Action Sheet:
What Teenagers Can Do About Prejudice

1. Work on yourself first. You may feel defensive or want to deny you're prejudiced. That's a pretty normal reaction. So the first step is: Recognize that you, like everybody else, have been "programmed" to have prejudices and stereotypical thoughts, to one extent or another. Don't feel that you're a bad person if you uncover some of these in yourself. Feeling defensive or guilty will only make you want to forget all about working on this problem!
Then look for possible prejudices within yourself and for ways you may discriminate without even realizing it.

a. Be conscious of your discomfort or fear around certain types of people. For example, if you're not Black, do you automatically feel afraid when approaching a group of African Americans? Or do you feel upset that they are "hanging out" together, as though they have somehow excluded you?

b. Be aware of tendencies you may have to judge other people because of their appearance, clothing, or speech. This is especially important for teenagers, because they're under so much pressure from friends to make these judgements in order to fit in.

c. Do you ever think that members of a particular group have no sense of humor? That's a clue that you may need to look deeper within yourself for prejudices. What seems like a joke or harmless teasing to you may not be funny to someone else – especially if they're the object of the "humor" and they've heard it all many times before.

d. Take a look at your nonverbal communication with other people. For instance, do you establish friendly eye contact with some people, but tend to avoid looking directly at others? When having a conversation, do you keep a greater distance from people in some groups?

e. Examine whether you equally include people from other groups in your activities such as discussions, group projects, and social events.

2. Think of different ways you could get to know more people in other groups or learn more about them. Then reach out, expose yourself to new people, cultures, and activities.

a. Read books and see movies about persons ethnicities or sexual orientations, or the other sex.

b. Attend activities sponsored through regular events, like Black History Month, Gay Pride Day, and International Women's Day to learn new and interesting information.

c. If you don't already have a multicultural curriculum in your school, ask for it.

3. What can you do if you are a victim of, or a witness to, a prejudice-based incident?

a. Unless your safety is in question, speak out. Often "I" messages are helpful, to say how you feel about what you've seen or experienced. Examples:
"I feel upset by this poster, because it is insulting to African Americans."
"When you say Lisa rates a 2 on a scale of 10, I fell uneasy. I don't think it's very nice to judge other people that way."

b. Report serious incidents to an authority you can trust to do something. This may be respected teacher, for instance, or a committee designated to address the issue. If the first person you approach does nothing, try again with someone else. This is important. Incidents can escalate into even more serious problems.

4. Work together with other people to organize new solutions to the problems of discrimination and ethnoviolence. Here are a few ideas:

a. In your school, form a Task Force on Racism, and invite everyone to join. Racism isn't just a problem for its immediate victims, it's a problem for everybody. Within the Task Force, discuss what you see as the problems and solutions in your school.

b. You might want to do a small survey of different kinds of people in your school, to find out what kinds of experiences they've had with intergroup conflict. The Prejudice Institute can give you advice about how to do such a survey.

c. Join together with other students to press for a multicultural curriculum.

d. Form a support group, with other interested people, to deal with prejudice and discrimination (yours and other people's). You could discuss specific personal situations which come up, and roleplay possible ways of handling them.

e. Work to get a peer mediation group in your school. This is a program in which students are trained to mediate conflicts between other students, at their request. The Institute can direct you to organizations which assist in starting mediation projects.

5. Recognize that you can only do so much at the local level. Then you need to join with others of all ages and geographical areas and ethnic backgrounds in working for social justice.

Together we can move mountains.

— Barbara Larcom, The Prejudice Institute

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