Mixed Messages

It was not exactly the lesson the middle school students were supposed to learn during their weeklong stints in the city’s race relations workshops.

“Talk about your feelings,” the grown-ups told them. Write them, draw them, act them out . . . and we will share them with the world.

Unless, of course, what you say might offend someone.

Two years ago, Councilman Mike Feuer created a program called Shoulder-to-Shoulder. It brings together kids of every race and ethnicity, from every economic stratum, from public and private schools to work side-by-side on community service projects.

The students--from private schools like Campbell Hall in North Hollywood and Marlborough in Hancock Park and public schools like Hollywood’s LeConte and Palms in West L.A.--were paired up to create banners, which combine visual images with messages and silhouettes of the students themselves.

Sixteen banners, representing the work of 32 students, were produced, and five of those were displayed at Los Angeles airport last fall. Seven more were slated to be hung from street lights around the city, to correspond with today’s celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

But Mayor Richard Riordan objected to one of the banners which reads, “They were white suburban kids shooting, not black. I was relieved.” He halted the project until he could review all the banners. Last week, the mayor met with Feuer and Joe Hicks, head of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, which oversees the program. The three agreed that five of the banners could be displayed, starting this week.

Some of the students are having a hard time understanding why they were censored.

“I don’t see how people would feel threatened by them,” said Oliver Barroso, an eighth-grader from the Crenshaw District whose “See Beyond Stereotypes” banner will be among those on display.

“This is a very multicultural place, and the message [of the banners] is really the way people came together to work on them,” said Oliver, 13, who attends Burroughs Middle School. “They gave us a chance to express ourselves.”

In fact, officials said, the decision not to display some of the banners was not about political correctness, but reflects the complexities that surround discussions of race.

“Every one of these would be wonderful in the right context--an exhibit, a gallery, maybe--and we’re going to try to find a way to put them on display,” said Hicks. “But it’s a different thing to just hang them from a lamppost, where there is no context. They’re just raw; you read them and just drive on.”

Still, he added, “We’ve got to be careful in all of this, so the young people who designed these banners won’t think the messages themselves were inappropriate, that the sentiments were wrong.”

Michelle Marsh, Shoulder-to-Shoulder coordinator, said the slogans were bound to be controversial, because they came from journals each student kept, where they were asked to record their thoughts about race, identity, conflict, violence.

“These are their thoughts, their words . . . them exploring their feelings,” she said.

And despite the differences in the students’ backgrounds, they came to like and respect one another by each session’s end, said Marsh.

“They all end up being 13 years old and they all think their parents are geeks, and they all have teachers they don’t like. . . . And they all want to live in a clean, safe, peaceful environment.” Marsh said she expects some of the students will feel disappointed or confused.

“We encouraged a lot of self-exploration, pushed them to talk about really controversial issues, with the idea that they would generate some thought-provoking discussion around topics that are not commonly addressed by adults, much less kids.

“Then when they did that, we wouldn’t represent their work, because it was too controversial,” she said.