In conjunction with its participation in Friday, April 30th's national Stand Against Racism, Belmont Housing Resources for WNY welcomed as its distinguished guest speaker author/educator Gary Earl Ross.

A professor at the UB Educational Opportunity Center and the author of numerous works including the Edgar Award-winning play Matter of Intent and the novel Blackbird Rising, Ross spoke before Belmont's staff and community guests. He also signed copies of Dots: A Fair Housing Tale, the children's book he wrote in 2002 as part of an Erie County Fair Housing Partnership-sponsored initiative to promote early awareness of the negative impact of discrimination.

 The following are his inspiring remarks, entitled

A Stand Against Prejudice

I was invited here today to make a public stand against racism, a vicious evil that, historically, has affected opportunities in education, employment, housing, travel, marriage, socialization, investment, retirement-even access to restrooms and water fountains. Laws have been passed to address such denials of opportunity and access, but racism is a persistent cancer and manifests on a personal level in such things as stereotyped depictions on protest signs and inappropriate emails and on an institutional level in such things as the new anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona. But before I take my stand, I must point out that racism, however powerful, is the very large tip of a very large iceberg-bigotry itself.

The United States of America is a great country. It is great chiefly because of its belief in equality. Even with all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence, we have a troubled and troubling history that has included slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, Oriental exclusion acts, Japanese-American concentration camps, the Zoot Suit riots, unspoken but understood and accepted anti-Semitism in business and politics, black-white race riots throughout the entire 20th Century, and countless other examples of race bias, class bias, faith bias, and gender bias. Imagine life in America without the equality clause.  Our country would likely embrace its prejudices as wholeheartedly as any other culture, and our evolution toward equality would be just as slow.

Racism, bias, and bigotry are painfully human traits which rise from the need to belong to something that underscores our sense of importance (US) and from the uncertainty we feel when we face those who are somehow different (THEM). Every cultural group has its targets of prejudice. Every society has its class system, where one cluster of people is denied the privileges and benefits accorded another.

In Italy, the Roma, or gypsies are subjected to mandatory fingerprinting, ethnic ID cards, and forced resettlement. Signs that once graced establishments in France and Belgium and said, "No dogs or North Africans allowed" have since migrated to parts of China, where the word Mongolians has been added. But China's largely Muslim Uighurs have it even worse and are frequently the victims of ethnic violence. In Japan, Korean immigrants sometimes change their surnames in an effort to "pass" and escape the derogatory term sangokujin, the Japanese equivalent of the n-word. Even though it is constitutionally outlawed in modern India, the caste system still rears its ugly head, as it did a few years back when the families of two young lovers from different castes put aside their differences long enough to gather together on the roof of their high-rise apartment building in Mumbai and hurl the young lovers, their children, to the street below.  

In Canada, Native Canadians have been the victims of an institutionalized racism that once sought to destroy their cultures in much the same way the Westward Expansion of the United States sought to eradicate the cultures of Native Americans. The word genocide was born late in the first half of the last century, the result of the Nazis' theory and practice of hell against European Jews and others deemed inferior. In the last years of that same century, words like Hutu, Tutsi, Bosnian, and Serb signaled genocide. In this century such words as Shi'ah and Sunni have indicated sectarian conflict that could easily devolve into genocide.

In too many parts of the world women remain so intractably second class in their citizenship that rape-frequently a weapon of war but sometimes inflicted on child brides-results in death, whether from the hemorrhaging of a nine-year-old on her wedding night or the mandatory murder of rape victims for bringing dishonor to their families. In one form or another, ethnic cleansing, genocide, religious conflict, slavery, class struggle, gender struggle, racial strife, and less violent bigotries have always undercut both our better natures and the endless possibilities of the best of human intentions.

But America stands as the universal litmus test of equality and freedom.  It remains a beacon for all people who seek fair treatment, regardless of skin color, gender, age, or social station. Given Jefferson's words, we engaged in a very public struggle over our own racist past, with the Civil Rights Movement putting the idea of equality front and center for the whole world. Those who casually accepted racial supremacy were forced to reconsider in the face of torture and murder, and gradually other prejudices-against other ethnic groups, against women, against the disabled-were exposed and helped toward the dustbin of history. Being American now means we are willing to extend those certain inalienable rights to all, even to those who would deny them to us. 

Today, despite a resurgence of overt racism in some Tea Party demonstrations, public condemnation of prejudice is the social norm. One who levels a charge of bigotry against another must be prepared to explain the allegation, and those who are called bigots sometimes go to great lengths to disprove the assertion. Since we have reached a point where the Commander-in-Chief is a man of color and other recent (and serious) contenders for his job have included women, Catholics, Jews, and a Mormon, it is clear that proclaiming your prejudice is no longer acceptable. Still, we continue to tolerate too many biases. Perhaps it is time we dispensed with them and the language that undergirds them.

White trash is one such socially acceptable term of bigotry, along with hillbilly, redneck, and trailer trash.  Out with all four. Because someone is poor or rural does not mean he is depraved or subhuman. Moreover, it's time we did away with blaming the poor for their poverty, whatever their backgrounds. Since we don't know why most people end up on welfare-and welfare now has a time limitation-we can't honestly judge relief recipients.  So farewell to welfare queen, welfare scammer, and poverty pimp.

With countries like conservative Saudi Arabia and secular Indonesia, the "Islamic world" is no more a monolith than the "Western world." We must let go of our fear of Islam and recognize that the problem is narrow-minded fundamentalism, which is not limited to Islam. Whether the fundamentalist uses the Quran or the Bible to justify murder-and both books, in parts, advocate unholy violence-religious bigotry is incompatible with our Constitution and our civilization.

As a nation of immigrants where many languages have been spoken for the entirety of our existence, we must abandon our bias against other tongues and accents. The ancient Greeks may have inspired the word barbarian by making fun of the speech patterns of foreigners, but this is the 21st Century and we ought to have evolved past that.  Yet a recent Tea Party protest sign saying "Respect Are (A-R-E- not O-U-R) Country-Speak English" shows we have not. The sheer silliness of some of our English only language protests is evident in the famous, though possibly apocryphal, quote, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas."

Since evidence is mounting that sexual orientation is based in physiology and genetics, holding a referendum on gay rights and gay marriage makes as much sense as asking Southern whites of the 1950s to vote on the civil rights of non-whites or asking atheists to determine a faith's Sabbath or the order of service on the holiest day of the year. If throughout history, four to eight percent of any population in any culture has been gay, it is clear that being gay is no more a choice than skin color, eye color, height, or any other trait we're born with. Because no one can help how he or she is born, gays deserve full equality now.

And the final prejudice that deserves a quick burial is a non-specific religious bias. A recent survey indicating wider acceptance of racial, religious, and sexual orientation differences held atheists and agnostics in particularly low esteem. In other words, "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one." It seems we have progressed past the point of saying, "You must believe in my God" to "You must believe in some God." The establishment clause of the Bill of Rights, however, holds that our country will not establish a state religion. By doing so, the clause guarantees to all the right to believe or disbelieve in any higher power. Atheists and agnostics should be neither objects of derision nor targets of salvation and should be judged not by their lack of faith in a Supreme Being but by their faith in the American ideal of liberty and justice for all.

We have come so far in our efforts to eradicate prejudice in so many forms that it is only fair we complete the journey.  This, then, is my stand against racism. This is my stand against every bigotry and every bias and every shred of unthinking ignorance that limits our visions and lives and fills us with unreasoned fear and makes us lesser human beings. This is my stand for the human family in all its wondrous diversity. I ask you, humbly, to stand beside me.