by Randall Allen Dunn

Last week, someone shouted a racial slur at my wife and daughter as they walked home from the grocery store. Nicki was so shocked she didn’t even see what vehicle the man was driving. I’m shocked that this happened in one of the most ethnically diverse cities of our state.

When she texted me about this, I was really angry. I’ve been dreading this day ever since we became a multi-racial family. The day when our children would have to start listening to the mindless contempt of people who judge them by their skin color and nothing else. Whether it’s a white person who hates blacks, a black person who hate whites, or others who just can’t stomach seeing both races share the same house.

I’m still angry as I type this.

Angry at how cruel people can be, to shout something from a car at a young mother walking down a public street with her two small children, one a five-year old girl and the other one in a stroller. I’m angry that someone can be so ignorant and hateful that they would try to make Nicki and Abby and Noah (not his real name) feel less than human. Angry that someone would dismiss my daughter at a glance, never bothering to discover how special she is.

But as angry as I am, I can’t let myself hate them. I can still be angry, frustrated, impatient, and confounded by them, but I can’t hate them. They’re acting out of blind ignorance. What they need is education, to break through their prejudiced mindset. Not for someone like me to stand up and start a war with them. Hating the haters won’t solve anything.

Still, it’s hard to swallow my pride and my sense of justice, while I wait for those people to grow up and stop throwing stones at my kids.

I’m reminded of the film, “Ruby Bridges”, which chronicles the trying experiences of the first African-American child to attend an all-white grade school in the South. On the first day of school in November of 1960, Ruby (Chaz Monet) is greeted by an angry mob of protesting adults. They wave picket signs and shout threats, upset that the President has ordered them to integrate their school. US Marshals are on hand to ensure Ruby’s safe passage into the first grade.

Unfortunately, all of the other kids’ white parents have yanked them out of school, unwilling to let their children share the same building with a black child. At the same time, all of the white teachers have refused to teach Ruby. They don’t realize – and likely wouldn’t believe – that Ruby is a brilliant child, who tested highly enough to be selected to attend the all-white William Frantz Public School. So Ruby’s mother, Lucille (Lela Rochon), refuses to give in to local pressure, insisting that her daughter earned the right to receive the same quality education given to other children. She knows that they have to take a risk in order to change their lives for the better, or people will simply continue to limit their opportunities because of their color.

Having just moved to town from Boston, Barbara Henry (Penelope Ann Miller), settles in to teach Ruby as her only student. She’s frustrated at the abuse hurled at this innocent little girl by the locals, who won’t even try to accept her.

A child psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Coles (Kevin Pollak), shares Barbara’s feelings. Having seen the protesters shouting threats at Ruby, he offers to provide Ruby some free counseling during her first year.

But he becomes so focused on helping Ruby as a patient – or even a project – that he fails to recognize his own inner prejudices. While his wife, Jane (Jean Louisa Kelly), enjoys getting to know Ruby’s parents, Robert graciously declines every offer of hospitality made by the Bridges. When Robert later asks Jane to make him some dinner, she pretends to be surprised to hear that he’s hungry. She tells him she’s full, having enjoyed a home-cooked meal at the Bridges’ home, and walks away.

Robert later recognizes that while he’s been fighting for the Bridges’ rights, he hasn’t treated them as equals, let alone as friends or neighbors. Which is something the Bridges need far more than they need a professional counselor.

At the same time, Ruby is dealing with more stress than any first grader should ever have to. Every day when Ruby walks up the steps of the school, one female protester threatens to poison her. So Ruby can’t bring herself to eat anything unless it’s packaged, like potato chips and pop. She also hides her lunch so the teacher won’t see she’s not eating it.

Other adults call Ruby nasty names, complaining that they won’t allow their children to attend the same school as a black child. When some white children finally do return to school and join Ruby’s class, a boy tells her his mother told her not to play with her because she’s black. (Of course, they used much crueler words to describe Ruby’s race.)

Most horrifying of all, an elderly woman fashions a doll in Ruby’s image, lying in a makeshift coffin, and waves it at Ruby from the line of protesters.

Adults refusing to associate with a little girl, and refusing to let their kids play with her, and threatening to kill her. All because they don’t like the skin she’s wearing.

It’s hard to wait for such people to grow up.

It’s even harder to stomach the way some of those people combine their prejudice with faith, praying over their meals while shaking their heads at the little black girl who is “ruining their school”. It sickens me that people who believe in a loving God would somehow decide that God’s love doesn’t really extend to everyone.

Years ago, I encountered such a person as I visited an adult Sunday school class. A man talked about being grateful to God and said, “After all, I could have been born Black.”

I was shocked speechless as the teacher deftly moved the conversation along by asking a new question, to avoid calling the man out for making such an ignorant and hateful statement. I couldn’t believe this person had just linked his bigotry to God, as if God had “cursed” some people with “the wrong color”.

In light of such nonsense, who can blame Ruby’s father, Abon (Michael Beach), for taking down the picture of Jesus from their hallway? Why shouldn’t he be angry that his daughter sees such a painting every day, in which Christ is depicted as resembling the protesters more than he resembles Ruby, even though no one knows what Christ looks like.

And why shouldn’t Abon be dubious about making integration work, having served alongside white soldiers in Korea, risking his life for them, but still being valued less because of his skin color?

My mom told me how some black soldiers who returned home from World War II were lynched for wearing a military uniform. I’m sure those people would never believe that the black men had fought for their freedom, and that the uniform they wore was the only outfit they had to wear upon their return.

Their attackers presumed the uniforms had been stolen.

In the face of such stupid hatred, I honestly don’t have much patience. But I also recognize the futility of arguing with truly ignorant people, who can’t grasp how closely their bigotry mirrors the mentality of the Nazi regime, who were all too eager to burn thousands of Jewish people in ovens. All I can really do, when I hear such mindless remarks or hear about such unforgivable murders, is hold my stomach and try to keep from vomiting at the senselessness of people’s hatred.

Because it’s not just about prejudice of white people against black people, or vice versa. It’s all the racial slurs and racist jokes made about Asians, Hispanics, Indians, Arabs, Native Americans, Jews, Poles, French, Germans, Russians and every other race that people put on their hate list. Every race that people readily dismiss as worthless or untrustworthy or less anything than the rest of us. I have always been disgusted by people’s expressions of personal bigotry, in conversations, jokes, or in violent news headlines.

Yet Ruby handles it in a way that challenges me, and should challenge all of us who must deal with the haters who surround us. As she is about enter the school one morning, Ruby turns back to face the crowd of protesters, though the US Marshalls had warned her never to look at any of them. She mouths something, then walks back into the school building under escort.

Later, Robert asks Ruby what she said. “Did you finally get angry with them?” he asks. “Did you tell them to just leave you alone?’

“No,” Ruby says casually. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t talk to them.”

“But, Ruby, I was there,” Robert tells her. “I saw your lips moving.”

“But I wasn’t talking to them,” Ruby says. “I was praying for them.”

Robert is aghast. “Praying for them?”

“Yes, I pray for them every day in the car. But I forgot that day.”

“Oh. What prayer did you say?”

“‘Please, God, forgive these people, because even if they say those mean things, they don’t know what they’re doing. So you can forgive them, just like you did those folks a long time ago, when they said terrible things about you.’”

I’d like to be able to pray for the haters, the bigots, and the murderers, the way that Ruby did. Of course, it feels hard to do that. But the truth is that it’s a choice I make. Whether to let anger curdle into bitterness, or to pray for those attackers to change, while wishing them well. To keep my heart clean and ready for other people’s hearts to change, even if some hearts refuse to ever open.

My wife and daughter were insulted by an individual, not by a race. Nor was the attack made by a specific political party, age group, United States region, or even a gender, but by a single person who made a bad choice. A person who had listened to lies about others and lies about himself, which led him to lash out at an innocent family. I can’t really hate him. He’s as much a victim of those lies as we are.

But I know who I am, who my wife is, and who Abby is. If someone tries to label us as nothing more than a color, gender, nationality, or any other one-sided aspect, that’s their choice, and their loss. Each person is unique and full in their individual personality. Even the guy who shouted insults at my family. He might have his own wife and kids. He might be struggling at his job. He might have a flooded basement. He might have been abused as a child. He might be scared of black people, without even knowing the reason. He might be any one of those things, or none of them. I don’t know, because I don’t know him, any more than he knows us.

So why would I hate him?

I don’t even know him.

Instead, I’ll stick to what I know. That I’m married to an amazing woman, who’s doing a phenomenal job of raising our kids. That Abby is the most incredible child I’ve ever known, and she continues to make us laugh every day. That Noah is learning to trust us more and more, and loves our family. And that whatever crisis we face, with bizarre tantrums, broken relationships, flat tires, skyrocketing fuel costs, or even a man shouting insults from a fleeing vehicle, we’ll get through it all, and tomorrow is another day.

Another day of knowing who we are.

(Please note: I will not be posting a new Weekly Blog next week. I’d like this one to stay up a while longer.

-RAD)

Find more reviews of “Ruby Bridges” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Abby just started kindergarten, taking the first step on her long-term career path. Nicki is thrilled to be told that Abby’s starting out at the highest reading level in her class. Of course, telling Abby this information could prove dangerous, as she already thinks she is smart enough to run the household. Based on her talent and personality, I expect her to one day become an exceptional dance choreographer, like Paula Abdul in the ‘80’s, or become the dictator of a small country.

Of course, she has a world of possible careers to choose from, and another fifteen years or more to think and plan for it. Then, once all of her hard work and preparation pay off by landing her the dream job she’s always wanted, she will probably be laid off and have to search for something else.

That’s the point at which many people feel lost. Their identities are so wrapped up in their chosen career that they can’t imagine themselves ever doing anything else. They’ve come to believe that what they have done at their job all this time is what makes them the person they are. Without that career, they have no identity.

But as our pastor recently reminded us at a church leadership meeting, we are all human beings – not “human do-ings”. Though we get wrapped up in the busy-ness of what we are doing, those tasks don’t define us.

In the film, “Kindergarten Cop”, John Kimble (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a take-no-prisoners detective, goes undercover at a kindergarten class. He’s searching for Rachel Myatt, the ex-wife of his drug-dealing nemesis, Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson), based on information that Crisp’s ex went into hiding, while Crisp’s son is attending a nearby kindergarten. Knowing that Crisp has been trying to find his son, Kimble reluctantly accepts partner Phoebe O’Hara (Pamela Reed), a former teacher, who plans to do the undercover teaching assignment.

Sadly, Phoebe gets horribly sick the night before they arrive for school, so Kimble decides to teach the class in her place.

Phoebe pities him, knowing what he’s in for.

When the wary Principal Schlowski (Linda Hunt) asks Kimble whether he has any teaching experience, he responds, “They wouldn’t have sent me otherwise.”

Not only does he have no experience teaching, it soon becomes clear that he has no experience with kids at all. Especially little kindergarten kids, who make public announcements most embarrassing personal information, need constant supervision and potty breaks, burst into tears when a teacher loses his temper, and will readily tell him what a lousy job he’s doing.

Kimble soon realizes that being a kindergarten teacher is much tougher and more frightening than being a cop. He has no control of his class, and feels overwhelmed. He can’t wait to finish this ridiculous assignment and return to slamming dangerous criminals into brick walls.

Then Phoebe encourages him from her own experience. “Look, you’ve got to treat this like any other police situation. You walk into it showing fear, you’re dead. And those kids know you’re scared.”

Kimble nods his understanding, with a renewed determination. “No fear,” he says.

The next day, he brings a whistle to class, instructing the kindergarteners how to respond to the whistle. He makes it a game, seeing how quickly they can clean up their toys when they hear the whistle’s signal. He is amazed when the children actually follow his instructions. He starts to feel a new sense of pride in himself, and in the class he leads.

He soon has the children marching in rhythm like an army battalion, following a set class routine, playing games together, and outclassing the other grades in their fire drill practices.

Principal Schlowski has a private meeting with him about some of his unorthodox teaching methods. She tells him what a terrible idea she thought it was to bring his pet ferret into the classroom, and to blow a whistle at the children. “I have no idea what kind of police officer you are,” she tells him. “But you’re a very good teacher.”

Kimble is surprised and grateful, having expected to be chewed out for his teaching attempts. He is even more surprised later, when Principal Schlowski later honors him at a school fair, as she addresses the crowd of parents. “I’d like to introduce you to our kindergarten teacher. He came to us as a substitute teacher and he’s proven to be a wonderful asset. Let’s welcome him into our community and hope that he considers staying on a permanent basis. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. John Kimble!”

For the first time in years, Kimble considers switching jobs, as he sees smiling faces all around him, praising him for what he’s accomplished with the children. He’s discovered something new he can do, and discovered that he loves doing it.

After saving everyone from Crisp, Kimble leaves the police force to continue working at the school, using the new skills he has learned to continue teaching the kindergarten class that he’s fallen in love with. He’s learned that he can do more than what he started out doing, because there’s more to his identity than his former job.

If you’re re-thinking your career, remember that the average person changes jobs at least five times in their adult life. There’s no reason to presume that the job you have now is the only one you can do, or that it makes you who you are. You are much more than your current job, and you can do many more jobs than you realize. Perhaps even a job that you never imagined yourself doing.

Be open to shifting careers, and seeing what you’re really made of.

No matter what you’ve done in the past, there’s still a whole world of possibilities out there waiting for you.

Find more reviews of “Kindergarten Cop” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Pressure to conform to others’ prejudices can turn us into people we never meant to become. When our family and friends tell us who to like and who to hate, we’re on dangerous and unstable ground. The “us or them” mentality doesn’t leave much room for making wise choices, let alone moral ones. Especially when we’re warned that supporting an “outsider” will place us in that same enemy camp. The message is clear: hate our enemies, or become our enemy, too.

In the film, “Freedom Writers”, first time teacher Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) tries to connect with a class that lives by bigotry and gang violence. The racial tensions seethe within them like volcanoes ready to explode. Someone could easily get killed just for crossing the lines of another group’s turf.

So Erin decides to create a new line.

Taping a line down the center of her classroom, she tells the students to stand on it if they own the latest Snoop Dog CD. Most students step proudly onto the line, only to discover they’re sharing it with another hated student, from a different gang and a different race.

Erin instructs them all to step back, then asks them to step on the line if they know where they can get drugs right now. Several students again step on the line, and again are aggravated to see one of their rivals standing with them, almost nose-to-nose.

Erin continues asking questions, helping the students discover their similarities instead of their differences. Finally, she asks if anyone has lost a friend to gang violence.

Nearly everyone in the class steps on the line.

She tells them to stay on the line if they have lost two friends.

Most of them remain where they are.

“Three,” Erin says.

A handful of students step back.

“Four or more.”

A small group remains on the line, from different gangs, of different races. Staring at one another with rage, mixed with sorrow. The grief wins out, as they start to recognize that their real enemy is the violence they all live with.

Erin suggests that they honor the memory of those fallen friends for a few moments, by speaking their names aloud. The students all do so, reverently.

Gradually, Erin finds more ways to break down the racial barriers, and the kids start to see one another as classmates, not members of an enemy race.

Erin later invites Jewish survivors of the Holocaust to speak to her class. One man bares his arm, showing the number he had been given at a concentration camp. Proof that he suffered through the terror of extreme bigotry, and survived.

Erin secures a special guest visit from Miep Gies (Pat Carroll), who had hidden Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis during World War II. One student, Marcus (Jason Finn), tells Miep what a hero she is. Miep refuses the compliment, stating she was not acting as a hero, but only doing what was right.

This inspires another student, Eva (April C. Hernandez), to testify honestly in court about a murder she witnessed. Although her family and friends knew that Eva’s Hispanic boyfriend was the real shooter, they had insisted that Eva protect “her own” – meaning her own race, by lying about what she saw. Eva had planned to do so, letting another person take the blame – someone of another race.

But when she is asked to identify the shooter, Eva shocks everyone by pointing to her boyfriend. She had been all too eager to bury the truth, favoring her own race at the expense of another. But her eyes had been opened to the deadly danger of prejudice. Instead of making decisions based on a person’s race, she had chosen to pursue truth.

Family and friends can push you view certain people as “them”. Don’t let their hatred infect your mind or your heart. When we let go of our assumptions, we discover that other people are not so different from us after all.

In fact, most people are a lot more like “us” than “them”.

Find more reviews of “Freedom Writers” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

The generation gap always seems to widen when kids become teenagers. When their friendships with peers and activities outside the family start to make their parents strangers to them. Soon, all adults become incapable of understanding what those kids are saying, what they feel, what matters to them.

And then those adults just give up. Not realizing they’ve never actually tried to listen.

The film, “Freedom Writers”, is based on the true story of Erin Gruwell, a teacher who helped high schoolers find purpose and hope for themselves, by expressing their personal struggles of growing up in a violent neighborhood. The personal testimony of their daily struggles was later compiled in a book, The Freedom Writers Diary.

In the movie, Erin (Hilary Swank) is thrilled to start her first teaching job at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School. But after she arrives, she discovers that her class is filled with “at-risk” students who are considered “unteachable”, and that physical fights and gang-style violence are to be expected. The principal refuses to let Erin supply her students with any textbooks, expecting them to only be stolen or damaged. Instead, she suggests that Erin teach the students basic discipline, insisting that it is the most they can accomplish.

Erin struggles to make the classes meaningful.

To get her students to listen.

To get them to stop erupting into physical fights during class.

One day, Erin discovers that a student has made a racist caricature of a Black classmate, Jamal (Deance Wyatt) and has passed it around the room. Until it came across the desk of the Jamal himself, who now feels humiliated in front of all his peers.

Erin makes an example of it to the class, telling them how such propaganda was used during the Holocaust to convince German citizens that the Jews and the Blacks were the cause of all of their problems. “Scientific” data was published to convince the Germans that these people were less intelligent and less trustworthy. Once people became convinced that Jewish people and Black people were less than human, it became easy to murder them without feeling guilty.

Erin goes on to challenge the students’ poor choices for their lives, choosing to hate and destroy one another. The kids argue that they’ll all die, anyway, so they prefer to die as legends fighting for their ethnic pride. One boy, Marcus (Jason Finn), explains it for her. “We in a war. We graduating every day that we live because we ain’t afraid to die, protecting our own. At least if you die for your own, you die with respect. You die a warrior.”

Erin boldly shatters their delusions. “You know what’s going to happen to you when you die? You’re going to rot in the ground. And people are going to go on living, and they’re going to forget all about you. And when you rot, do you think it’s going to matter whether you were an original gangster? You’re dead. And nobody – nobody is going to want to remember you. Because all you left behind in this world is this!” She holds up the racist cartoon for the class, showing them what their prejudiced lives amount to.

Her words hit home, as the students start to recognize the violent trap they’re living in. A trap they’re helping create.

When one student asks what “the Holocaust” is, Erin is stunned. She tells the class, “Raise your hand if you know what the Holocaust is.”

One white student sheepishly raises his hand.

Erin then says, “Raise your hand if anyone in this classroom has ever been shot at.”

Every other hand goes up.

The bell rings, and the students file out quietly, as Erin stands, grieved and shell-shocked by her own ignorance. These kids didn’t need to know about the Holocaust; they were living it.

She tries a new approach, introducing the kids to the practice of journaling. She gives them each a personal booklet to write in, to write whatever they want, without fear of censorship. She encourages them to make it their own, as a way to express their feelings and thoughts. She tells them if they want her to read what they’ve written, they can leave their journal in a closet, which will be locked up after class ends.

At her first parent-teacher meeting, Erin is even more discouraged when no parents show up. Her students’ parents don’t seem to care, while the other teachers have all met with the parents of more accomplished students.

Then Erin notices that the classroom closet has been filled with journals, from every single student! She spends the evening reading through their entries, and soon finds herself heartbroken.

The kids have written about their fears, the pressures they’re under, the dangers they live with. They write about being abused by parents, seeing friends killed, being sent to juvenile hall and forever labeled a criminal, getting evicted, being hated for their skin color, and more.

Erin realizes that these are the things these kids have been wanting to say all along.

If only someone would take the time to listen.

Erin has decided to be that someone.

If you’re a parent or an adult, the teenagers you know might not be going through the same kind of horrors that these kids suffered. Or … they might. You won’t really know until you invite them to talk to you, and start building a relationship of unconditional acceptance. It will probably take time, especially if the walls of communication have been torn down in the past. But you can start demonstrating today that you’re ready to listen to them with an open mind and heart, and without judgment.

If you’re a teenager, don’t assume that parents and adults won’t listen to you. Sooner or later, you’ll find someone who’s willing to listen to your story and believe you, and accept you for who you are. Someone who can help you deal with the things you’re going through. But you have to start looking, and not give up on people. Somewhere there’s an adult like Erin who’s willing to listen with her heart, who can support you and help you find a new way to cope.

If all else fails – if you can’t find anyone to listen to your story – write it down. I’ve learned that simply writing down your thoughts or ideas can bring healing to your heart, helping you to better understand yourself and your deeper feelings, and to find new solutions for your life.

Try talking. Try listening. Try journaling.

Any of these will be a great way to try hoping again.

Find more reviews of “Freedom Writers” at amazon.com!

Read the book that inspired the movie, The Freedom Writers Diary at amazon.com!