Facing Racial Stereotypes : Culture: Students attending a weeklong camp on human relations endure painful lessons about society in the hopes of breaking down barriers.

On a placid June morning amid the soothing smell of pine trees, nearly 100 Los Angeles-area teen-agers sang a ballad in unison and then tackled an exercise on racial stereotypes that by nightfall would tear them apart.

Many of the young people had traveled up this San Bernardino mountainside filled with a sense of purpose, determined to rise above the rioting that tore apart Los Angeles less than eight weeks before. But in a series of emotional confrontations at this weeklong camp on human relations, they found in themselves some of the same attitudes that contributed to the unrest.

During exercises dealing with stereotypes, blacks were called “undependable,” “unfriendly,” “ready to pick a fight.” Anglos were labeled “condescending,” “rude,” “smile outside, racist inside.”

Then came the night of the most excruciating exercise. Campers ranked the power of four racial groups in a routine known as the “Power Grid”: whites consistently came in first, Latinos last.

Many youths sobbed openly at the seeming futility of it all.

Yet within days, a number of these youths, from neighborhoods as diverse as Westwood, Compton, Gardena and Santa Monica, would be re-energized and brainstorming about new ways to fight racism on their home turf.

And organizers hope that some of the idealism permeating this mountain retreat--including a dogged belief that racial stereotypes can be admitted, confronted, perhaps even changed--will prove workable “down the mountain” as campers return to the schools and the streets of Los Angeles.

The National Conference of Christians and Jews has been organizing human-relations camps in Southern California since 1950. The progression of lists, conflicts, tears and resolution has been a rite of passage for thousands of area high school students over the years. But the June 20-26 session in the San Bernardino Mountains was the first since the Los Angeles riots, and organizers approached it with unusual nervousness. They even considered toning down some exercises.

Some campers, meanwhile, arrived at Pilgrim Pines camp above Yucaipa wondering if such exercises really could dilute stereotypes in a city wracked by racial disunity.

The riots were one reason that 17-year-old Stan Kang of Santa Monica signed up. But by the evening of the third day, he still wasn’t sure where all the seminars and soul-searching would lead.

“I hope there’ll be some conflict. That’s the only way we’ll get something done,” said Kang, a private school graduate of Korean heritage who is headed for Amherst College in the fall. “I’m still sort of skeptical of what’s going on here. There’s a lot of talk.”

Some camp veterans complained early in the week that this group of teen-agers seemed too polite, too eager to avoid confrontation--perhaps because their memories of the strife remained too raw.

“They’re walking on eggshells. They’re very careful about what they say,” said a frustrated Vincent Chandler, 17, of Monterey Park, who attended the camp in 1991 and returned this year as a “youth leader,” or peer counselor.

Camp staff members wondered if they were being too careful, if the teen-agers now receiving kid-gloves treatment needed to be jolted more harshly before they would open up and acknowledge how they stereotype others.

Five campers sat on the edge of a stage as their colleagues stared at them.

A facilitator pointed to an Anglo girl with long, straight blond hair.

Where did she live?

“The Valley.”

“Westside of L.A.”

The black girl sitting nearby?

“More toward downtown.”

And what does the Latina do in school?

“She’s in the cheerleading squad.”

“I see her sitting in class, putting on makeup.”

What sort of car does she drive?

“I say she gets the guys to drive her around.”

And how about the Asian-American youth?

“One or two sports teams. Maybe tennis.”

“I see him in an Integra.”

“A Toyota Celica. Or a Volvo.”

It was the morning of Day 3, and campers were beginning to look at stereotypes.

The exercises grew tougher. That night, campers were divided into groups from public and private schools, and made lists describing how they viewed their counterparts.

Private school students were called “rich,” “stuck-up,” “sheltered,” “ashamed to be rich.”

And public school students were labeled “not as diligent,” “higher dropout rate,” “take more vocational classes,” “more like the movie ‘Grease.’ ”

Some students in each group reacted angrily. One girl later confessed to other campers: “I feel embarrassed to say what my family does and how much things cost because I feel I’m going to be judged.”

And a boy adds: “Even if I have more money than you do, my values are the same as yours.”

This was classic camp style, with teen-agers encouraged to open up, admit to stereotyping, react to others labeling them, openly discuss feelings.

They ended Day 3 in harmony, gathered in the darkness around a campfire, singing songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “If I Had a Hammer,” the smoke billowing past the camera lights set up by a television crew taping the weeklong camp.

Ironically, a training session for camp staff and volunteers originally was scheduled for the weekend of May 1-3. Then the riots swept through Los Angeles after the April 29 verdict in the Rodney G. King beating, delaying the session for two weeks.

When the session was finally held, it would reveal divisions among staff and volunteers charged with leading a camp on racial harmony. Some people advocated canceling last week’s camp, recalled Lori Nelson, NCCJ director of youth education.

Because camp facilitators tend to put difficult issues “in people’s faces,” she said, there was fear that “parents wouldn’t let their kids attend for fear of violence.”

But planners decided the camp should continue.

It was smaller and more suburban than past camps because the Los Angeles Unified School District was still in session, organizers said. An unusually large number of students attending--40 of the 95--came from private schools. The second camp of the summer, scheduled for Aug. 1-7, is expected to draw many more L.A. Unified students.

Twenty-four of last week’s campers were Anglo, 21 were Latino, 20 were Asian or Pacific Islander and 18 were black. The 12 other campers were of mixed ethnicity.

Some of their activities were standard camp fare. Teen-agers crowded into the dining hall three times a day, complained about the food, teased their counselors, joined in nightly sing-alongs and then talked with cabin mates late into the night.

But much of what ensued on the mountainside was unorthodox, even unsettling.

Campers were asked to grapple not only with racism, but with stereotypes of class, gender and sexual orientation. They met in “racially separate groups,” dialogue groups, small groups, big community groups.

As the camp continued, it was not unusual to find pairs of campers sitting with legs crossed on a stone ledge or a grassy hillside, arguing passionately or perhaps even crying.

Time felt compressed, with campers saying they experienced a kaleidoscope of emotions within just a few hours.

Day 4 seemed to go on forever. It began on an upbeat note with post-breakfast singing, accompanied by the sounds of some campers shaking noisemakers and tiny tambourines or clicking drumsticks on the backs of chairs.

Then campers broke into four racially separate groups to begin work on the lists of stereotypes.

“Think about the assumptions you make about people when you first meet them,” NCCJ outreach coordinator Lecia Brooks advised black campers.

A long white strip of paper taped to the wall quickly filled with the campers’ assumptions about Asians: “withdrawn,” “submissive women,” “distinct body odor,” “deny that they’re against black people.”

In a nearby lodge, Asian campers were making their own list about blacks: “They have an attitude,” “get mad easily,” “they feel society owes them something,” “unfriendly,” “not clean.”

Next, the lists were rolled up and transported from lodge to lodge. Black campers sat watching as new lists--those bearing stereotypes about them--were unfurled in front of them.

Some comments such as “not clean” drew gasps and angry comments. One girl in a corner began crying.

In a meeting between Asian and Anglo teen-agers, one Asian boy bristled at characterizations like “not sexual” and “have accents.”

“It seems you feel I’m a robot or something,” he told the Anglo group. “I’m communicative. I feel I’m sexual. I don’t have an accent . . . You see Asian, you don’t see me.”

An Anglo girl asked her black colleagues: “Do you feel that everyone . . . that inside they have some racism in their head?”

“Yes,” a black girl retorted.

But even with emotions at such a pitch, organizers still felt some campers were holding back. “It seemed like they didn’t want to upset anyone,” Brooks said later. “It was a lot harder to break through that.”

So the staff decided to “turn up the volume” and do the full-scale “Power Grid” exercise ranking races according to their power in society.

That night, campers broke into racially segregated groups. Three of the groups ranked Anglos first, Asians second, blacks third and Latinos fourth; only the white group varied, ranking blacks second and Asians third.

The main lodge had been turned into a kind of gallery, its walls hung with posters laden with statistics about different racial groups, including unemployment and the percentage of lawyers and medical school graduates by race.

Campers filed slowly by the posters before gathering in the center of the lodge to hear the facilitator solemnly read off the Power Grid results, group by group.

Four times, Anglo campers were deemed the most powerful and told to stand on the stage. Four times, Latino campers were told to stand in the back of the room.

The lodge echoed with loud sobbing. Boys and girls of all races stared at one another, faces damp with tears.

This moment, they would say later, was the most painful moment of the week.

“My friend was up on the stage--my best friend, looking down on me, and me looking up,” recalled Eugenia Washington, 16, of Gardena, who is black. “It just hurt me. . . . It made me realize that I can’t hide from it. It’s always there.”

The campers moved on. Now the dialogue groups focused on what they could do to change things after they left the mountain.

“These individual young people have to walk out of there feeling they’re valuable and they can make a difference,” said Nelson. Her assessment of last week’s camp: It was unusually difficult, but successful.

Campers promised to reach out to teen-agers of other races. They talked of confronting friends who used racial slurs, calling radio stations to complain about racist comments, asking a record store not to stock music by a white-power band. A few said they might try organizing multicultural clubs at their schools.

By the camp’s final days, teen-agers seemed less angry, more accepting, even mellow.

“I don’t think stereotypes like that can be changed in one week, or one month, or one year,” said Vanessa Rodriguez of Lawndale. But some campers’ stereotypes may have been altered, she said.

Jade Sasser, 15, of Hollywood, said that she still believes she can fulfill her dream to become a lawyer, despite feeling shaken by a chart showing how few African-Americans are in the field. And although she had considered corporate or international law, she said: “Coming to this camp makes me feel I’m much more needed in civil-rights law.”

The camp atmosphere was rather otherworldly, some campers acknowledged. “It’s just incredibly ideal because you’ll never find people talking so honestly to each other,” Kang said.

Curiously, few teen-agers talked extensively of the riots in their meetings.

That annoyed Washington, who felt that white campers were less than honest when they ranked blacks second in the Power Grid. “You know they don’t think we’re second, or they’d treat us better,” Washington said. “I think it was the guilt, and the riots.”

But Washington says that by recognizing racial divisions, the campers grew closer.

“You can’t work on your differences,” she said, “if you don’t admit you have any.”