Schools to Offer Anti-Bias Program

In an attempt to prevent hate crimes and keep Ventura County schools safe, the county superintendent of schools office will begin offering an Anti-Defamation League program geared toward confronting biases, challenging prejudicial behavior and communicating the value of diversity.

Workshops for the program, called “A World of Difference,” should begin in county classrooms by November, said Supt. Charles Weis.

The program that began in 1985 isn’t intended to lecture educators and students about racism, said Marjorie Green, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of schools and education. “We just want to be the trigger, the catalyst to get them talking about the issues,” she said.

After the 1992 Los Angeles riots and a burst of requests for the program, Green realized many teachers had considerable difficulty broaching the topic of racism and prejudice.

“What they said was, ‘You know what . . . this is such an explosive issue I don’t know how to deal with it.’ . . . It’s like squeezing a toothpaste tube and not knowing how to get [the toothpaste] back inside,” she said.

What the Anti-Defamation League workshops typically do is divide participants into small groups to create plans to deal with prejudice or racism when confronted with it. The program sometimes has participants place themselves in the role of a victim to create greater empathy.

Sometimes school administrators have difficulty acknowledging how widespread racism is, Green said. “A lot find it easier to say it’s ‘a kids-will-be-kids thing,’ or, ‘The boys are just acting out,’ ” she said. Most hate crimes throughout the nation, she said, involve juveniles.

In Ventura County, hate crimes are far from an everyday occurrence, but they do happen. In July, a African American couple in Camarillo discovered swastikas, profanity and “WP,” apparently an allusion to “white power,” scrawled across their home.

Also in 1996, members of a synagogue in Meiners Oaks found their temple painted over with swastikas. And two years ago an African American musician was stabbed near the Ventura Pier by a group of whites who said “he didn’t belong in the neighborhood.”