YOUTH
Anti-Racism Movie Resources
Out of the Basement and Into the Congregation

In April the Junior High class offered a skit of a story from their curriculum, Race to Justice, for Children’s Chapel. A student in a Catholic school tells the story of a young African American girl who joined the class in the middle of the year. She was nervous about being in the new school, not knowing anyone and trying to learn the routines everyone else had learned already. In addition, she was also the only African American in the entire school. The nun who taught this particular class had lived through years of hateful and hurtful discrimination. She was constantly belittling the African American girl to the point that the girl believed she was less of a student than the others in her class.

Then one day, returning from a field trip, the nun was accidentallyleft behind at a rest stop. Later that afternoon, the nun returned to the school in a car with an African American family. This was a pivotal moment for the nun. People whom she didn’t know at all, and who had a very different skin color than she did, had rescued her and been kind to her. She learned that she had been wrongly judging people by the color of their skin. She asked the young African American girl for her forgiveness and went on to become lifelong friends with her. She devoted her life to teaching others about prejudice, racism, and bias.

Junior High youth used this story to illustrate the hard work they have been doing this year. They have talked about three basic types of racism (individual, cultural, and institutional), stereotypes, prejudice, and bias. Many congregants agreed to participate in a video the youth made about diversity within our own church, individual biases, racism, and ways to diversify our community. In the process, they helped raise racial awareness; examined their own values about stereotypes; practiced intervening in front of others and gave support to their peers when they took risks; pretended they were alien and simulated cultural discomfort, and acted out real instances of racism both as a victim and as a victor. As Anne Wilson Schaef says in her book, Native Wisdom for White Minds, "Only when we feel the grief of what we do to one another will we change. Only when we see that we behave like this when we overtax our natural resources and do not value the richness of the diversity of the world can we begin to plan for diversity and balance."