Wrestling With a Flood of Mixed Emotions Over Racism

I have taken a beating these last two weeks from readers disappointed in the “cowardly” way I handled an incident involving four teenagers and a surly ride attendant at Disneyland.

The story--the subject of my column two weeks ago--goes something like this:

On an outing with my daughter’s Brownie troop, I watched as a young usher glared at, then ordered four young men to step out of line at the entrance to the Matterhorn ride. We’d stood behind those boys for 20 minutes and had seen not an inkling of offensive behavior . . . certainly nothing to justify the usher’s harsh tone and arrogant manner.

To me, the incident had clear racial undertones--the teenagers were black and Latino; the young usher was white . . . and he was about to let his prejudice ruin their day.

On instinct, I intervened. I asked him to lighten up, let them go; then asked the boys to apologize for whatever offense the attendant had imagined. Crisis averted, we all went on our way.

But afterward, it nagged at me for days. I could not forget the hurt and bewilderment I had glimpsed in the eyes of those boys as we turned away. Had I really done those youths a favor by counseling humility when they had broken no rules, done nothing wrong?

“How I wish now I had intervened not to smooth things over, not to teach them to grovel, but to back them up if they chose not to back down,” I wrote in my column.

And in dozens of e-mails, letters and calls, readers made clear that they thought I had made matters not better, but worse; that my intentions may have been good but my actions were flawed.

“What you actually did was to say to those boys that there is nothing to be done about such racist, bullying behavior but to grin and bear it,” e-mailed Carol Simoes.

“You also reinforced the behavior of the bully, who was given an apology when he should have been apologizing himself.”

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Some readers were sympathetic to the pressure I felt to “make nice” for the sake of those kids and my own.

“You were thinking like a mother, not a civil rights activist,” one woman wrote.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about not having said or done the perfect thing,” e-mailed Ed Mirmak of Irvine. “That only occurs in works of fiction--and rarely in the first draft.

“It’s quite remarkable that you got involved at all. What do you think would have happened if you had minded your own business, like most of us would have? . . . Maybe they would have been thrown out of the park, or worse.”

Many said the column made them more aware of the responsibility we all have to challenge discrimination.

“I am white, and all too often I see this type of injustice inflicted upon kids of color or of a different ethnicity than my own,” wrote Maude Ham of Burbank. “My usual reaction is to shake my head in dismay, but I side-step the confrontation anyway. After all, I’m white, and it’s not my business.

“But we adults, regardless of our race, can no longer let such behavior on the part of arbitrary authority slide. These kids are our future, as much as my own child, and to treat them like this is horrible.”

And some readers argued that what I did was right; that young people today--of every race--need to be taught ways of defusing, rather than escalating, confrontations.

“You gave those humiliated kids wise counsel,” wrote Paula Berg, who volunteers with a Mission Viejo program that uses senior citizens to teach teenagers ways of avoiding violence and reducing aggression.

“One of the many techniques we teach for defusing potentially violent situations is to ignore provocative comments . . . or simply apologize to the tormentor, even though there may be nothing for which to apologize,” Berg said.

“In the long run, the boys who took your advice and got on with their day of fun in the amusement park were undoubtedly the winners.”

But other readers were not so forgiving. There were angry phone calls, vile messages left on my answering machine.

“You’re nothing but a sniveling coward,” one caller said. “An instrument of the enemy . . . traitor to your race” and worse.

“I went to bed very angry last night after reading your column,” wrote Vikki Valenzuela, the mother of two “clean-cut and polite young Latino men.”

“I was appalled that you ‘smoothed things over.’ . . . If educated people such as yourself don’t stand up for what is right, for what is fair, who can minority children count on?”

The column unleashed a flood of painful memories for many readers, who recounted harassment they or their children had suffered at the hands of authority figures. Their responses revealed the painful wounds that still fester on both sides of our country’s racial divide.

“How could you?!?” e-mailed Linda D. Richardson. “How could you aid in demoralizing, humiliating, shaming those four young men?!?!?

“I cried when I read your column. I cried remembering each and every time my African American relatives, friends, associates were forced to submit to the abusive power and authority of some white person-in-charge.

“I cried because those four young men were forced to ‘lick the boots of the white massa’ in order to ‘go along.’ I cried thinking about all the young black men hanged, harassed, run out of town for disrespecting white folks--looking them in the eye, talking back. . . . I cried because it is still happening.”

And then there was Frank, who didn’t give his last name but felt just as strongly that the misdeeds of random black and Latino kids somehow justified the mistreatment of these four youths.

“Maybe the attractions host at Disneyland learned the same lesson I learned when I was a student at Santa Ana High,” his e-mail said. “That minority kids were the only ones who would brazenly cut a line in front of a small white boy like myself, then glare at me to see what I was going to do about it. That blacks were the only ones who would try and extort lunch money from me. That minorities were the most likely to cause disruptions in class and ruin my learning experience.

“Maybe the employee’s prejudices, like my own, are based on real experiences with minorities.”

Maybe . . . but does prejudice--no matter its source--have any place at the Happiest Place on Earth?

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Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez says no.

“Disneyland welcomes all of our guests, from the youngest to the oldest, and it’s our goal that all of our guests are treated well,” he said.

He knew nothing about the incident I witnessed. I reported it immediately after we left the ride, but only to the fellow who had replaced the young usher on the Matterhorn line. I asked him to pass it along to their supervisor . . . a naive and ineffectual request, I now realize.

What I should have done, Gomez said, was to file a formal complaint at Disneyland City Hall on the park’s Main Street. There it would have been logged and reported to a supervisor to investigate and resolve.

“You had a legitimate complaint, but maybe you took it to the wrong place,” he said.

Gomez said reports of rude treatment or racial bias are “very rare” at the park these days. “We do daily tracking of guest comments, and over the last year the positive comments have continued to go very high.”

And while employees don’t receive specific training on racial sensitivities, “they all know we have very high expectations of delivering service, and courtesy is an important element.”

So I plan to follow this through, to file an official guest complaint and see what Disneyland has to say.

And in the meantime, I think I’ll take the advice that my teenage daughter gave:

“Let it go, Mom. What you did was fine . . . they’re not scarred for life. They just wanted to go on a ride. Don’t make it into this big ‘social justice’ thing. It was just a day at Disneyland. OK?”

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Sandy Banks can be reached at sandy.banks@latimes.com.Readers’ Reactions

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