About 15 years ago, during yard duty, two girls chanted at me, “Chino, Chino, Japones.” The predominantly Hispanic neighborhood was then experiencing a small influx of Asian students from Vietnam and Cambodia. I surmised that the new racial mix had stirred feelings that needed to be discussed in depth.
I created a series of multicultural units beginning with “The Japanese: Alike but Different.” I began with the Japanese because it was the Asian culture I knew best. The purpose of the unit was to provide as many real experiences of the culture as possible, in the hope that the students would see the Japanese to be as human as they, and deserving of their consideration. Once they had attained this level of compassion, I thought that my students might accept Socrates' notion: “We are all citizens of the world.” Ultimately, I wanted my students to discipline themselves to suspend their preconceived notions and look instead for the actual person.
My students ate, wrote, read, drew, constructed, discussed, sang, spoke, and danced things Japanese and went to Japanese Town on a field trip. I showed them pictures of the relocation camps. They were stunned when I told them that I was born in one. I told them about the slavery of the African-Americans, of the Auschwitz death camp, and the plight of the Native American. Although they were aghast and understood that prejudice had rationalized these atrocities, they did not really understand that prejudice directed toward one is a threat to all who cherish freedom until the Iran Hostage Crisis.
One day later that semester, two of my students were chanting “Death to the Ayatollah” during recess. When I brought the students in, I wrote those words on the board. I asked, “How many agree?” Most of them raised their hands. I erased “Ayatollah” and wrote “Japanese.” They protested, “They haven't done anything.” I replaced “Japanese” with “American” and finally with “Mexican.” They were outraged. They felt the hate and the threat to themselves when they saw those words on the board.
I asked: Would our killing the Ayatollah bring back the hostages? What is it that we want? Revenge or resolution. What is the best way to solve this problem? I explained that I wanted them to handle conflicts by using words to articulate the personal harm they suffered and words to find the solutions. Prejudice must stop with us. They agreed.
Lasting Lessons
The success of this unit was not measured by a test, but by two serendipitous events. The first happened that year at our schoolwide multicultural fair. Each class showcased its projects and demonstrated what it had learned about the culture. When several students from another class visited our booth and chanted “Chino, Chino, Japones,” my students quickly walked over to them and said, “Hey, you better stop that!” And they did.
At that moment, I remembered how my students had struggled to eat with chopsticks, to make sushi, to brush Japanese characters. On their field trip to Japanese Town, they no longer laughed when they saw people use chopsticks or heard the language, for my students' struggle to become proficient at those tasks turned their ridicule into respect for the culture.
Ten years after that event, a student from that class visited me. She came to tell me that she had been awarded a full scholarship to the University of California at San Diego as a pre-medical student. On her first day at the university, her advisor and a small cluster of students met to introduce themselves. When she said that she was from East Los Angeles, the other students fell silent. She said, “You probably think that all the girls in East L.A. have hair out to here and wear lots of makeup and ride around in lowriders with their gang boyfriends. Well, there are lots of kids in East L.A. who do dress like that and who don't dress like that who contribute to their community.”
She said the multicultural units on Japan and the Rastafarians had helped her to appreciate other cultures, and as a result she appreciated her own culture. I felt vindicated as a teacher. Martha was proud of herself as a Mexican, an American, a woman, and, just as important, she held the same regard for others. She felt no need to diminish others in an effort to bolster her self-image.
At Home in America
For me, multicultural education is a means of enabling students to feel comfortable in America. Steeped in Japanese tradition at home, as a child my main direct contact with American society at large was school. I did not feel comfortable in America until I was a college student. In school I learned the norms of democratic society. There I read, discussed, and thought deeply about what it means to be American. I learned that there was indeed an America in which anyone could feel comfortable—an America where race, color, or creed had nothing to do with being American. It was the America expressed in the ideals and principles set forth in the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the institutions that safeguard our freedoms.
My goal for all my students—American born or not, minority or not—is to develop cross-cultural acceptance, to have them develop strategies to work through their own prejudices and to sustain their own dignity when they become the targets of prejudice. For me, it is not a question of relinquishing our heritage, for inevitably values change. Rather, it is doing the very hard work of teaching children to sustain and protect our democratic way of life and to build a world culture of human beings who resolve disputes in ways that protect the rights of all.
