had to make adjustments. He said when he saw clients for the first time they would be surprised he was black. To ease the tension, he would say something like, “Damn, I need to stop eating these Cocoa Puffs.”
The prejudice that Jones experienced did not end at home. Someone once broke a window at his home off of Alki, in West Seattle. He opened the bag that hit his window and it contained a message that read, “Move out, nigger.” “KKK” was also spray-painted on his door. He said he left the door spray-painted as a sign that he and his family were not going anywhere.
“Unfortunately [prejudice] seems like something that won’t go away,” said Jones. But, he added, dreams give people strength and you have to be a strong person to say, “I’m going to make a difference.” There is strength in diversity, said Jones. People have to make it part of their day-to-day activities, he said.
This was Jones’ first experience participating in the conference. “I enjoyed being able to share my own personal experiences,” he said. Jones added that by telling about his own experiences, he hoped the students would learn that they could rise above prejudice, address the issues and succeed. After Jones answered a few questions from the audience, the schools then met to create their own action plan to combat prejudice.
This is the first year the Seattle Human Rights Commission has sponsored the RAP conference. Commission Chair Jones said he was impressed with how knowledgeable the students were. He said he would like to see the commission sponsor the conference again.
The next conference will take place on Oct. 22 of this year. For more information about the RAP conference, call 206-448-5349, ext. 1.