REPORT FROM THE BATTLEFRONT OF INTOLERANCE
The eight year old boy had never seen anything like it in Indiana and California where he’d lived before, and he didn’t understand it. There he was, a new kid in a1959 North Carolina elementary school, looking at two different restroom doors, labeled “white” and “colored”. The drinking fountains were labeled the same way.
It upset and embarrassed him in a way he didn’t understand at the time. He just knew that he felt bad for whoever the people were that weren’t considered “good enough” to use “his” restrooms and fountains. He also had a haunting feeling of sadness and guilt–about the fact that it was people like him–white-- that labeled the doors. That one memory of his first brush with bigotry shaped a lot of his subsequent life.
As he grew and learned, he realized that his simple experience fit into the larger context of mankind’s most serious social problem–intolerance.
Fast forward 50 years. The same “boy” is a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, whose childhood memory is part of the reason that he is standing in front of a group of Hart High School sophomores, making a presentation as part of the Sheriff’s Department’s S.H.A.R.E. Tolerance program. The 20 Santa Clarita Valley kids are sitting in a circle of chairs in the foyer of the school auditorium at 8:50 AM, “second period” of their January 20, 2009 school day. The Deputy Sheriff is prodding the group to think about and discuss the effects of intolerance, hate, and bigotry on their lives, now and in the future.
It’s a tough session–the group is trying to talk over the loud volume of the live TV coverage coming from inside the auditorium. Suddenly, just after 9:00 AM, PST, the deputy hears booming music, recognizes “Hail to the Chief”, and figures out what it means. The greatest country in world history, notwithstanding its problems, had just struck a new blow for civilization, by inaugurating as president a man who couldn’t even have used the “white” drinking fountain in 1959.
Yes, I was the 8-year-old in North Carolina. I had to stop the group discussion for an emotional second or two, and call to the kids’ attention the incredible significance of the moment. “Do you realize what all that music and cheering is about?”...
I am proud to be a part of the Sheriff’s S.H.A.R.E. Tolerance effort. I work in the program because the problem that caused those labeled doors is still with us 50 years later. The doors may not be labeled, but the thinking that caused them is still too much alive and well among the six or seven billion people on the planet.
Working with the high school kids gives me hope. Sure, we’re not “there” yet in terms of achieving universal appreciation for diversity and tolerance, but many of these soon-to-be young adults are inspiring me with their openness and broad perspectives. So, we press on.
The Sheriff’s Department’s venture to enlist deputies in the effort to develop leadership about tolerance has been underway in L.A. County high schools only since October, 2008. We may be chipping away at a glacier with an ice pick, but I am intensely proud of my fellow deputies who have taken on the added responsibility of making these presentations to influence the world’s future leaders.
And whether it’s a thoughtful, insightful comment by some teenager, or a Presidential inauguration, there is always something to cause me and my fellow deputies to feel we’re contributing to the world’s future by doing our small part in something so important.
Neal Tyler, Chief
Field Operations Region I
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