Posted on Tue, Mar. 15, 2005

Fight signs, slogans of hate

Hate speech thrives when the community remains silent

REBECCA N. RUHLEN
Special to the Observer

A hate group is in town this month, targeting area high schools. I prefer not to give the group or its messages free publicity, so permit me to leave them unnamed and only briefly described. The group's targets are abortion, homosexuality and Islam. (If you want the gory details, ask a student from North Mecklenburg High School what he's seen on his school's doorstep recently.)
This article isn't about hate, anyway. It's about how people respond to it. What I've learned is that honorable and otherwise like-minded people can disagree strongly about how to respond to a hate group parked every morning at every entrance to their children's school.

The advice I heard most often last week was simply to ignore the group. Ignore the signs, symbols and slogans of hate and intimidation. Ignore the twisting of a religious message of love into a dogma of damnation for certain folks. After all, I was told, a reaction is what this group is hoping for. The bigger and louder our response, the more we feed the fire of their campaign.
This is true. A provoked, angry response is precisely what a hate group wants. But if they can't get such a response, they will settle for a week of unfettered access to the minds and hearts of our children.

Within hours of the hate group's appearance outside North Mecklenburg High last Monday, their hate-filled flyers were being passed from student to student in the classrooms. Students were using their cell phones to call the group's headquarters. Others were visiting the group's Web site and sending it e-mails. Students had conversations with members of the hate group, even giving out their names. And meanwhile, as a community, we ignored it.

On Wednesday morning, I stood beside the road with my stepson and two of his classmates. We held signs denouncing bigotry and hatred in the school environment and reclaiming faith for the purpose of peace and love. For 10 minutes, one member of the hate group stood near my child and harangued him with awful threats and vile descriptions of his ideals and his fate. We did not rise to his provocation, did not react, not even with eye contact. He stopped. Hundreds of students and parents driving slowly past saw our message -- and most of them cheered.
I realized that morning that the problem is not the people in this hate group. They are citizens with rights in a free democracy, and they are merely exercising those rights, as perhaps we all should from time to time. The problem is not even with their message -- merely words and pictures, none so brilliantly conceived as to be impervious under scrutiny.

The real problem in this situation is the silence surrounding the message. Hate speech thrives in a vacuum. It strikes at the level of everyone's basest instincts, our reptilian brain. This is true of teenagers and adults alike. I cannot help wondering if most of us choose to ignore hate speech not as a reasoned strategy but as a last resort. We do not want to sink to their level of invective and unreason, and yet when faced with it, little else comes to mind.

It's time to start thinking outside that box. Time to stop letting a hate group define the terms of the conversation or shut down our speech altogether. Our youth have been exposed to some scary ideas recently. Soon enough, they will enter a world that is rife with scary ideas, few of which will be as obviously wrong as the ones now at their school gates. If the best advice we can offer them is to bury their heads in the sand when faced with provoking, disturbing and morally wrong speech -- if that is all we can model for them now -- then the future of our democracy and civil society looks awfully bleak.

Our children need to hear us affirm -- publicly, peacefully, and steadfastly -- what we believe and why we reject hate speech. Between hatred and apathy, there is a third way. Between violence and silence, there is a third way. Organize a counter-protest, but keep it peaceful and positive. Make hate speech, the First Amendment, or separation of church and state the subject of a Sunday school lesson. Talk about why some things are legal even though few people like them. Write letters to the editor. Speak up at a school board meeting. Remember that we are all one community, our young people are looking for answers and examples -- and hatred thrives in silence.

Rebecca N. Ruhlen of Davidson is an anthropologist and the parent of a North Mecklenburg High School student. Write her by e-mail at rebecca_ruhlen@yahoo.com.