Local residents discuss the effects of racism in the Chippewa Valley during a recent program at Phoenix Park in Eau Claire.
By David Gordon, associate editor
The CVPost
A recent discussion of racism in the Chippewa Valley was successful because the participants “sat down to talk about race without finger-pointing,” according to Roberta Joern, coordinator of mission and outreach for Spirit Lutheran Church.
The event, the second of three scheduled “American Denial” programs, drew more than 60 people to Phoenix Park on a recent July evening.
Joern, a member the programs’ planning committee, said she hopes the July program “started to nudge people away from the ‘not in Eau Claire’ ” reaction when the subject of racism comes up. The discussion began with first-hand reports of recent and past racist incidents at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Fall Creek High School and elsewhere in the Chippewa Valley.
The “American Denial” series is intended to help – or force – the audience to confront and deal with their own reactions toward people who are different from themselves and to recognize attitudes that could become the basis for hatred, prejudice and racism.
The first program, in April, focused on the Holocaust and attitudes that enabled it to take place. A third program will be scheduled for next fall. The series is co-sponsored by First Lutheran Church and JONAH (Joining Our Neighbors Advancing Hope), an Eau Claire area faith-based organization that focuses on social justice.
Joern was heartened by the number of unfamiliar faces at the July program. She was particularly impressed “that the presenters were willing to tell the truth” about their own experiences with racism “even though it was hard to share.”
That helped put a human face on situations that often are painted only generally and in broad brushstrokes, Joern said.
Two Hmong students at UW-Eau Claire related personal encounters with racism, both on campus and during their pre-college years.
Hao Pay Lee, a social work major, said she has heard comments such as “go back to your own country” countless times since her early days in school.
Lee said she felt targeted by the posting of an anti-Hmong diatribe on a dormitory wall at UW-Eau Claire and that it made her realize how much racism – and racial insensitivity – there is on the campus. She noted that elders in the Hmong community also experience racial discrimination but often “don’t realize it because they don’t understand what’s being said to them.”
UW-Eau Claire student Mong Lou Xiong took exception to the university’s handling of the anti-Hmong posting. He said that when Hmong students took the matter to the university’s housing office, they were told they should find ways to be more inclusive and thereby satisfy one of the complaints in the posted material.
“The school’s approach was to tell the victims to adjust to the perpetrators,” Xiong said.
Two Hispanic students at UW-Eau Claire spoke of bitter discriminatory experiences as children and of repeatedly being “colonized” and “conquered” in the name of democracy.
But Alejandra Estrada and Ariana Tellez closed their presentations by emphasizing, in unison, that “we, too, are America.”
Estrada later added that, because she wants to be able to converse with her parents and grandparents, she sees no need to “fit in” by giving up her Spanish language fluency just because she also is fluent in English.
The final presenter, Dr. Gurpreet (Simi) Ahuja of Eau Claire, who is a native of India, touched on discrimination she encountered during her residency training here.
But Ahuja’s main focus was on the lingering scars of the racist behavior she endured in school after immigrating with her family to Milwaukee’s south side when she was 12. She said she believes this behavior on the part of her classmates clearly reflected the racial attitudes of their parents.
During the open discussion, Jackie Christner of Eau Claire told the group that some 20 years ago increasingly racially charged comments about Hmong students at Fall Creek High School led the school to set up a “Hmong Week,” during which the student body was immersed in Hmong history, culture and food. The results were good, she said, but that kind of experience needs to be repeated every few years as generations of students change.
One result of that experience, Christner said, is a realization that rather than being a “melting pot,” American society is more like a tossed salad in which each ingredient blends into the whole while retaining its own unique characteristics.
Selika Ducksworth-Lawton, a UW-Eau Claire history professor, cautioned the group to avoid asking any one individual to speak for all members of her or his racial or other group.
“I may teach African-American history, but I don’t speak for all African-Americans,” she said.
Ducksworth-Lawton also urged the group to question the stereotypes they apply to others.
“The media has implanted these stereotypes within us,” she said, and people need to think about their assumptions about others before acting on them.
Zach Schultz, a North High School teacher and a writer for Volume One, served as facilitator for the evening.
“Unless we tell these stories,” Schultz said, “people will continue to deny” that problems of racism are real.
“The things we’re not willing to talk about” keep us from confronting important issues and dealing with them, he said.
A number of suggestions for actively promoting diversity were offered during the July discussion, including:
- Starting education about racism and diversity in pre-school, or certainly no later than kindergarten.
- Inviting an “other” to a one-on-one situation, such as having coffee together or simply trying food from an unfamiliar culture.
- Learning at least the conversational basics of the native language of an immigrant group.