Prejudice

Re "Painful tales of bias in O.C.," Column, Jan. 12 I recently watched "Mississippi Burning" (about the murder of three civil rights activists in 1964), and there's a line in the film spoken by a white character, who says that hate isn't something we're born with, it's taught. As a white person who went to a high school in Los Angeles in the early 1960s that had a majority of black students, I have never understood the judging of people on the basis of skin color. The fact that this ugly and discriminatory behavior by white Americans is still going on in places like Orange County is absolutely appalling.

Like many World War II veterans, he speaks modestly about his service. He is quiet and a polite listener, not the kind to draw attention to himself. But a few months ago, as he visited the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, other veterans noticed his hat emblazoned with his unit's insignia and number. "You see him?" someone asked. "He was in the 442. I've read about them. " Another vet, after spying the hat, walked up to him. "Sir, I just want to shake your hand. " The 442 refers to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the all-Japanese American units that served with distinction in World War II. The unassuming man turning heads was my father-in-law, Tokuji Yoshihashi.

With one Mormon leading the pack for the Republican presidential nomination and another scheduled to announce his candidacy on Tuesday, a significant bloc of American voters continues to oppose followers of that religion, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. About one in five Republicans, or 18%, said they would not vote for a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon church. About the same proportion of independents said they would oppose a Mormon while a larger number of Democrats, about 27%, said they were opposed, according to the poll.

Re "Painful tales of bias in O.C.," Column, Jan. 12 I recently watched "Mississippi Burning" (about the murder of three civil rights activists in 1964), and there's a line in the film spoken by a white character, who says that hate isn't something we're born with, it's taught. As a white person who went to a high school in Los Angeles in the early 1960s that had a majority of black students, I have never understood the judging of people on the basis of skin color. The fact that this ugly and discriminatory behavior by white Americans is still going on in places like Orange County is absolutely appalling.

In P. A. Davis' response (April 19) to "Lipstick Liberation" (by Lindsy Van Gelder, March 15), Davis called it absurd to label homosexuality normal, because single-sex couples lack the biological mechanism for procreation. Davis is a prime example of a bigot making a negative value judgment about something he or she does not understand. If Davis had condemned blacks as intellectually inferior, the letter would have been discarded as antiquated prejudice. That it was printed is a reminder of the continuing acceptance of homophobia and heterosexism in this society.

My congratulations for two articles (Feb. 3): The first, "Isolation Painful for Partners of Gays in Service," and second, the article on the Mary Magdalene Project--"Special Mission Helps Women Get Off the Streets." Both indicate a concern for presenting factual information about controversial issues and will help overcome prejudice and stereotyping that cause great pain, fear and hatred. Ignorance and fear continue to divide people and cause so much inhuman behavior. As a retired school principal and one who has worked more than four years as a chaplain in the Los Angeles County Jail Unit for Gays, I know firsthand the importance of working for justice and solutions to the problems of crime.

I can already envision the hate mail this column will generate. Every time I write about anything involving race, my inbox fills with invective -- racial slurs, rants about the "welfare crowd," suggestions that I stop whining, go back to Africa and turn my "affirmative action job" over to some slighted white person. So I know a bit about how Cambridge, Mass., Police Sgt. James Crowley must have felt when he was insulted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Allow me to add a postscript to the John Dreyfuss article in the View section Nov. 6, "A Child's Palette of Pre-Prejudice." I applaud Louise Derman-Sparks in her efforts to educate the preschooler in the area of prejudice. But how do you reach the parents, the hard-core racists, who teach their children to discriminate? My child, at the tender age of 3, was told by another 3-year-old that her mother said she could not play with him because he was black. My son was perplexed, and asked me what she meant.

Re "A Consumer Underclass: Scorned Teens," a column on March 18: Daisy Yu sensibly speaks on behalf of all the teens in our society in her article. Using a word such as "underclass" precisely describes a stereotype that some adults may have about minors. As a high school teen, my mind was stimulated by knowing that a college student is taking a potent stand. I have been a victim of this type of prejudice when an employee has followed me in a children's store, suspicious that I would commit an act of theft.

In reference to "It Was Much Too Quiet on 'Malcolm X' Set for Kate Vernon," by Susan King (Off-Centerpiece, Nov. 22): Vernon whines over the way Lee supposedly ostracized her on the set of 'Malcolm X' and how she "never felt part of the process" and couldn't "figure out the psychology of Spike." Welcome to the club! I am sure that African-Americans involved in the business and dealing with white directors and producers go through this humiliation on a much broader scale. This is not to justify prejudices in any way but to make the point that African-Americans are the No. 1 victims of ostracism, and we have never been able to figure out the psychology of white America.

She seemed embarrassed to tell me that she's voting for Mitt Romney, as if the admission might suggest that she'd been hiding racist leanings during our long friendship. Four years ago, she voted for Barack Obama and made sure then that I knew it. She was proud to vote for the black man, to celebrate the history-making and imagine an America breaking free of racist roots. This time, she said, it's not about race: Been there, done that. Now we can all go back - with a feather in our cap - to politics as usual.

The Oslo courtroom where confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is on trial offers a look at a tragic outcome of anti-Islamic hostility. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, years of war and repeated calls for violence against the West stirred worldwide fears of Muslim extremism, but many human rights analysts say they find it difficult to explain a recent surge in anti-Islamic hate crimes other than political manipulation and fears that displays of Islamic faith herald new threats from radicals.

Proposition 8 is a law in search of a reason. What is the purpose of denying the use of one word - "marriage" - to a class of people deemed by the state itself fully capable of taking on all of the child-raising and other responsibilities associated with the word? The search for a reason may now go to theU.S. Supreme Court, assuming the court agrees to weigh the issue. Last week, in Perry vs. Brown, a divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional under the Constitution's equal protection clause.

Terribly earnest and earnestly terrible, the heavy-handed Bollywood political screed "I Am Singh," from veteran actor-director Puneet Issar, begins as a passably melodramatic outpouring of post-9/11 grief. Proud Sikh Ranveer (Gulzar Chahal) flies from India to Los Angeles in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks to investigate the killing of his brother by anti-Muslim skinheads. While there he teams up with former Sikh LAPD officer Fateh (Issar), fired for wearing his turban, and a Pakistani American (Rizwan Haider)

The Roman Catholic Church feels oppressed. Religious liberty is under siege. At this week's meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the group's president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, declared, "We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion," which he attributed, ambiguously and ominously, to "well-financed, well-oiled sectors. " Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia gave a speech to college students declaring that the "America emerging in the next several decades is likely to be much less friendly to Christian faith than anything in our country's past.

"Students' Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated," one headline announced. "Civil Rights Movement Education 'Dismal' in American Schools," declared another. The alarming headlines, which appeared in newspapers across the country, grew out of a report released three weeks ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Teaching the Movement," which claims that the civil rights movement is widely ignored in history classrooms. By not teaching it, the report claims, American education is "failing in its responsibility to educate its citizens to be agents of change.

I read "Beauty and the Bleach" (July 26) with a chuckle. My girlfriends and I are all in our "of a certain age" years. Many of us are of Asian descent, and we are all worried about our skin. The article made gratuitous mentions of colonialism and prejudice. That's a lot of hooey. There's nothing controversial about it. The article didn't address the single most important reason we want to "whiten" our skin: aging. We want to look younger. It's about vanity. We want our faces to be smooth and blemish-free as a baby's bottom.

The 2000 census revealed what many of us have suspected, that there is no longer a majority group in California. Although this puts us at the cutting edge of multiculturalism, still all of us tend to view interactions from our own cultural viewpoint and many of us carry prejudices that have been passed on from generation to generation. We can learn to live and work together harmoniously, or we can divide along racial / cultural lines and engage in cultural wars. The choice is ours.

Justin Bieber's line of perfume — for women — recently made its debut. He seems to know his market. One teenage girl gushed, "I love him! I love him! When I use the perfume, I feel him!" And it's not only Justin — I call him Justin although we travel in different universes. Last year, there were 69 new celebrity perfumes. There was Katy Perry's Purr, Beyonce's Heat and Jennifer Aniston's creatively named Jennifer Aniston. It got me thinking that we seniors should have our own scents.

Few 18th century authors have achieved the modern popular success that Jane Austen now enjoys. Her novels are always in print, and in the last decades they have been adapted into films and television miniseries, from "Sense and Sensibility," "Emma," Persuasion" and "Mansfield Park" to perhaps her best-known work, "Pride and Prejudice. " Now the story of the Bennet sisters has been adapted for the stage by Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan for a South Coast Repertory production that begins previews Friday and opens Sept.