Commentary; Posted: 1/4/06
Time to take responsibility for mistakes
Dale Swanson
Guest Columnist
Much of the conflict that has existed between the Human Rights Commission and the Forest Lake City Council and mayor has related to the issue of how much, if any, community response should be made to human rights violations. The latest proposal of the council and city staff to the HRC is to eliminate this role entirely.
The following provides an example of such a response and illustrates the importance of this role.
In early September 2005, the Youth Service Bureau disseminated a color flyer representing seven young ladies laughing while two mimicked people of Asian descent by pulling back the corners of their eyes. Since the YSB is known and respected for its many good works, the HRC sent a letter pointing out the discriminatory practice, our role in providing appropriate community responses to such practices, but offering as an alternative the opportunity for the YSB to propose its own corrective action with a comparable level of publicity.
Instead of dealing candidly and responsibly with this matter, the YSB responded essentially with denial that the mimicry was racial discrimination, deflected that the same was not in any event intentional and simply expressed ìdisappointmentî that victims found the same offensive.
In a follow-up letter, the HRC expressed regret over the denial and refusal to propose a suitable and corrective community response.
We reiterated that racially offensive materials not only affect the members of the targeted race, but are offensive to all members of the community concerned with human rights.
A second opportunity was extended to propose a curative response at least as broad as the offense, but it has now been 10 weeks with no further response.
The role of the community response is both to support the targeted victim and to the greatest extent possible convert the incident to a learning experience for the perpetrator and the community at large. It is often not important whether the conduct was intentional, since most likely a majority of the discriminatory action toward protected classes involves thoughtless, careless and often socially programmed behaviors from years or even generations ago.
It was not only the Nazis who commenced their ìFinal Solutionî with films and cartoons ridiculing Jewish people, but many of us ìWar Babiesî will remember the Disney cartoons shown into the early 1950s with racially offensive depictions of the Japanese and Black Americans.
Likewise, it is not enough the offensive behavior be discontinued as promised here. Not only do denials from the perpetrator indicate a lack of understanding at the point of offense, but mere termination of the offensive behavior deprives the community and possibly those with the same insensitivity from their opportunity to learn from the same experience.
In a community where people of color compose only about 4 percent of the population and the disabled and other non-gender protected classes perhaps only several more percentage points, it is important the other 95 percent of our community have every opportunity to learn from even the unintentional and socially programmed incidents of human rights violations so that we all may learn and be benefited.
In summary, there is no crime or even dishonor in simply making mistakes. The right brain experts advise mistakes are responsible for the overwhelming majority of our knowledge.
Candor and taking responsibility in those situations likewise contribute to rather than detract from the respect and confidence we have in other people and our institutions. Learning and displaying respect for other people is far more complicated than it sounds given the many cultural and social weaknesses that seem to incline us to criticize others for fun or because everyone is doing it.
A healthy community needs and welcomes every opportunity to grow and learn that it can have, and community responses to human rights violations are an important example of those opportunities.
Dale Swanson is a member of the Forest Lake Human Rights Commission.
Forest Lake Times
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