New York Teens Stereotypes Out Of The Dark - And Abolish Them

NEW YORK - Jews? "Cheap! Cheap! Cheap!" "They always pick their nose!" "They smell!"

Asian Americans? "They do the best in school!" "Their breath smells . . . and they all wear those slippers!"

African Americans? "We can all dance!" a black girl says with an ironic smile. "Rob houses," shouts a white boy. "They all eat watermelon!" another exclaims.

It's Friday morning, and time for Civil Rights and Race Relations at New Utrecht High School.

About 45 teenagers packed into an overheated classroom in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn spit out stereotypes in a fusillade of bigotry, with two men at the front of the room encouraging them to speak their minds.

They do. And they're having a ball.

The students laugh, gently goad each other and hoot agreement, though sometimes a pensive quiet falls over the room.

In this timeworn school just a few blocks from where black teenager Yusuf Hawkins was murdered more than three years ago for being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time, kids are taking the talking cure for racism.

The course, taught by unpaid, trained volunteers and inspired by Hawkins' killing, is among 25 offered one day a week in New York City high schools, and hundreds more like it are taking place in classrooms around the country.

At a time when prejudice and race relations seem worse than ever, the hope among the boldest educators is that hate can be eradicated by opening the minds and hearts of the next generation.

"Most bigotry is based on some kernel of truth," said Alma Clayton-Pedersen of the Center for Education and Human Development Policy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. "Once somebody gets a confirmation of a kernel of truth, they generalize it for a whole population."

Those kernels explode under challenge, but that requires a secure setting. Like a school.

At New Utrecht, uttering the unmentionable in public seems therapeutic, judging from the happy air of cross-racial, cross-cultural camaraderie among the teens, ages 15 and up.

Delighted eyes riveted on Galen Kirkland, a black lawyer and co-leader of the course, as he threw down the gauntlet.

"Who knows about stereotypes?" he asked.

A girl spoke up: "When you don't like a person before you know them."

Kirkland wrote headings on the chalkboard: African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Asian Americans, Italian Americans, gays. With Norman Siegel, his white co-leader, he invited the students to call out stereotypes.

For 40 minutes, the class rocked and roared like a loaded roller coaster.

Kirkland, a consultant for nonprofit groups, is former head of the New York City Civil Rights Coalition. Siegel, a 1961 graduate of New Utrecht, is executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

They devised the course in the weeks after Hawkins was killed in August 1989. The 16-year-old black youth was shopping for a used car when he was fatally shot after being confronted by 30 whites waving baseball bats and golf clubs who were hunting for black friends of a white neighborhood girl.

Bensonhurst is a quiet, mostly white and largely Italian-American community of neat two-story brick houses, where many Virgin Mary lawn ornaments stand out front with open arms.

But the community became a synonym for vicious, unrepentant racism after Hawkins was killed there and an anti-racism rally through the neighborhood brought out spectators who hurled racial slurs.

These events prompted Siegel to enlist Kirkland in devising the race-relations course, and Principal Allen Leibowitz to add it to his curriculum.

"Maybe we could make the world better," Leibowitz said, "and that's the bottom line."

The world inside New Utrecht High for its 2,500 students is 54 percent white - mainly Italian Americans and a smattering of Russian-Jewish immigrants; 22 percent black; and 12 percent each of students of Asian or Hispanic origin.

Students in the 11-week course are treated to a mix of the Socratic approach, which involves throwing out questions to test common prejudices, role-playing, courtroom scenarios and discussions of race-related current events and books.

The objective: to stimulate critical thinking and frankness by exposing kids to different life views, then equip them to speak up when they see bigotry.

Today's topic was stereotypes.

Each time a group name was called, hands flew up. Girls giggled. Boys snorted. This was fun, but risky.

When they got to Italian Americans, many white faces dropped.

This wasn't so funny. Some were about to taste their own foul medicine.

"Guidos," someone ventured.

Kirkland: "What's a Guido?"

A white girl offered: "They blast their music and they don't even dance."

Siegel: "Is there an equivalent? A Guidette?"

The class exploded in laughter.

"10-feet-high hair!"

A white boy: "Guidos smell. They always have that cologne on!"

End of sermon. Now for Socrates.

Kirkland: "Why do people resort to stereotypes?"

A black girl: "Stereotypes come out of ignorance."

The class applauded wildly.

Then, too soon, the bell rang and they scrambled out the door.

Amid the clamor, Drew Smith, half-Italian, half-Irish, had sat at the back of the room, remembering how he and his pals with Italian grandparents laughed about blacks preferring watermelon and fried chicken.

He worried now about the beating he would get if they knew he actually likes black kids and admires Basma, the outspoken black girl seated next to him.

Smith, a skinny kid with the first furry outcropping of a mustache, looked somber in class when he blurted out the conclusion of his private musing.

"Blacks eat watermelon and chicken," he had shouted out. "But lots of people eat chicken! And watermelon!"

Reflecting later on all this, he said, "I love the class. Since we got this program, like a lot of kids - white kids, black kids, Puerto Ricans, Orientals - we talk about things and it's a lot better.

"At one time, I totally hated black people. I was totally against blacks. But . . . slowly I'm learning that was stupid. That was retarded.

"The class made me begin to think," he said. "I always wanted to think black people were worse. It's just a darker skin color; it's still a human being under the skin color."

It's that kind of change Kirkland and Siegel are after.

"We wanted to touch the open sore of the elementary question: `What is racism?' " Kirkland said. "What's the responsibility of the individual? This society has a very difficult time talking about matters and issues of race."

Linda Rabino, who uses the course in a social studies course at a Bronx high school, said it's not only her kids who benefit.

"It gives me as a teacher . . . a chance to examine my own feelings, my own prejudices," she said.