People Who See a Future Don’t Turn to Racial Anger

Recently I went to Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Bensonhurst and found a miniature United Nations, a true rainbow of humanity.

The Bensonhurst I visited was not the bastion of racism described in the media.

The student body at FDR is made up of young people from 58 different national heritages who study and play together in peace and with mutual respect. These young people are America’s dream team, and they show why we need a multicultural education to keep the milk of human understanding flowing. Recently, the psyches of these young people have been torn with tension and fear.

The brutal murder of Yusuf Hawkins has caused much racial misunderstanding and pain. The media has not helped matters by portraying the white people of Bensonhurst in a one-dimensional way. Many innocent young people expressed a feeling that they were not only ashamed of what happened to Yusuf Hawkins but embarrassed by the distorted press coverage of their neighborhood.

Almost all of the students I spoke to responded positively to historical examples I gave them of interracial cooperation in struggles for freedom and justice.

I told them about Viola Liuzzo, an Italian American woman who was shot down by racists while driving civil-rights activists between Selma and Montgomery, two key points in the freedom struggle.

I told them about the large African American vote for Mario Cuomo when he became New York’s first Italian American governor.

I told them about three young friends named Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, two Jewish Americans and an African American, who were killed by white supremacists as they registered disenfranchised African Americans in Mississippi.

I told them about the African American soldiers who liberated the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.

I told them about the large African American vote for Abe Beame when he became New York City’s first Jewish American mayor.

I told them about the large numbers of white voters of all ethnic backgrounds who voted for David Dinkins in the recent Democratic primary for mayor of New York City.

I told them about all of the people of every conceivable color and heritage who had chosen to place hope over fear. And they responded with swelling pride.

But what about the young Americans cut off from this history and caught up in the pathology of racial animosity and fear?

The striking thing about the rising tide of racial violence is that it is, for the most part, perpetrated by young people. According to the New York City police, 70% of all crimes in the city involving inter-group bias are committed by people under 19 years of age.

The social pressures producing race hatred are enormous, beginning with reduced career and educational opportunities for young people, which is the material basis for racism. When there is racial polarization and growing impoverishment of the white working class, many disaffected whites scapegoat African Americans, Asians, Latinos, women and other ethnic groups for their troubles.

The gang that set upon Yusuf Hawkins with baseball bats was acting, among other things, out of a profound frustration with their own lives. Joseph Fama, who was questioned about the shooting of Hawkins, dropped out of high school at age 15. His lack of economic success was the material basis of his racist rage. And no one ever taught him any better.

People who believe in themselves and in the future do not kill innocents in cold blood. But when the material basis for racial anger and rage is combined with crude stereotyping in the media and a lack of moral leadership in local communities, the results are explosive. That is how we come to associate (unfairly) whole communities, such as Bensonhurst and Howard Beach, with racial attacks, or Harlem with crime and violence.

But we have a way to reduce the chances of more deaths owing to racial hatred and impulse.

We can give our children a multi-cultural education that teaches them mutual respect and support. We can teach them about all of the heroes and heroines who believed in, and fought for, the oneness of humanity regardless of race, creed or color.

Without such an education, sending our children to school with children from other heritages becomes a risky proposition. But there are great rewards to be reaped if we transmit the richness of multicultural experience.

Our children must be prepared emotionally, physically, psychologically and practically for the game of life, which is multiracial, multicultural and multifaceted.

Our schools should work to develop a curriculum that teaches about the beautiful richness of different heritages and the common struggle waged by all people for freedom, justice and dignity.

The great American challenge is for people of different backgrounds to learn to live together in peace. Whether we rise to this challenge depends on the efforts of “we the people,” our sacrifice, our devotion, our courage.