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Teacher examines bigotry By JOHN DARLING Franklin Williams drives from Santa Cruz each spring to teach tolerance and diversity to Rogue River High School students, not because they have racial turmoil but because the community itself has a low level of diversity. Williams � who speaks to six classes today � uses games, jokes, tales and his engaging personality to draw students into looking at how prejudice works against them as teenagers. Then he examines bigotry�s existence in society, and how it causes suffering for victims and perpetrators. Adolescents in the Rogue Valley especially need to see and hear from an African-American up close, he says, because they live in a largely white culture and aren�t prepared to encounter people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. "There�s not much fresh information that blows through here and not much dialogue happening," Williams says. "These kids need that information for when they leave and go out into the broader world, which 95 percent of them do." Williams, 50, teaches his diversity and tolerance seminar in Santa Cruz County schools, in that county�s juvenile probation department, and as a teaching assistant at University of California, Santa Cruz. He teaches by contract in other West Coast high schools and is seeking to teach the course at Ashland High School. "We live in a society where racism is built in and institutionalized," he says. "Our culture is based on violence. The media don�t dwell on violence; they just reflect it. My program isn�t going to eradicate it, but if we acquiesce to it in silence, then it we�re supporting it and it just grows." In his teaching trips to the Rogue Valley over the past three years, Williams said 95 percent of people � students, parents and educators � have been supportive, but says he has received death threats and was thwarted by community objections when he tried to teach in Grants Pass. In an article last year in The Grants Pass Daily Courier, Three Rivers school board member Bill Bonville was quoted as saying "my impression is that the man peddles hate under the guise of tolerance." Williams taught last year at Inn Sight, which accepts students on contract from the Three Rivers District. Bonville e-mailed his comments to school administrators when Williams sought access to area schools. Rogue River opens six of teacher Mari Holder�s social studies classes for Williams today. He decided to teach the sessions without charge because there was no budget for outside presenters, he said. Williams "talks to teens in their own language," offering students a chance to ask about prejudice and diversity � and what it�s like to be black in a white culture. "I don�t speak to them about history any further back than five years. There�s plenty that�s happened recently: the rise of the white supremacy movement that we see in Timothy McVeigh, the attack on the Jewish day care center in L.A., the rise of hate sites on the Internet � 5,000 of them." Williams is entertaining and has good rapport with her students, said Holder, and for most, it�s the first time they�ve ever talked to an African-American face-to-face. "Rogue River is a small, homogenous community that�s over 98 percent white," she said. "His message has an impact on the kids and makes them think about denigrating remarks they may have made in the past without meaning any harm. Now they think before they speak." The most pervasive fears and stereotypes Williams has found in his classes, he said, are 1) that all black people hate all white people, 2) that gays will be the downfall of American culture and 3) the extent to which people believe negative stereotypes about Jews. While much hatred is created by the new freedoms of the Internet, Williams stresses the importance of defending free speech. "We all have the right to hate," he says, "but not the right to hurt." America�s evolution toward a multicultural society "is the most important thing that�s happening now," he said. "The more blood we mix ... the less we can point to and fear the other group. What you realize is that they�re like me and I can�t hate myself." Williams plans to buy land in Southern Oregon and live here part of the time. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.