Program Launched to Fight Prejudice in Region’s Schools

About 1,200 students, teachers and civic leaders gathered in front of the Los Angeles Coliseum Tuesday in the opening of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League’s “World of Difference” program, organized to fight racial, ethnic and religious prejudice in area schools.

“(Los Angeles) is the most ethnically diverse city in the entire world . . . and unfortunately tensions still exist based on our racial and religious differences. Only through a better understanding of each other can we put these differences aside,” Mayor Tom Bradley told the gathering.

Before the mayor spoke, the crowd was entertained by a mariachi band, a gospel choir and a Jewish school choir.

Coordinators of the yearlong program said it was conceived four years ago because of increasing racially motivated attacks among students across the nation. They said the program has already been successful in Miami and Boston, and they hope to reach hundreds of thousands of students in six Southern California counties through extensive media campaigns and teacher workshops.

“We hope to be trainers of trainers,” said Janet Himler of the ADL, which was organized 75 years ago to fight bigotry. “We will go out and train a core group of teachers, who will then go out and train others, and so on.”

Himler said that during the workshops, teachers will be given lesson plans designed to encourage their increasingly diverse students to talk about racial, ethnic or religious differences.

About 85% of the of 580,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are minorities--including Latinos, blacks, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Filipinos and American Indians. District officials expect that number to increase to 90% by 1997.

“This program is going to teach us that whites are not the only people who matter in this world,” said 13-year-old Susan Martin, a student at the 32nd Street USC Magnet School. “We need to learn to care about all kinds of people.”

Some 20 protesters at the gala agreed but criticized the program for not addressing sexual and economic discrimination.

“In effect what the ADL is saying is that certain kinds of discrimination are taboo, but others are acceptable,” said Enric Morello of ACT UP/LA, an advocacy group for AIDS victims. “They have excluded women, poor people, the homeless, people with AIDS and homosexuals, and they should all be included.”

David Lehrer, regional director of the ADL, said that his group focused its efforts on racial and religious bigotry because “that is our area of expertise.”

He added, “The school districts involved in the program have agreed to target the other areas of discrimination because they are much more knowledgeable in those areas.”

Lesson for Parents

“World of Difference” will be implemented in public, private and parochial schools throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Harry S. Kilgo, coordinator of a Compton child care referral agency, said he hopes students will influence their parents.

“I still have parents who refuse to let minorities take care of their children, even though there is a severe shortage of day care providers,” he said. “Young children seem to be blind to such differences. They just look at each other as people. We can learn a lot from them.”