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Among participants in our roundtable discussions, family moments represented some of the greatest difficulties: How to speak up to the people closest to you, those you love the most, whether in response to a single instance or an ongoing pattern.
Power and history — spanning generations — come into play in such moments, affecting how comfortable or unsettling it feels to speak up. Who holds power in the family? Who sets the tone for family interaction? What roles do elders and children play, and how might their words carry more weight or impact? Would your uncle hear a complaint against his bigoted “jokes” more deeply if it came from his 7-year-old niece? Or would Grandpa’s quiet grace be the stronger voice against bigotry?
And other questions take shape: Was bigotry a part of daily life in the home you grew up in? Do you continue to accept that as the norm? Do you forgive bigotry in some family members more than others? Do the “rules” about what gets said — and what doesn’t — change from one home to another? Who shares your views opposing such bigotry? Working together, will you find greater success in speaking out?
Many people spoke of setting limits in their own homes, not allowing racist “jokes” or comments, even if they can’t control such moments in other relatives’ homes.
Appealing to shared values can be a way to begin discussions at home or with relatives. Try saying, “Our family is too important to let bigotry tear it apart.” Or, “Our family always has stood for fairness, and the comments you’re making are terribly unfair.” Or, simply, “Is this what our family stands for?”
WHAT CAN I DO AMONG FAMILY?
SPEAK UP!
RESPONDING TO EVERYDAY BIGOTRY
From a California man:
"I grew up fairly poor, but I attended a college that drew students from some very rich families. A wealthy classmate invited me out to dinner one night when her family was visiting, and we went to the fanciest restaurant I'd ever been to.
"During the salad course, the waiter brought a cloth-covered platter with what I found out later were chilled forks. I reached to take the platter out of his hands so I could pass it around the table to the others. Apparently, judging from the laughter from my classmate's sister and parents, this was a major faux pas. I was supposed to just take my fork and let the waiter move to the next person with the tray.
"I felt ashamed for the rest of the meal and excused myself from joining them for some sightseeing afterward. Heading back to my dorm room, I just kept thinking about them laughing at me. That can't be good manners."
Others spoke of similar social-event moments, including being in groups where phrases such as "redneck" and "white trash" are used in "joking" but uncomfortable ways.
Speaking Up...
Social events provide us with opportunities to mix and mingle with people who are different from us. They also are common environments for cultural misunderstandings and biased "humor."
Address the speaker. A simple comment — "I'm sorry; what's so funny?" — can jar someone from their rudeness. Or be more exact: "I'm sorry. I'm not sure I know what you mean by 'white trash.' Could you explain that term?" When faced with crafting an answer, the speaker may begin to understand the inappropriateness of the remark.
Appeal to the host. Party hosts have brought people together and often are the closest to each of the guests. Ask the host to rein in offensive "jokes" and culturally biased statements. In the above case, the man may have discussed the moment later, with his classmate, who then could have raised the issue with her family.
Look for body language. Did you see anyone else flinch when the comment was made? If so, approach the person and assess whether they know the speaker well. If so, consider asking that person to approach the speaker privately.
LEROY DIXON . ORG
ColorOfChange Poor, sick, and elderly people of every color were abandoned too. We are not alone, and ... for low-income communities connected to the greater effort of addressing climate change.
WHAT YOU CAN DO Are You Being Bullied?So you're being bullied, huh? That can feel pretty awful. But, no matter how bad it makes you feel sometimes, you should know you're not alone. That's right ... there are plenty of kids all over the world who go through the same things you do every day. And, even though you may feel helpless sometimes, there are a lot of things you and others can do to help stop the bullying. Give these tips a try.
Always tell an adult. It's hard to talk about serious things with adults sometimes, but they can help put a stop to bullying. Tell an adult that you trust and can talk to - your parents, your teacher, your school counselor, your coach, your neighbor. If you've told a grown-up before and they haven't done anything about it, tell someone else. And if you're afraid to tell an adult that you have been bullied, get another person - like a friend or a sister or brother - to go with you. Having someone else there to support you can make it a lot less scary. Tell the adults exactly what has happened - who did the bullying, where and when it happened, how long it's been happening to you, and how it's making you feel. If you talk with an adult at your school, ask them what they will do to help stop the bullying. It is their job to help keep you safe. Most adults really care about bullying and will do everything they can to help you.
Telling an adult can seem hard. Here are ways some other kids have done this:
Raven
Melanie
Milton
Stay in a group. Kids who bully like to pick on kids who are by themselves a lot– it's easier and they're more likely to get away with their bad behavior. If you spend more time with other kids, you may not be an easy "target" and you'll have others around to help you if you get into a difficult situation!
If it feels safe, try to stand up to the person who is bullying you. If the person who is bullying you thinks you won't do anything about it, they are more likely to keep picking on you. This doesn't mean you should fight back or bully them back. Instead, tell the person bullying you that you don't like it and that they should stop! Keep it simple. You might just say, "Cut it out, Miranda!", and then walk away. If possible, try to talk to them in a calm voice. Kids who bully often like to see that they can make you upset. If you're afraid to talk to the person who is bullying you by yourself, then you might want to ask someone else to be there with you. Kids who bully are more likely to listen, and less likely to bully you, when you're with someone and not alone. If you're not comfortable standing up to someone who has bullied you, that's definitely OK! Just walk away. But be sure to tell an adult.
If you are being bullied online, don't reply. This may actually make the bullying worse. Instead, be sure to tell a family member or another adult you trust. If possible, block any more communications from this person. (For example, it might be a good idea only to accept messages from people you know.) Save evidence of the bullying. If you get a nasty e-mail, print it out or save it so that you can show it to an adult.
Join clubs or take part in activities where you'll meet other kids. Sometimes, it can help to join clubs or take part in activities that interest you. Think about joining a sports team, taking an art class, or joining a scouting group, for example. You can meet other kids who share your interests and you might make some good friends!
What NOT To Do If You Are Bullied DON'T...
•Think it's your fault. Nobody deserves to be bullied!
•Fight back or bully a person back. This probably won't make things any better and it might get you into big trouble. Besides, you should try to act better than the person who bullies you.
•Keep it to yourself and just hope the bullying will "go away." It's normal to want to try to ignore bullying and hope that it will stop–or hope that the person will start to pick on someone else. But, often, bullying won't stop until adults and other kids get involved. So, be sure to report the bullying.
•Skip school or avoid clubs or sports because you're afraid of being bullied. Missing out on school or activities that you enjoy isn't the answer. You have a right to be there!
•Think that you're a "tattle tale" if you tell an adult that you've been bullied. Telling is NOT tattling! It's the right thing to do.
•Hurt yourself. Some kids who are bullied get so sad and depressed that they may try to hurt themselves because they think there is nothing else they can do. This definitely isn't the answer. Talk with an adult immediately and tell them how you are feeling. They can help stop the bullying.
ARE YOU BEING BULLIED?RavenThursday night, doing my social studies homework on my family’s computer. My brain needed a break, so I decided to send an e-mail to my friend Lasa to see what was up. When I opened my messages, I noticed that I had an e-mail from someone named “Guess Who?” I thought it was Lasa sending me a funny note, so I opened the email.
Guess what? The e-mail was definitely not from Lasa. Here’s what it said.
“Hey, Raven. You are so lame. Everyone in school hates you. You think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re not. You wear ugly clothes and you have stupid looking glasses. Do you think you’re smart? Well you’re not! I saw you cheat on the math test last week and I’m going to tell everyone.”
Pretty bad, huh? I felt sick to my stomach. In about 10 seconds, a million thoughts ran through my head....like, “Who would say these mean things? I do not think I’m better than everyone else! I would never cheat! Why would someone say that I did? Do kids at school really hate me?”
I must have looked pretty shocked, because my Mom, who was doing the dishes in the kitchen, asked me, “Raven, what’s wrong? You look like someone just kicked you in the stomach? Are you feeling OK?”
I said, “Nothing. I’m fine.” But I guess I wasn’t very believable because my Mom got a worried look on her face and came over to the computer.
I thought about hiding the e-mail from her. My Mom is pretty smart, so I decided I’d better tell her. I showed her the note.
After she read it, she looked shocked. “What horrible things to say! Who sent this to you, Raven?”
I told her, “I don’t know, but maybe I should send a note back to see if I can find out, or at least to tell them to cut it out.”
My Mom said it probably would be best not to send a note back. She thought this might make things even worse. Here’s what we did instead. First, we saved the e-mail and also printed it out so that we will have this as evidence if we need it later on. We also blocked the sender from my e-mail account so that they can’t send more e-mails to me.
Because the person who sent the note was probably someone at my school, my Mom and I set up a meeting with my math teacher and guidance counselor to tell them what happened. I was really nervous about this. I mean, what if my math teacher didn’t believe me and thought I cheated? What if they told everyone at school what happened and made everything worse?
It turned out that the teacher and counselor were really nice. They were upset about the e-mail and said that there had been other students at school who had been cyberbullied. They said they would send a report to the principal and would watch out for me. The teacher and counselor told me to be sure to talk with them again if I have any problems with bullying.
This week all of the teachers in my school talked about cyberbullying in class meetings with students. None of the teachers talked about me or my e-mail problem specifically (which was good). But, they reminded everyone about the school’s rules against bullying, and they talked about how cyberbullying was really serious.
Well, it’s now a week later. Thinking about the e-mail still makes me kind of upset. The good news is that I haven’t gotten any more mean e-mails. I told a couple of my good friends—Lasa and Josh—about what happened. They were really upset for me.
If I get any more e-mails, I’ll be sure to tell my Mom and my teacher or guidance counselor. I wasn’t sure they could help, but they really did.
ARE YOU BEING BULLIED?MelanieLast summer, for the first time ever, my parents let me go to an overnight camp for two weeks. Camp Friendship was a really cool place. It had a huge lake, canoes, arts and crafts, rock-climbing—all kinds of things to do.
I was kind of nervous to go, because I hadn’t been away from home very much. I also was a little scared because I didn’t know anyone else at the camp. If you’ve ever been away to camp, you probably know what I mean.
Anyway, things started out great. I liked my camp counselor, Maya, and most of the other girls in my cabin seemed pretty nice. I made a friend, Katy, who was in the bunk next to mine.
The problems started on the third day. That morning, I went through the breakfast line in the “mess hall” and looked around for a place to sit. When I saw my cabin-mates sitting together, I headed over to join them. All of a sudden, one of the girls—Jessica—put her swim towel on the one empty seat and said, “Sorry. There is no room at this table.” A few of the other girls giggled. I felt really hurt. I didn’t know what else to do, so I found a seat with girls from another cabin.
Well, it didn’t stop there. Later that day at the archery range, Jessica told me there were too many campers doing archery—and maybe I should go find something else to do. At the end of the day, when I was heading to my cabin, I heard all of the girls talking and laughing. As soon as I walked in the door, everyone stopped and just looked at me.
When I said, “Hey, what’s going on?”
Jessica said, “It’s really none of your business.” Katy and some of the other girls looked kind of uncomfortable, but nobody said anything. I crawled into my bunk and pretended to go to sleep. But, I hardly slept all night.
The next morning on the way to breakfast, my friend Katy caught up with me to say she was sorry about what happened last night.
“What’s going on with Jessica and the rest of the girls?” I asked her. “I feel like I’m being left out of everything!”
Katy said that for some reason, Jessica was telling everyone that I was stuck-up and that I talked about other girls behind their backs. Jessica didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and she told the other girls that they shouldn’t either.
I asked Katy if SHE thought I was stuck-up and if SHE believed what Jessica said about me. Katy said, “No. Nobody does. We’re all just afraid of making Jessica mad.”
Katy and I talked about what I should do. I definitely did not want to talk to Jessica. That seemed way too hard. We finally decided that we’d both go talk with our counselor, Maya. Maya was a college student, and she seemed really cool. She had told us on the first day that we could talk with her about anything. I was kind of nervous, so I was glad that Katy agreed to go with me.
It turns out that I didn’t need to be nervous. We saw Maya at lunch and asked her if we could talk with her in private. She said, “Sure thing!” and we walked outside.
Katy and I told Maya exactly what had happened. Maya listened carefully, asked some questions, and wrote down notes about what we were saying. When we were done, she said, “I’m really sorry, Melanie. Nobody deserves to be treated that way. Jessica was really out of line.” Teri said that what Jessica was doing was bullying, and that the camp had rules about bullying. Here’s what Maya said she’d do.
First, she said she’d report the bullying to the other counselors, so that they could all watch Jessica’s behavior more closely. Next, she said she’d talk with Jessica, and with all of the other girls in the cabin, one at a time. She’d tell Jessica that she has to stop the bullying immediately or face consequences. She also said she’d ask Katy and my other cabin-mates to think about what they could say and do to help me and not encourage Jessica. Finally, she said she’d check in with me each day in private to see how things were going.
Maya asked if I was OK with her plan, and I said I thought it sounded pretty good. I said I was kind of nervous about what Jessica would do, though.
I don’t know exactly what Maya said to Jessica later that day, but whatever it was it worked. I also noticed that Maya and the other counselors hung around Jessica a lot, so it was hard for her to act up.
Jessica and I never ended up being good friends, but that’s OK. At least she stopped picking on me. And camp turned out to be pretty fun.
ARE YOU BEING BULLIED?MiltonHi. My name is Milton. If you’ve seen the Webisodes, you probably remember that I had some problems being picked on by Brick and his friends at school. That was last year, and things are a lot better now.
Or at least they were better, until last week when our bus route changed. All of a sudden, there were three new 8th grade boys on my bus, and they thought they ruled the entire bus. Here’s what happened.
On Wednesday, when I got on the bus after school, one of the boys—Justin—stuck out his foot when I was walking by him, and I fell flat on my face. He and his friends—Doug and John—laughed. When Mr. Jones, my bus driver, looked up in the mirror to see what had happened, Justin hopped out of his seat to “help” me pick up my stuff and said, “Man, Milton, you gotta be more careful!”
Mr. Jones asked me if I was OK. I was so embarrassed. So I said, “I’m fine.” I found a seat as far away from Justin and his friends as I could.
I thought that maybe Justin and his friends would leave me alone if I just kept away from them.
On Thursday, when I got on the bus in the morning, I had to walk by Justin to find a seat. This time, he grabbed my lunch bag away from me and threw it to Doug on the other side of the bus. Doug squashed it with his foot and then handed it back to me, saying, “Milton, I think you dropped your lunch. Better be more careful, buddy.”
This all happened so fast that Mr. Jones didn’t see a thing.
When I finally found a seat, my face was bright red. I was really embarrassed, and also mad. My lunch bag was totally flattened, and all of the kids on the bus were looking at me. I sat there thinking, “Who do these guys think they are, anyway?” I thought about just letting it go and hoping that they’d get tired of picking on me. But then, I noticed that Doug and Justin had started picking on a couple of other kids who looked scared to death.
I thought to myself, “Justin and his friends are never going to get tired of picking on kids on the bus. If they get bored picking on me, they’ll just find someone else to torture.”
So, when the bus pulled up at school to let us off, I made sure that I was the last one off the bus. I stopped at the front of the bus, and Mr. Jones looked at me and said, “Hey, Milton. How’s it going?”
I took a deep breath and said, “Not so good, Mr. Jones.”
He frowned and asked me what was up. I told him what had happened during the last couple of days on the bus. He asked me some questions and said he was sorry that he hadn’t seen what Justin and his friends had been up to. Mr. Jones said he’d talk with Ms. Fife, the Assistant Principal, about the bullying. Then, he said, “We’ll do everything we can to make sure they stop, Milton. Thanks for telling me. I’ll bet that was kind of hard to do.”
As I was walking to my homeroom, I saw that Mr. Jones had gotten off the bus and was talking with Ms. Fife, who was on bus duty. I felt a little sick to my stomach, wondering what they’d do and whether things would get better...or worse.
That afternoon, before our bus pulled away from school, Ms. Fife boarded the bus and stood at the front. She asked everyone to be quiet and then said that she and Mr. Jones had a few announcements to make.
Ms. Fife said that they knew that some kids had been bullying others on the bus, and that she had already talked with those kids.
Everyone turned to look at Justin, Doug, and John, who kind of stared at their feet and looked embarrassed.
She said that bullying on the bus was not going to be allowed. Mr. Jones said that he was going to be watching closely and he also asked us to report any bullying that we saw.
Well, believe it or not, Justin didn’t stop. The very next day, he sat in the seat behind mine and said, “You’re going to pay for squealing on me, Milton.”
I guess Mr. Jones was watching pretty closely, because just then he yelled, “Justin! I want you to move to this seat right behind me, now!”
That was the last that I ever saw Justin on the bus. When I asked a few of my friends what had happened, they said that Justin had been kicked off the bus. His parents now had to drive him to school every day, and he was in big trouble with them.
Now, things are back to normal on the bus. Doug and John still ride the bus, but they don’t cause any more trouble. Mr. Jones keeps a pretty close eye on them, though, just in case.
