On The Line. Kids and Prejudice; No. 1; Prejudice in the Family; Pt. 1; WNYC

Right now we begin a five-part series here on the line, Kids and Prejudice. As morning edition and all things considered, try to solve the Prejudice puzzle on the national level this week, we will tackle it on the local level. Prejudice and charity may not seem to have much in common, but they do share at least one trade. They both began at home. This hour we will look at prejudice in the home, how parents instill it in their kids, sometimes unwittingly, and what can be done to teach respect for people who are different. My guests this hour are Joe Giordano, a trainer and consultant for ethnicity and mental health associates, Emma Gonzalez, assistant director of the Parent Training Program, part of the group educators for social responsibility, and Lucille Turner, who has taken that parent training program and is now a parent trainer herself. Good morning to all of you. Good morning. Joe Giordano, let me start with you. Does prejudice start in the home for most people? Oh, certainly, I think so. No question about it. That's where children as the old, South Pacific play musicals that children must be taught to hate, and certainly as a child is born, children are born with hate.

They learn that, and certainly the family is the first exposure. So that's etched very early in a child's development, is what those messages are, how the family communicates, and certainly the family is primed there. How does it usually get transmitted from parent to child, explicitly, suddenly, suddenly, on purpose, accidentally? Well, children go up, research indicates that at three years old, kids begin to sense differences, begin to sense in their own environment, strange faces, so they react to those kinds of differences, and how the parent handles that with the child, and comforting them, and giving them a sense of security, sends the most immediate message at the most earliest time. And a child picks them up even in a family that doesn't see themselves as prejudice, that the subtle messages of those differences as a kid first goes out into school, who he brings home, the discussion around the table, jokes,

what they see on TV, and what is then reinforced or countered in the family and discussion. All of that begins to send messages to the child, and oftentimes those messages, unfortunately, are ones that certain groups are seen less than. Emigods, let me give you basically the same question, and that is how does the prejudice get instilled from a parent into a child, especially in cases where it is not taking place explicitly or with malice? How does it happen? Well, I just wanted to say that we work in conjunction with the Board of Education, and that we notice with people, and this is so with all of us, is that there is a self-rejection that we've learned to reject our own cultures. I mean, when we think of the whole history of the United States, everyone migrated here, for the most part, and that I think the parents, when they really also reinforce their own cultural heritage,

their own belief in what customs and values they have, that may be different from the larger society. I think that it has to begin at that level, because we're all different, and to learn that it starts with yourself, and to get a sense of pride, and an understanding of that own background, begins to open you up for others. So one of the complexities here, I think, is that most parents want to pass a sense of their own group identity to their kids, whatever that group may be, and the trick then becomes to do that without putting down other groups. Exactly, exactly. That's a fine line to walk. Where do you think many parents fall off that line into prejudice? Well, one of the things I wanted to say, they're taking pride in one's own culture and one's own language. If that is English, and that is European, that's fine. But it has to be done without that superiority that we're better than the rest. So that's important. And I think that sometimes, because media, like Joe was saying,

and the lifestyles and everything reflects a certain image that's projected, and then kids begin to feel bad because they don't fulfill that image. You know, that I think that the message has to be regardless of color, regardless of language, regardless of all the other differences, regardless of things that we do not understand, that differences need to be understood for what they are, and that there is value in that, so that while you're also promoting what we are and who we are and how we look is good, and love that and celebrate that, it should not be done at the cost on a higher scale. Lucille Turner, do you find that relationship in your own work as a trainer of parents that the relationship between how a child thinks of his or her own group identity or how a parent thinks of it and how he or she relates to others? With my own children, I can talk about, and some of the children since I've been in the program, then I've made and tried to help them to respect one another.

It's a whole new ball game for me, because of course we're all living in a home where our culture is one thing, and we practice it, and we don't come in that contact with so many others. But through the program I did, and I exposed my children to different kinds of things so that they would know how other people lived and appreciated these things. If it was like going to the library, we didn't go to a library where there were predominantly people of our culture, we went to a more integrated library, and they got to play, and they got to talk, and they got to understand these other children. If I'm answering your question, this is all new to me correctly, this is the way I handled it, and the program that I was and helped me to do it. Did you sense, as you were learning about yourself through this program, did you sense what Ms. Gonzalez was just talking about that, that there was something that you needed to put together fully in terms of your own self-esteem,

in terms of pride in your own culture, before you could totally accept people from other cultures? Oh, somewhat, somewhat. Yeah, that's really an important fact, because when we're talking about children, we're talking about the parents, who also, many times, have a lot of ambivalence about their own background, they grow up also, and I think what we find in a lot of research is that, precisely what Emma has said, that kids who feel good about their ethnic and racial background, feel positive about it, tend to be less prejudice. I'm not talking about ethnocentrism, but where you have a balanced view of, there are lots of things I like about my background, there are lots of things that I dislike about my background. As an Italian-American, if you ask me what I love about being an Italian-American, I tell you what out hesitation the family. If you ask me what I dislike most about being Italian-American, I would tell you the family.

So it's both sides, and it's a lot of ambivalence, particularly if you grow up in a minority group. If you're growing in a minority group, you're always trying to buy in to be accepted, and we know that many people grow up in feelings of self-hate, that the pain of your own group, the depression, the experiences you have in growing up, where you experience prejudice and discrimination, there's a tendency not to like parts of yourself, and that is part of your group identity, and that gets expressed. Parents need help. Parents also are sending double messages to their kids. You can start to internalize some of the put-downs that you might have. Yeah, you begin to believe that what the negative stereotypes that the world has about you, you begin to believe them. A little bit more about your experience in the parent training program. Why did you go into it in the first place, and what are some of the most important things that you've learned? Well, I went in there first of all, because I'm raising four grandchildren, and being a grandmother, I've been away from it for a long time, so I wanted to learn from the younger parents how they handle certain situations.

And in the program, there were many more younger people than myself, and they had similar problems to what I had. Such as... One of the problems was to listen to your children. I came from the school that you didn't listen. If you say... Children are supposed to do the listening, right? That's right. You were just there, if I could put it that way. But now I learn to listen to my children, not to be judgmental. I learn to... There can be when-when solutions, and they're aware of it. We can talk it out. The final solution will be mine. But I will be willing to listen. And it's worked. You know, I'm a bit nervous now, because this is all new to me. But I had so many things I wanted to say. The program was great for me. It helped me raise my grandchildren. Can you point to some of the ways that you're now helping other parents as a trainer?

Is that one of the things you emphasize is to get people to listen to their own kids? And because I'm a grandmother, and people think grandmothers have all the answers, they will call me and say they're having problems with their children. And what can they do? And you'll hear them yell over the phone. Sit down. I don't want to hear it. But we learned, Emma knows, that even if we're on the phone, back away and say, I'll call you back. I have a problem. I must go and listen to the child. I'll call you back later. The child appreciates it. And it works. It works for me. My children will say to me, if I say no, that's not the way it's going to go. They say that's not a win-win solution. So they are aware of what I've been involved in and other parents also. And how do you think that relates to preventing prejudice in your kids? Okay. We had an incident in school where one of the children called my grandchild black and ugly. And she came home. She was deeply hurt.

And we sat down. We talked about it. And I said, okay. How do you feel about yourself? Do you feel ugly? No. And I said, we'll get a mirror and look at yourself. And tell me exactly, how do you feel about yourself? And I think building self-esteem in her and going and telling her, go back and tell the child, if it comes up again, that you feel good about yourself and that he has to, he or she has to handle that problem about her being ugly because she doesn't feel ugly. And we didn't hear any more about it. So these are the kind of things that I've tried to build in them, their self-esteem. So they'll be able to handle situations that would normally knock them down or cause them to be physically aggressive. Emigun's always, I imagine that one of the good things there is even that she, as a parent, dealt with this explicitly at all, rather than letting the kid bottle it up and get all confused. And well, maybe I am ugly at the same time as, God, I hate that kid.

And therefore, I hate kids of that kid's race because they're going to tell me that I'm ugly. Parents have to be brave enough, really, because it takes courage to deal with something like this openly, to open the door to the pain that the child must be feeling and all of that. Is that a key component of the program? Absolutely, absolutely. And as Lucille was talking, it reminded me that a great deal of our program focuses on support so that we do a lot of group kinds of activities to show parents that there are other parents who are facing the same problems. They are facing a society that's very difficult for everyone. And it's not only multi-racial, multi-cultural, many diversities, but it's also a very violent society. And resources are always a struggle to have what you need to give the best of your family so that in coming together, in sharing those insights, and being able to discuss it, but also thinking together, what kinds of solutions they can come up with? How many alternatives there are?

The fact that we're not alone, the fact that there are many people we can turn to. Parents become a real support to one another, so they're not alone. Therefore isolation is broken down. But alternatives begin to come into light. They begin to see other ways that they can handle it. They begin to see that critical thinking is really important to have your child really express themselves, whether it's negative or positive, but that they are given a kind of an open way of discussing things. And then you can intervene more positively. And so you begin to intervene not by telling them what the decisions or solutions are beginning to have them think about what are alternatives. So thinking alternatively is really important in this society, and that there isn't just one way and that you're not alone. That's really important. All right, we're going to take a short break, then we'll come back. And when we do, I want to ask you more about how you deal with victims of prejudice and not just the perpetrators. Stay with us. This is on the line on WNYC AM-A-20 Part 1 of our five-part series,

Kids and Prejudice. My guests this hour, as we deal with the first topic of our five-part series, Prejudice and the Home, are Joe Giordano, a trainer and consultant for ethnicity and mental health associates, Emma Gonzalez, assistant director of the Parent Training Program, of educators for social responsibility, and the SEAL Turner, who has taken that parent training program and is now a parent trainer herself. And Joe Giordano, what about dealing with being a victim of prejudice? That must be tough for kids, and especially tough for parents to help them deal with without teaching a corresponding hate for the other group. Absolutely. I think we don't often realize, and parents don't often realize that children are subjected to a lot of painful experiences. And many groups that I do with adults and talking about issues on race and ethnicity

will always go back to their childhood and talk about that incident as Emma described with her child who had an opportunity to come home and talk to her mother about it. Blue seal. Blue seal, I'm sorry. But those things are remembered so that when we really are looking at ethnic slurs and bigotry and bias and violence, it's not just the victim themselves, but it affects a total family, a total community. We saw what happened in Howard Beach and Bensonhurst. It just not even confined to the victim themselves which is horrible enough, but spreads fear. So ethnicity and race and bias and violence when it's expressed in that way is a very, very serious issue because for the victim themselves, what it does it says, even an ethnic slur says, a part of you is no good. You're not accepted. All the things that you love about your background, your family, the relationships, the celebrations, the holidays, the values,

all of that gets wiped out. And it is a psychological scar. And so, victims need to be attended to. The family needs to be involved in that, the school, the teacher, when an ethnic slur happens in a classroom, how many teachers do not deal with that? They don't deal with it because some say, it's not part of the curriculum. I don't want to take time off in the class or I'm afraid to open up the issue. And we really have to see it as a very serious psychological scar and that a victim needs healing. And if you open up the issue, you see how much prejudice there actually is. And if you have a classroom of 30 or 40 kids, a multicultural classroom, you might open up a very serious can of worms if you let kids start spouting all their feelings about other groups. That's why we're training. That's why you're training. This must be a particularly difficult issue in the minority communities of the city.

Because there's such a legacy of prejudice against blacks and Hispanics and Asians in this country. How do you teach the kids about injustices that they have to face without teaching them to dislike whites? Or to teach hate, right? Because if we, any group that teaches hate, it comes back to us. It makes us cripple the human beings. It makes us less able. It affects our creativity, affects everything. But I think what's real important is that, along with school, with home, school is really the second socializing fact of kids every day because they face that every day. And I think that schools need a very, very comprehensive curriculum because kids need to have reinforced the contributions that the groups make. Because a lot of our faces are children today is that they have to face a stereotype that they're not a good-ass. And when that is absent from media, television, from the school, from the curriculum,

everything that they learn in school has to reflect who they are. Not the negative things that happens with the group because that comes out of neglect and out of hurt because you strike back when you hurt. Not everyone stays passive when we hurt. So to reinforce that, to be white, that is not the enemy. It's not the skin color, it's an attitude that needs to be worked with. And it's really reinforcing that, first of all, that we're not the minority. We are the majority of the world. And in this nation, more and more, that that group is changing. And I don't mean that numbers is what makes a difference. But the fact that we are an important contribution to this society that every one of these groups that you mentioned have made a contribution and continue to make contributions. And it's really reinforcing that at all levels. And I think for parents, one of the things is that how they can reinforce, not only at home, how good and wonderful you are, how important you are, but it's also they're getting involved with what's happening in the schools.

And talking to other white parents to see the importance of diversity doesn't mean to exclude anyone. So now it's no longer a white history and, you know, social studies curriculum. It is an old people's curriculum. Ms. Turner, how do you deal with that as a parent? Do you find your kids or other kids or other parents that you talk to falling into a trap of stereotyping white people when they look at the prejudice that you and people in your community as African Americans face? Oh, sure. I think that you have to reach out to other people's children because every parent is not going to teach their children not to be prejudice to accept other people for what they are and not who they are. As individuals, as opposed to parts of groups. So what I did with my children as well as the other children and my kids' classes to go up there and talk to them

and have around table discussions, let them vent their feelings. And it worked fine. I think some of the teachers were shocked that these children would say the things they said. But we really learned how they felt. And I told the teacher, don't be shocked at what they said. I asked them to be free to express themselves, even if you thought it was going to hurt someone, else get it out. So I got to know a lot of the children in all my children. I have four children and I went to each class and I did this with them. I would walk in the hall if I saw a child sad and about something. I would hug them. We learned to hug. And if they were being punished for something, I would sit down and talk and ask them if they understood why they were being punished. Because sometimes black children think if you punish them and you're white, you're doing it because they're black not for what they did. And they understood better. Right. We need this kind of thing on a mass level, don't we? Yes, yes, we do. It's part of everyday life.

You know, we really need to go beyond two, I think, an analysis of American society, or even New York City as a black, white, majority minority. I think what we're really saying in many ways is that everybody brings something to the table. Everybody has a history, even though they may, some may not even be in contact with it. Others, it's very upfront. But we need to recognize it's a very diverse society. But talking about whites, we're talking about a lot of diversity between Americans, Italians, Germans, Jews, Irish, Polish, and the diversity among blacks is enormous. More than one out of ten blacks are born in the foreign country. There's differences between a three-generation Bedford-Syverson family and one from Jamaica, from the Caribbean, and Asian, but thenally, so the South. So we need to recognize that diversity and go beyond that black white, because it polarizes us. And when we're talking about ethnicity and race, we're really talking about family. We have to take a break in less than a minute for the news. But Jojo Dunnell, let me ask you very briefly about a study, I think it's called the Howard Beach Study,

that found more tolerance than expected among parents and less among kids. Is that the case in about 20 seconds? Are kids actually more prejudice than parents today? That was the most unusual finding we had in the study. Because the case usually is that kids are more tolerant than their parents. They're also easier to change, much quicker when they're given a good example. Okay, we'll come back on that point and explore it a little more deeply. I also want to invite our listeners to call in. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you have told your own kids about prejudice, or what your parents told you. Was there prejudice in your home? What stereotypes were passed on to you at home and how have you dealt with those things? 212-267-WNYC-267-969-2. Give us a call and we'll put you on the air right after the news. This is part one of our five part series,

Kids and Prejudice. Today's topic is prejudice in the home. My guest or Joe Giordano, a trainer and consultant for ethnicity and mental health associates. Also Emma Gonzalez, assistant director of the parent training program of educators for social responsibility. And Lucille Turner, who has taken that parent training program and is now a parent trainer herself. And with you on the phone, what have you told your kids about prejudice? Call us up and tell us your own personal experiences in this area in terms of dealing with prejudice at home. What have you told your kids about prejudice? Or what did your parents tell you? Was there prejudice in your home? Were stereotypes passed on to you at home? And how have you had to fight that information or disinformation? Or how have you helped your kids deal with prejudice against them? Or what did your parents tell you when you were the victim of prejudice? Or anything else on this topic of prejudice in the family prejudice at home? 212-267-WNYC-267-9692.

And we'll get to the phones in just a minute. I just wanted to finish on the point that we had started just before the news. This Howard Beechstone is kind of shocking because I mean, I think in, you know, I'm starting to sound like an old person here in my 30s. In my day, it used to be that the assumption was that the kids were less prejudiced than the parents. Is that changing? We don't know. I'll tell you it's a paradox. Because what we see in all the research on attitudes towards different ethnic racial and religious groups is that American society is more tolerant, believe it or not, that people at least attitudeally feel good about or feel positive towards other ethnic racial groups. Yet, we see bias-related crimes on a rise, on college campuses and in communities. And 80% at least in New York are those bias-related crimes committed by people between 13 and 20. So what's happening?

Right. What's happening is that those are the crime-prone ages in the first place, right? So do you think that people outgrow prejudice to some degree? Emma Gonzalez, what do you think about that? Well, I think so. I think it depends on what kind of lifestyle we have. And what contact we have with other groups. If you go to school with kids and have a nice environment and you make friends, you're going to feel very different about an ethnic group. When you divorce from that group, you're going to have all the stereotypes that are reinforced by this very violent society that doesn't accept difference. And I think that talking to children and even youth, I find that children change their minds very quickly when they are proven otherwise, when they're given alternatives. So it's very important that we bring in that alternative. People who are different and different ethnicities are not going to go away. It's interesting just to pick up on this one other point and to give us a little bit of optimism in a world that is turning very pessimistic about intergroup relations. If we step back and look at the big picture over a long period of time,

we are becoming more tolerant. Yes. And I think a lot of the problem today is we have a meteor, which we didn't have 20 years ago, that sends pictures so quickly, images into the home, that writes headlines of that is right there all the time. And the perceptions are that things are getting worse. The Poland, New York City indicated that the perception of most people is things are getting worse. And I think what makes it even more stressful, more frustrating, is that people don't entirely feel as bad as everybody says they are. And we think we have come a long way. You just have to look at the PBS program on the eye of the prize. I think that was the name of the prize. Yeah, eyes on the prize. And you see where we have come since the civil rights movement. So we have come a long way. And I think we got a build. See, I am optimistic about it. And in fact, that is going to be our topic tomorrow is the media and kids' pledges. So let's spend the whole hour talking about the media. I want to go to the phones right now and we will get back to this

and we have been a lot of things as we go. Let me ask you all to put your headphones on so you can hear the callers. Oh, you don't have headphones over there. All right. Why don't you just go over there where I think there is a set plugged in. And yeah, Ms. Turner, if you can unplug them and give them to Emma, I think we will have a go. All right. All right. So we are playing musical chairs here. And our phone number is 212-267-WNYC-267-9692. And let's go and talk to Lee. Hi, Lee, you're on the line. Good afternoon. Good morning. Thank you for calling us. Now, everyone did, as I did, racism would end overnight. The instant solution. Oh, yes. With my children and with my grandchildren. When there was a problem, I would get the children together. I would bring in children of ethnic persuasion, I was black. And I would say, now listen. Racism is not new today.

And I would tell the Italian children, I would say, you know, you had your problem. I said the biggest problem was the sacraments that said the case. I said you had to hear the rhetoric on that. I would tell the Polish children, the terrible thing where the Polish jokes, people committed suicide because of the terrible racist, serious typical jokes. And then I would tell the Irish about how they would talk about the Irish potato and all. You know, and each one I would tell. And they were surprised to know that there was racism against them even in this country. But see, I have documentation. It's there, people who are listening, go to your library, read about the immigrants, read about all of this, my father, my father, my grandfather. He worked on Ellis Island, and speaking of Ellis Island, rather than having it rebuilt, I would have it raised. Because the stories that came out of Ellis Island, I hate to hear the fairy tales. Because I heard it from the horses and mouths. And when the immigrants come here, I don't have to tell you, learn a gentleman, you know. And there were some great fairy tale stories, and there were some horror stories.

It's all there. But you don't know you hear the fairy tales, you don't hear the horror. That's too often the case. You don't hear about Swinborn Island, Swinborn Crematory. You don't hear about the bodies dumped in Ellis Island, that people were there, and you don't hear anything. You know, really, I think that Lee does have the instant solution to racism. If every parent would do what she did, and bring children of different backgrounds and different cultures into the home, and explode some of the myths, and if every parent did that, then we would have, forget about multicultural curricula. We would have multicultural playgrounds, and we would have multicultural life, as you say. And there's one more thing I want to say. And I tell my children, everyone in the United States of America that is not of Anglo-Saxon background has felt the sting of bias and discrimination. The artists need not apply. We do not hire foreign. Why don't the people have access to the airwaves and the screens tell this? And this would be the end of racism.

Well, and that's what we're trying to do here today is tell a little bit of it. And I might add that even the people of Anglo-Saxon background have been the victims of this too. Lucille, does that strike a chord any of her stories in terms of what you've been trying to do, what you've been trying to do as a parent, or a trainer? Well, I haven't gone out and bought different children into the home, but I teach my children how to treat someone the way you want to be treated. Irregardless, you may not meet these people, and then I don't know if I would tell them all of the negative things if I'm trying to build positive things in them. And I myself have to set a good example of how I feel about other people. I could tell them anything, but if I'm not practicing, it's all in vain. All right, Lee, thank you very much for your call. Dan, you're on the line. Hi there. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Okay, I might be a little day early, I wanted to speak about in the media how things are going with our children. I'll tell you why don't you save that one for tomorrow, because we're going to spend the whole hour talking about the media and prejudice tomorrow.

You also had a personal story, didn't you? Well, how I was raised, I'm black, and I was raised by two southerners that were victims of a lot of prejudice, they both came from the Carolinas, and a lot of that bitterness that they had was passed on to my sister and myself. And I remember her and you mentioned that the children are a lot less tolerant than the parents. Where my parents, they were bitter, but they did teach us tolerance, my sister and I. And socially, we both teach our children, she lives now in the South, and I still live here in New York. We're very tolerant of certain things, you know, of a prejudice around us. We're not really tolerant, but what we tend to do is we teach our children that this person is different, that person is different. We are different also, as a matter of fact, because we're black, it's unmistakably different.

And we are proud of ourselves. So you can say what you want about me, and it's like the old children, I'm rubbing your glue, everything you say, bounces off me and sticks to you. And my boy is basically teaching them how to walk proudly and say, well, you are who you are, I mean, that's the way you are. And I am the way I am, and if you don't like me, it's not really my problem. Dan, how old are your kids? How do you teach them to deal with being victims of prejudice in terms of them not turning it around and generalizing back to whoever is dishing it out to them? So one of the things is I tell them it's not you, it's not there's nothing wrong with you. It is something that they learned either at home or that they were taught, somehow that that's the way things are. And Joe Jordan, I didn't Dr. Spock write about that very concept, like 40 years ago, he wrote about the fact that somehow being prejudice hurts the perpetrator as much as it hurts the victim.

Sure, that's right. It does, but they don't often register with them right away, so that a lot of it is a projection of people's own anger. And even for a parent, I mean, here's a parent that we're speaking to who had very painful experiences. And those painful experiences can be turned to anger towards the group that did this or as he's doing it, which is a very responsible parent is taking that, not losing it, embracing and saying this is part of who I am. But I also want my kids to balance that with growing up in a multi-ethnic multiracial world and they got to live in that. And that's an important message. I think parents kind of know that even if they have prejudice, their kids are growing up in an extremely changing world. And they better have good experiences and better know how to deal with differences.

And we're starting to live in a city that has no majority. We have about 25% black, 25% Hispanic, 25% Jewish, and 25% everybody else. And that is, it is not a majority minority world anymore. Can I say something? Let me let Dan get back in here because I think he wanted to say something and then we'll get back to you, Dan. I'm 33 years old and I went to a high school 15 years ago. That was multi-racial multi-multi-ethnic. It was a specialized school. And we had a reunion back in May. And I showed up along with many of my other classmates. And we got to talking about the racial situation when we were in that school. And what we hear about the current climate. When I was there, we had black, white, orientals. You name it. Everybody was there. And we all got along. I suppose because we were all there with one focus and one purpose. And we talked about how well we got along. We had a large gay population. And we had basically no problems with that sort of thing. We had special holidays that we celebrated and everything else.

And we hear about the school now where there was cases of gay bashing and there's race fights and things of that matter. And we were all very disappointed that we came from this school. We graduated from this place 15 years ago. And here we are. We showed up 15 years later. And we're hugging and talking and laughing and joking. And people who are supposedly, you know, are younger or younger are slightly younger. They're fighting each other because of the same differences that basically brought us all together. To some degree, things are definitely going backwards at least on the short term. It disappointed us terribly because we said, you know, we never had any problems like that. In fact, we talked about where we all came from our neighborhood schools. I came from the South Bronx. And I was talking to a guy that came from Ozone Park. And we, one thing we both had in common, we said we wanted to get out of our neighborhoods. So we can be around other people that were different. And now the school that we went to has full of different people in their fighting.

And they want to get into areas where they're only with their own. Dan, I got to run and take some other calls. Thank you for calling. I appreciate it very much. This is on the line on WNYC AMA-20. We will take a short break and then continue to take your calls on kids and prejudice and prejudice in the home for the rest of the hour stay with us. This is part one of our five part series kids and prejudice today's topic prejudice in the home. And we have three guests, Emma Gonzalez assistant director of the parent training program of educators for social responsibility. Lucille Turner, who has taken that parent training program and is now a parent trainer herself. And Joe Giordano, a trainer and consultant for ethnicity and mental health associates. And we invite your phone calls, your experiences of prejudice in the home, how your parents passed on a prejudice to you, or how they passed on a lack of prejudice, how they helped you deal with prejudice as a victim. Anything in your own experience about prejudice in the home, 2-1-2-2-6-7, WNYC 2-6-7-9-6-9-2. And Emma Gonzalez, you wanted to comment on our last caller?

It was really the discussion that we were having and I wanted I thought about fear the fact that we have a society as you mentioned that people think is changing. I just think that this majority of there were people around the world have been existing for a long time. But I think that there is less tolerance on the part of the victim to allow for that injustice to happen. And I think that's one major change that we see in that. But I think that parents really need to deal with fear because whenever we see anything changing, we think that we're going to lose something. And that fear creates intolerance because we do fear what's different. And if we have to really put effort down about tolerating inequality. Because while we have poor schools and poor neighborhoods and poor residential and poor services in any way, we are reinforcing that negative behavior. And that's what's going to lose the city. Not the fact that it's so ethnically diversified.

Oh, I didn't say that's going to lose the city. No, I know. I know. But I'm saying people. I know because I have friends and all of them. It's like don't reinforce a difference because people are so scared. And it's not going to go. If we care about that diversity and we want everyone to live well, we'll all have an equal turn at it. Let's go back to the phones right now. Gary, you're on the line. Good morning. Thank you. I'm grateful to your last call of band for bringing up the topic of gay bashing. And I'm just wondering if this parents training program addresses that issue. Does it? Emma? Yes, we do. We emphasize any kind of bias is negative and hurts people. So we do emphasize that. And I must say that this is a co-sponsor program with the Board of Education. They're very committed to training parents to then be advocates to other parents. And Gary, you may be interested in our Friday segment in this series. We'll be devoting it entirely to kids who are growing up in households with gay parents. So tune in Friday for that. Thanks for calling us. Thank you. And let's go to Julie is next. Julie, you're on the line.

Yes, good morning, everyone. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hello. I'm an African American and growing up in the 60s. My mother basically she handled prejudice with this graphic statement of who do they think they are. And now that I am bringing up my own child through the 80s and 90s, my statement is this is who you are. It really doesn't matter who someone else thinks they are. But what their own prejudice is because if you concentrate on that, what someone else thinks of you, it's that and you. And it slows you down. It slows your progress. And it defines the individual in terms of somebody else, rather than in terms of him or herself. Right. And it's a totally abstract sense of self. It's just not even true to yourself. You never really find out who you truly are if you concentrate on who other people think you are. And I just like to say I feel I've had some a great amount of success with this statement of this is who you are because when my son at the tender age of six, I told him that some people well actually don't like other people because they have a different skin color.

And he looked at me and he laughed like mom that silly, you know, how can anybody even think of something so silly to feel badly about someone else because they're different on the outside. That's interesting because it sounds like your child in that case did not just internalize it in terms of I'm okay, they're not okay, but really generalized it to I'm okay, they're okay. Right. Exactly. That is the exact point. And really what I grew up with caused me a lot of pain and I still struggle with it. And it's been bumped into me on the street for instance, which New Yorkers are in for it offends me because I think they're doing it because they they're devaluing my might, you know, who I am. And you know my son sometimes he sees the anger flare up in me like I'll say, how could they do that and he'll say mom, you know, it was just a mistake.

And I'm realizing to a term that I hear people use a lot these days, which is I'm tired of being invisible. I'm not going to be invisible anymore. And sometimes even something as simple as bumping into you on the street can be a function of that. If they don't see you as being quite as whole a person as they are, then it's all I'm going to brush past this person. I'm sure it happens that way in some in some lines, but I think for the most part it really doesn't. Also, I feel I was hoping that through the years that this prejudice would diminish and that by the time my son grows up with the attitude of this is who I am. A wonderful giving person that he would have to deal with people, you know, from different points of view besides the prejudice. And I don't think it's going to happen that way. It seems to be getting worse. You know, I pray that it will get better. Well, maybe with more parents like you, it will get better. Julie, thank you for calling us. Thank you very much. You know what's amazing, what Julie's comment was about.

We see this in research. The kids who even grow up in a sea of bigotry all around them can not come out being bigot. Why? Why some kids that and some kids the opposite? Well, for those kids who don't seem to be a kind of Julie, where even though they make up getting certain messages in their family, they don't buy into it. And they don't buy into it because those kids who usually have a good feeling about who they are, their own self esteem. And they also have pretty good rational thinking powers, which says to us that even though kids can grow up in a bigotry community or in a family, that the institutions that touch him or her, the school, the community, the youth groups, the churches, the synagogues and so forth, if they have the message, they can, they can, they can point the kid in the right direction. Hard, hard bigots, we're not going to do a hell of a lot about. The parents, the kids, we may have to, all we can do is contain them.

And, but there are a lot of people in the middle who are ambivalent, not sure, and need that kind of direction. And I think it's not just, we can't just lead a blame on the family. But all the institutions need to do something in this area more than just rhetoric. And let's take another call. Emily, you're on the line. Hello. I am Emily. I am a white person, and I am a little tired of being ashamed of being white. But anyway, I am an Irish Catholic mother of four daughters. And I do not want my children to associate in any kind of a social way with blacks or Hispanics because of their attitudes about sex. They have babies without benefit of marriage in many, many, many instances. All right. Now, here's an example, I think, of how a prejudice gets passed on from parents to child because you're a standard type of... I want my daughter to remain a decent people and marry if they're going to have children.

And I take great pride really in what's positive and contributions about our culture. I think that the stereotype that you raise, and it's really then addressing that all of us have those attitudes. And I think that's very unfair, and that's the kind of thing that divides us and makes us not really live together. I think that there are people who have certain practices that we socially may not accept, but we have to do that individually, not lump a whole group together. Emily, thank you for calling us, and I think that in a way, this brings up the complexity, and we only have about a minute left to deal with this complexity. As we get more understanding and more knowledge about prejudice, it gets more difficult to continue to weed out, settle the levels of it. So she might say, well, I'm not against blacks or Hispanics, but I'm against what they do. I'm against rap music, or I'm against the fact that they have kids out of wedlock, and that becomes kind of a surrogate for it.

But she's also a parent who's saying, look, my values are that in marriage, in fidelity, and so forth, and the world out there was pretty dangerous. And she's right. She has a right to be concerned about what she wants to pass on to her children as a value, except it gets distorted by blaming a group. That's only a small percentage of black Americans, or minority groups, who, you know, you can turn that around and say, would we say that if you're Irish, that there's, I don't want my kids associating with the people who drink a lot. I mean, it's a fact that there's high drinking, and so what we're saying is there's a segment, and you have to watch your kids no matter who they go with, because it's a dangerous world out there. And that is where we have to leave it, Joe Giordano and McGontales, the Steel Turner. Thank you all very much for coming in and starting us off on the right foot.