Jordan Times
Friday, October 26, 2007
Queen promotes tolerance,
acceptance at Los Angeles high school
AMMAN (JT) - Her Majesty Queen Rania on Wednesday visited the William Howard
Taft High School in Los Angeles to support its integration programmes and
promote her message of tolerance and acceptance.
Five years ago, Taft High piloted an innovative and bold programme to eradicate
prejudice and intolerance among its students. Since its inception, the Zerohour
campaign has successfully fought to tackle those problems and promote
multicultural inclusion.
Zerohour uses a three-pronged approach to deal with issues of intolerance: The
SPIRIT class conducts anti-bias workshops and field trips to the Museum of
Tolerance; the HEART programme employs conflict resolution skills; and the Peer
Mediation programme trains students to mediate interpersonal conflicts between
other students.
During the visit, the Queen engaged students in a dialogue where she encouraged
them to continue broadening their horizons.
The students described the effects of intolerance and stereotypes.
“When people are so quick to judge me simply due to my race and ethnicity, I
wish they could understand all of the hard times and hurt I have had to endure
in my life,” said Rocky Shinya, an Asian American student, adding that a lot of
assumptions are made because of his ethnicity.
“We truly believe in your message… Harmony amongst religious, ethnic and social
groups is of the essence and must be in the forefront of all countries and
leaders if our world is to prosper into the next generation,” he said to the
Queen.
Standing side-by-side were “once rivals, now friends” Sergio Astorga and Abran
Hernandez, copresidents of HEART, who personified the effects of acceptance.
Growing up in different communities divided by racial tension, “we grew to hate
each other simply due to our area codes. We matured through the help of HEART to
see how stupid and empty this hatred was,” Astorga said.
After hearing about the effects of the programme, the Queen engaged the students
in a question and answer session where she described Jordan as having “an
amalgam of backgrounds focused on one vision: A vision of tolerance, moderation,
acceptance, and dialogue”.
Supporting the values proliferated by the Zerohour campaign, and lauding the
school’s and students’ accomplishments in “calling time on intolerance”, the
Queen said that suspicion and mistrust are the enemies of multiculturalism while
respect and acceptance are the keys to integration.
Queen Rania, who has been focusing many of her programmes on the need to bridge
the divide between East and West, stressed the importance of cross-cultural
dialogue.
“Even though we have open communication channels, we know about each other less
and that is something I always find baffling,” she said. “We have to make that
extra effort to step out of our comfort zone, to challenge some of the
assumptions we make… You’ll realise how much you can learn from people different
from yourselves.”
Showing a keen sense of interest in Jordanian and Middle Eastern affairs, the
students seemed eager to get the most out of a dialogue session, asking for
advice on “mending hatred” and bringing together conflicting groups.
The Queen highlighted the impact of dialogue and promoted the need for a change
of mindsets.
“I encourage you to challenge your own assumptions about my part of the world
and learn about the real Middle East: Its people, its diversity, its history,
its rich culture and tradition,” said Queen Rania, calling on the students to
use online social utility networks to expand their knowledge of the Middle East.
“Next time you log onto MySpace or Facebook, take the time to learn something
new about a person from the Middle East,” she told them.
Taft has come a long way in battling intolerance, but students still wanted some
advice on how to break down lines of segregation.
One route to tackling that issue, according to Queen Rania, is to recognise that
we have more in common than we have different, and to appreciate the beauty and
wealth of diversity.
“To pull down these walls, or erase the lines of segregation, we must
internalise and live these basic truths to start humanising ‘the other’,” she
said.
The Zerohour campaign, now a pilot programme in some Los Angeles County schools,
was designed by the LA County Commission on Human Rights to educate school
administrators, teachers and students on how to achieve safe,
culturally-appropriate learning environments.
When asked about her future projects, the Queen briefed the students on her
commitment to education, talking about the school adoption programmes she worked
on during Ramadan. Her Majesty also said it would be great to implement
programmes like this one in Jordan.
Schools that demonstrate long-term commitment to developing human relations are
eligible to become a part of the commission’s countywide network of Zerohour
Schools. The programme also includes the Hart, Gardena, Pomona and Artesia high
schools.
To become a Zerohour School, one must pledge to implement a schoolwide
commitment to peace and respect for all groups, develop human relations
leadership among students, strengthen parent/guardian communication, education
and involvement, provide opportunities for human relations teacher training, and
support and implement Zerohour-approved curricula and human relations classes
and programmes.
Taft High is a public school with a distinguished academic programme; over 80
per cent of graduates enrol in the University of California system. Taft has
seen repeated success in the US Academic Decathlon, winning the nationals in
1989, 1994 and 2006. Taft has also won the Los Angeles Regional Competition
every year since 1994, with the exception of 1999 and 2007.
Also, while in Los Angeles, Her Majesty joined journalist Arianna Huffington and
several high-profile Hollywood leaders to discuss the divide between East and
West.
“I have never seen such misunderstanding when it comes to both cultures,” she
said, as she urged the audience to foster greater understanding, tolerance, and
acceptance between East and West.
The Foreign Policy Roundtable is a Rockefeller Brothers Fund-sponsored project,
which fashions salons on global issues for leaders of the entertainment and
media industries in Los Angeles. This is part of a broader effort by many in
foreign affairs circles of the US to reach out to media and entertainment
leaders about the importance of engagement in global affairs.