By Nicholas Hassell, Special to JTNews
“No Place for Hate” was the theme of an anti-bias conference held Oct. 14 at Seattle’s Town Hall. The Anti-Defamation League and Nordstrom cosponsored the 17th Annual Reducing Adolescent Conference in conjunction with the Seattle Human Rights Commission.
“The ADL believes that hate is learned, and can therefore be unlearned” says Northwest ADL development director Tina Solomon, “and that’s our whole philosophy behind education in this anti-bias prejudice protection area.”
She added that the conference is useful because it can take representatives from schools, give them information, and then have those students dispense the information throughout their school.
Over 160 students from 21 schools throughout the Puget Sound area — some from as far south as Gig Harbor — attended.
The keynote address, given by Ed Taylor, Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Washington, spoke about how people must look at themselves before taking action, was by many accounts quite moving and had some in tears by its end.
Afterward, students broke into smaller groups and met with adult moderators for a round-table type discussion that focused on the subject of the keynote speech, and other issues having to do with ethnic bias in schools.
One subject that came up at a number of tables was that of naturally segregated lunchrooms. Students said how a large number of the more diverse schools seem to be more disjointed, because people from a certain background will most often sit with other students from the same ethnic background. A student from one school with a less diverse population theorized that natural segregation at his school barely exists because there are not enough people from different backgrounds to segregate.
Student Preston Goulet said his solution to the problem of bias is based on having an actual need. This theory responds to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which depicts the importance and order of which people and society prioritize their needs. Most important are physiological needs, followed by safety, and working all the way through to self-actualization — or feeling good.
In group discussion, one table agreed that the segregated seating at lunch fell into the category of self-actualization, so in order to solve the problem of segregation, and the first step toward stopping bias in schools, was to somehow find a way to instill a greater need in the students.
Most of the ideas presented by students at their discussion tables held this level of depth.
After the first session of discussion, everyone came back together to watch a short film, and then to partake in a conference-wide discussion. The film, titled White Face, depicted racism in a whole new manner: against clowns.
The film made the argument that racism — like hating a clown for the make-up he wears — is absurd, yet it might offend some people who believe racism is so serious that they don’t find any humor in the jokes. The film’s director transposed the example of the clown to show how racism towards multiple groups, from African American, to Jews, and even to Bosnians if enough attention was paid, could be perpetrated.
After the film, the students participated in anti-racism activities. In the first activity, students looked at different pictures, and then wrote down what they believed was happening. No descriptions of the pictures, some of which included a doctor and a Native American woman, were given until after all the pictures had been shown, and the students had given their opinion on each photo.
The shock value increased for each picture —the kind-looking old man who one student described as “the kind of nice old man who would play chess in the park,” was actually the leader of a white supremacist group in the Pacific Northwest.
The following activity was much more statistical. The students estimated the number of people out of 100 with certain characteristics that ranged from ethnicity to education level to sexual orientation to religion. The students said the most shocking statistic was that on an island with 100 people that directly conformed proportionately to the earth’s population, 50 percent of all the money would belong to six of those people — all of whom would be American.
Once the final discussions finished, the conference participants met with people from their own schools to lay out an action plan to get rid of bias and racism once and for all. This moment was meant to be the moment of truth, for students to be able to plan and organize themselves to join the ever-present and more creative fight against racism.
Students from Foster High School, one of the schools in attendance, plan to hold a Martin Luther King week — instead of just one day — as well as a program to recognize different cultures every week during the month of February.
Over lunch, however, the participants spent much of the time talking with their friends about the pizza. Most of them moved on to the deeper points of the importance of expelling racism from their community. At the end of the day-long program, students said they enjoyed and had gained a lot from what they learned.
“I’m glad we had a chance to come,” says Josh Thompson, a student from Foster, “I think it really opened my eyes.”
Nicholas Hassell is a sophomore at Foster High School in Tukwila, where he writes for the school newspaper The Growler.