Community leaders posed a host of ethical questions about prejudice, race and hate on Thursday in preparation for an international conference on prejudice to be held in Salt Lake City next month.
A luncheon meeting at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center featured Utah first lady Mary Kaye Huntsman; Michael Styles, director of the state Office of Black Affairs; Leticia Medina, director of Utah Issues; and Sherry Zemlick, a member of the Utah Psychological Association Task Force exploring the state's religious divide.
Their "Perspectives on Prejudice" was meant to serve as a springboard for a conference by the same name, to be held Dec. 1-4 and featuring a wide variety of papers, panels, workshops, film and small group discussion sessions. Several internationally known psychologists and researchers from top universities and a United Nations staffer will present during the four-day event at the Little America Hotel downtown.
During the luncheon, Huntsman told a group of nearly 150 people that her recent billboard campaign — which featured one-word epithets like "looser," "lazy," "terrorist" and "ghetto" — came out of discussions with a group of local teen ambassadors who represent various ethic, religious, geographic and disability groups. The labels were meant to create questions among observers about why such negative labels are prevalent in daily conversation, particularly among teens at school.
When the billboards were taken down, she said it represented a symbolic "tearing down" of the tolerance Utahns have for the hate generated by such words. "We received calls thanking us for challenging people to remove them" from daily speech, she said.
Huntsman told of one young man named Andrew, who had been labeled at his former school and spent one summer building his self-esteem so he could start fresh in a new place. But the verbal taunting began the very first day, and he was subsequently thrown into a garbage can, rolled into a locker room and forced to the ground on the football field, where he was made to repeat all the labels that others had attached to him.
When he walked home that day, he e-mailed a friend this short line: "They say 'Rest in Peace' " at the cemetery. "I hope I will."
Labeling doesn't come naturally to children, but it does begin somewhere, whether at home or at school. One local Muslim girl told Huntsman she was initially taunted for wearing a head scarf to school in reverence for her faith, but after 9/11, the persecution reached a fever pitch.
A Downs syndrome boy told of the abuse heaped on him by classmates, telling her he has learned that those who spew anger or hate "are the ones with the problem." Still, she said, "in the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can't see," and children carry the effects of prejudice and abuse inside them for a lifetime.
"My heart and my passion is with these young kids as they grow up," she said, pledging to continue working with teens to foster a climate of acceptance and outreach that focuses attention on inclusion rather than rewarding exclusion.
Styles told of growing up in Utah during the 1960s and '70s when discrimination was a daily fact of life. His parents worked hard for several years at the old Hotel Utah and at second jobs so the family could move to Holladay and their children would have the opportunities such a community affords.
But residents found out about the black family planning to move to the neighborhood in the mid-1970s and raised enough money so they could buy his parents out of the house. They refused, and his family ended up moving into their new home in the middle of the night to avoid a confrontation with area residents.
Community activist Irene Fisher was one of Styles' neighbors and "one of the few people who reached out to us. She took me into her home and welcomed me," and he and Fisher's daughter became friends. His family brokered an uneasy peace, but then the midnight phone calls started. Racial epithets and threats to burn their house down became a regular occurrence.
The harassment continued for two years, until they were able to find out who was making the calls. Styles said he still remembers the hurt when they found out it was a neighbor who had been outwardly friendly toward them. Though years have passed, the impact of that hate lingers to this day, he said.
"No child is born a bigot."
Medina said she grew up in Utah but is constantly asked about where her family came from. Such stereotyping may seem harmless, but it belies a larger issue that affects minorities in ways the majority population doesn't understand.
While she decried any kind of stereotyping, she said she understands how people develop prejudices from bad personal experience that they then apply universally, even when the fear or distrust isn't warranted. Medina said Hispanics were harassed regularly in the area of Southern California where she grew up, and she was often questioned by police and accused of wrongdoing she had no part in.
When she moved to Utah and was pulled over for speeding toward Park City, she felt a panic as the officer approached the car. She refused to roll her window down more than a crack, and repeatedly told the officer she was afraid of him when he questioned her behavior. He told her he was married to a Hispanic woman and then began speaking Spanish, assuring her that he was not a threat to her safety.
"My experience dictated my reaction in that case. You think about your experience with people different than you when responding, rather than reacting to stereotypes." She praised organizers of the event for their work to "help change how we respond to differences in this community. You are a catalyst to that."
Medina said as much as she would like to see prejudice evaporate, "it won't be in my day. Even today I struggle with being stereotyped. Do you?"
Zemlick's Jewish heritage has stirred deep emotions in her from the time she was a child, she said. As she grew older, she found herself wishing for a world of intermarriage, where all races and colors of people would mix together as a way to eradicate hatred and bigotry. She also became aware of an inner fear of annihilation, with the history of the Holocaust ever-present in her thoughts.
A lack of self-acceptance and a realization that she had anti-Semitic feelings of her own pushed Zemlick to accept the diversity within herself, and provided a catalyst to become involved with the Utah Psychological Association's "Healing the Great Divide" project, which focuses on religious division in the state. During the past two years, she has wrestled with her own inner prejudices, she said, while listening to fellow members recount their own struggles with discrimination, religious bigotry and homophobia.
The project has provided new friendships and "challenged me to become more aware of the beliefs and assumptions I have about people who are different than me . . . . It has challenged me to become responsible for the projections, stereotypes and beliefs that separate me from others," and given participants the chance to "openly disagree" while acknowledging differences and seeking greater understanding.
For information on the upcoming conference, see the Web at www.theipi.org.
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com