Lessons of Tolerance

A group of Caucasian kids sat on the floor of an Ojai conference center, talking about what it means to be white.

“I’m a sophomore, I’m white and I like it,” one girl said.

“About being white, I’m kind of 50-50 on that,” a boy said.

“I really don’t know what it feels like to be another race, so I guess it’s OK,” said another girl.

This is Ventura High School’s Peace Day. Over five hours, students from this predominantly white school broke into groups to discuss racism and how to deal with it. The goal, organizers said, is to learn lessons of tolerance.

The program is funded with $10,000 from a county grant and $5,000 from a state-funded Gang Violence Suppression Grant awarded to the city of Ventura. Organizers said they hope the program will keep small fights from escalating into violence.

By the end of next week, all of Ventura High School’s 600 sophomores will have attended the retreat. And if it goes well, the program may be expanded to Buena High School next year, said Ralph Rico, Ventura Unified School District’s conflict resolution coordinator.

Counselor Linda Holder, who organized the event and wrote the grant proposal to get two-thirds of the money, said the biggest challenge is getting white students to speak out.

“There’s a lot of social guilt,” she said. “But it’s not like they’re not hearing it.”

She said the program is modeled on the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which was launched in the 1950s to foster tolerance. And she considers the project imperative at this point in Ventura County’s history, as it shifts from being a mainly white county to one that is increasingly Latino.

According to the 1990 census, the city’s racial breakdown was estimated at 75% Caucasian, 19% Hispanic, 3% Asian and 2% black.

“Ventura is in transition,” she said. “Ventura is getting more and more people from other places and that’s when racism starts. That’s why we are working to try to do prevention.”

For their first exercise, the students broke into large groups of their own race--white, black, Latino or biracial. Sitting in circles on the floor, on the grass or under a tree, they talked about the racism they experience from within their own groups.

The Caucasian group was the largest, seemingly the most confident and least expressive.

Outside, under a tree, Gustavo Castro, who works with the nonprofit Coalition to End Domestic Violence, helped coordinate a group of Latino students. They were slower to speak than their white counterparts, but had more to say.

“People of my race might not accept me if they knew . . . “ Castro said. “Finish that sentence off.”

Students shifted uncomfortably. Some wanted to laugh. Castro had to squeeze the words out of them.

A girl said she might not be accepted if she hung out with other races. Another girl said her mother wouldn’t accept it if she went out with someone black. Slowly, slowly as Castro went around the circle, the answers got more personal.

One Latino student admitted, head hanging, that he gets ragged on because he doesn’t speak Spanish. Another said in Spanish that people won’t accept him for how he dresses. Yet another confessed that he hates it when he returns to Mexico and people tell him he isn’t Mexican. By the end, information was gushing out.

Exercise by exercise, barriers were broken down and students were encouraged to be more open, led by teachers and peers who had been trained to be discussion leaders for the event.

In the second exercise, the races mixed, the groups smaller and the questions more personal.

The students sat side-by-side with others they may never talk to. On a tiny stick-it note, they wrote down the worst name they had ever been called. Then the labels were redistributed. Everyone wore someone else’s worst-ever insult.

In one group sat seven Latino boys, three white girls and two white boys. The cultural gap was so wide that the students didn’t even understand some of each other’s insults.

The girls said they are reluctant to say anything when people call them names, because of what might happen.

One girl said that a bunch of Mexican girls used to sit behind her and call her nasty.

“I don’t know what they were talking about. My hair?” she asks. “I couldn’t talk back. I was afraid they would jump me. . . . I was just really different from them. They all had crunchy hair or something.”

The boys, by and large, said they would fight if they felt they were not respected. One said he would risk his life to defend himself.

After lunch, the students did their final exercise, “Shout it out.” They sat in one big room, grouped by race.

This was their chance to change things. Anyone from each group could stand up and say a name he or she never wants to be called again. Then everyone from the other groups could respond.

Some of the comments were funny, some sad, some heartbreaking. All were passionate.

“I don’t want to be called a Mexican, or Dumbo because my ears are big,” began one student in the biracial group. “If you don’t respect me, don’t talk to me.”

The responses were just as earnest.

A white student who had been lying on the floor, looking as if he wasn’t even paying attention, stood up.

“I won’t call you guys that,” he said. “I’ll respect you. I apologize for anything in the past we said that hurt your feelings.”

Applause broke out across the room.

Students said it’s not that Ventura High School is racist, but that groups are separated and don’t mix much. They say those divisions occur mostly along racial lines.

Through the exercises, the students could have been cynical, detached or above it all. But most of them participated.

They differed in opinion, however, about whether the one-day retreat would change anything.

“It was fun,” said 15-year-old Cody Mesa, who signed up to be a youth leader for future retreats. “You get to learn about other cultures and how other cultures feel about what you are saying about them behind their backs.”

But youth leader and peer counselor Bridget Anglum worried that the retreat could make things worse.

“One of the girls said this will stir up trouble, because people will start questioning things,” she said during a break. “I kind of agree. People could get in a fight and use names they learned here.”

But peer counselors who have worked with students at Ventura High School for longer were more optimistic.

“I think now I am more devoted to this than when I started three years ago,” said 16-year-old Trinity Shawley, who was one of two Ventura High School students to attend a workshop in Long Beach three years ago. She is half-Japanese, and says people used to tease her because of the way she dressed.

“I believed things couldn’t change,” she said. “But then I realized that I was changing things myself.”