Just say no to hate

COEUR d'ALENE - Tony Stewart still remembers that night some 40 years ago when he and friends in graduate school at the University of Tennessee were going to dinner.

He invited a black man in his 40s he had often seen alone, and he accepted.

When they arrived at the restaurant, Stewart held the door open for his new friend.

"I opened the door for him, and he said to me 'I can not go in the door in front of a white person. I can not do that. I've never done that,'" he said.

After some convincing, the man agreed to walk in a restaurant in front of a white man - for the first time in his life.

"What a terrible, terrible thing to do to part of the human race, to put them in such a mental attitude," Stewart said Friday at the Kootenai County Democratic Club luncheon at the Iron Horse restaurant. "That's what these really sinful and harmful laws have done to a human being."

Stewart, a member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations and retired political science instructor at North Idaho College, delivered a one-hour presentation that he labeled "a real conversation about racism" to about 25 people.

He recounted a world overview of prejudice and discrimination toward minorities, a history of racism in America, and spoke on the "moral imperative to eradicate racism and other forms of prejudice and bigotry in the world."

"The dominant culture for some reason has to be intolerant, sometimes hurtful, toward the minority culture," he said.

Such hatred continues today.

Many people have suffered, he said, not because of the content of their character, but the color of their skin.

"I just can't tell you the amount of suffering that goes on in the world because of hate," he said.

Racism dates back to the country's beginnings. Stewart called slavery "a terrible, terrible stain on our society" that led to decades of suffering condoned by the government.

Segregation, too, again sanctioned by the government, resulted in black children growing up believing they were not equal to white children.

It took nearly six decades to end segregation with Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. The U.S. Supreme Court decision overruled state laws that allowed separate public schools for black and white students.

Change, Stewart said, is not usually the result of government initiative, but grassroots movements by citizens.

"What I urge and hope for and dream for is that all people, both here and abroad, will become ethical activists," he said.

He called on people to end racism through education, and not sit passively on the sideline.

"We must stand up and respond to hate speech," he said.

Stewart urged those at the meeting to question laws, mores and traditions that are unjust.

"Support those that are just and change those that are not just," he said.

Stewart said he always believed hate speech would lose out in the end, but a rise in hate crimes - eight in the Inland Northwest since May - has him wondering.

"It's a problem nationwide," he said.

Brothers Bill and Wayne Parsons liked what Stewart had to say.

"It's good to hear somebody is doing more than thinking about it, actually doing something about it," Bill Parsons said.

He believes there's more racism in the area than people realize.

"I've been thinking that lately. There's a lot of hate talk and it seems like every time there's hate talk, somebody takes that and does something with it. That's what worries me a little bit."

Wayne Parsons said even though the Aryan Nations was driven out of North Idaho years ago, racism still exists here.

"It's just been lying there dormant," he said.

"It seems like it's coming back again," Bill Parsons added.

Tamara Poelstra shared a story that when her daughter, Abagail, was 2 years old, one of the first things she learned to say was "I love you" and she said it to everyone.

A relative told Poelstra her daughter shouldn't say that, and she shouldn't be so trusting of people.

Poelstra agreed in part, and told her daughter to be careful of strangers.

"But I'm not going to teach my daughter that she shouldn't love every person that she saw," she said.