Friday, April 07, 2000
Preparing kids for a multicultural world
Tristate families work to teach children appreciation for all people
BY CINDY KRANZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jesse Zhan, Ellen Ehrsam and Brittany Turner play at the Arlitt Child and Family Research Education Center at UC.
(Steven M. Herppich photo)
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A black Madeira teacher quits after he is harassed with racial epithets on his blackboard and disturbing phone messages.
Anti-Semitic fliers are tossed on Clermont County lawns in the early morning hours.
A black woman and her biracial fiance find a cross burning in their Middletown yard. Three teens earlier admitted posting racially offensive fliers on the couple's door and neighborhood light poles. (There's no indication they planted the cross.)
These recent episodes in the Tristate, experts say, point to the continuing need for teaching children respect and acceptance.
What's more, changing area demographics are driving the need for more diversity training. In the eight-county Tristate area, the fastest growing segments of the population are Asian- and Hispanic-Americans. From 1990-99, the Asian-American population has grown 37 percent; Hispanic-American 30 percent.
“The reality is we're not just a small little community. We're a global village,” says Chris Jarman, program director for the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), a non-profit human relations organization whose mission is to fight bias, bigotry and racism. Kids today are better connected to the world, via the Internet, cable television and CNN News, she says.
Some Tristate families have taken steps to ensure that their children grow up well-adjusted to a multicultural world.
Here's a snapshot of how five Tristate families have taught respect for differences:
• Beth and Bob Ehrsam of Mount Lookout make an effort to ensure that they and their children are exposed to diversity — racial, economic, cultural and physical.
They enrolled their children at the Arlitt Child and Family Research Education Center at the University of Cincinnati, which provided that mix. Their 7-year-old son is now in first grade at Kilgour Elementary, another diverse school. Their 4-year-old daughter is still at Arlitt.
The Ehrsams also take their children to their churches — St. Anthony in Madisonville, a diverse congregation, and Knox Presbyterian in Hyde Park. Knox is a member of the Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN), a group of churches that takes turns hosting homeless families.
“We participate in that as a family,” Mrs. Ehrsam says. “We serve them dinner and then participate in activities with them for an evening. That's wonderful because my children see children from very different backgrounds.”
Living in the mostly white Mount Lookout neighborhood, their efforts to seek diverse settings for their children have been deliberate. It's morally the right thing to do, Mrs. Ehrsam says, and it just makes sense.
“We believe that is the environment that is truly America and the globe, so we believe that they need to be exposed and be comfortable in that ... As we get involved with IHN and activities at the schools, I find it also provides such an opportunity to give, and then you get back so much more than we give. Our neighborhood doesn't reflect the future, but these programs do.”
• Black History Month has come and gone, but every month is Black History Month at Diana Bauer's house.
Her kitchen calendar features black artists. She's writing a cookbook, so her family samples ethnic dishes routinely. She brings ethnic music, literature and children's books into her home.
The Green Township woman enrolls her kids in classes and camps where they'll meet a diverse group of peers. Her family attends ethnic celebrations, such as the Black Family Reunion in August.
“We do not talk about tolerance, because this implies that there is something about different people which must be tolerated,” Mrs. Bauer says. “We talk about the value that is added to society by different racial, ethnic, cultural and religious groups.”
• Jill Z. McBride and her husband, Bill, previously lived in the city of Cincinnati and enrolled their kids in Eastern Hills Foreign Language Academy, a Cincinnati Public magnet school.
“We chose this school because of our belief in diversity, and we loved the fact that our kids were exposed to a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. And, they were learning a foreign language,” Mrs. McBride says.
Two years ago, they outgrew their home in Mount Washington and moved to Anderson Township. “What a huge difference in the level of diversity, as well as how diversity and tolerance are taught or handled in the schools.”
But the McBrides try to keep the topic of diversity alive in their household.
“The biggest thing we've tried to do is to tell our kids that they aren't really living in the real world in their current school system, and that the balance in their school system doesn't reflect the diversity they're going to find in the rest of the world,” she said. “We try to help them maintain friendships and relationships with the kids they went to school with previously.”
They attend a synagogue that draws people of many backgrounds; they volunteer with Anderson Promotes Peace, a group organized to combat hate crimes; and support and talk to their children about political causes that foster diversity, such as the Southern Poverty Leadership Foundation.
“Another issue relating to diversity is we have gay and lesbian friends. Two of the women recently had a commitment ceremony. That's the kind of thing we talk about at the dinner table, so that when they're confronted with that, they'll get a sense of where we stand as parents, that this is something we support in terms of being tolerant of people of different backgrounds or with different perspectives.”
• Dr. Sheila Brady and her husband, Dr. J. Michael Komer of Middletown, wanted to teach respect for people with varying abilities, as well as ethnic backgrounds. They enrolled their son in day care at Beginnings, a division of the Abilities First Foundation (AFF). The Middletown day care center serves children of nearly all abilities and disabilities.
“I wanted our son to know children that have different abilities from him,” Dr. Brady says. “He came to know children with Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, hearing impairments and mental retardation. AFF also has an ability-diverse staff. Jack loved his time at AFF, and I felt secure in the care he received.”
• JoAnne L. Hudek-Dole is a registered nurse at Jewish Hospital, where she works with people from all cultures. “Some of my very, very best friends are black, Jewish and Greek,” the Hamilton woman says. It was important to her and her husband, Nicholas, that their children have the same experiences.
They chose a preschool with an ethnic, as well as socio-economic mix, in order to expose their children to a variety of people and cultures. They later took their children out of a private elementary school and enrolled them in a public school.
“We feel that it is very important that humans start out knowing each other for the equals that we must be to one another,” she says. Their quest to expose their four children, ages 3-10, to other cultures extends to their toys. Their daughter has African-American dolls, and their sons have African-American and Latino GI Joe dolls.
“Members of both my husband's and my families are just scandalized that our children have these toys, and isn't that just too sad?”
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