[Peace-discuss] Anti-bias "I'm a little teapot" campaign

[Stuart Levy]

I'd mentioned yesterday at the AWARE meeting
about having heard (on The World, Thursday, WILL-AM)
a report about a group in Virginia who've been 
trying to make people aware of their own biases
with respect to Islam/Arabs/brown-skinned foreign-looking people...

The people doing this are at the Virginia Interfaith Center
(I'd misspoken yesterday -- it's Center, not the Interfaith Alliance.) 

Links at bottom of this message.

One thing they'd done was to put up Arabic signs
on the interiors of buses in Richmond, VA.  With each sign,
in tiny print at the bottom, was the English translation.
They figured (and correctly) that some people would be
very uneasy seeing Arabic signs on their buses -- what
could they mean?  Were they Messages to Terrorists?
And when they realized what the signs did say, they might
rethink their own reactions.

They made three kinds of signs.  One said,
"I'm a little teapot".  One said, "Paper or plastic".
One said, "Paper, scissors, rock."

The group also created a public-service announcement video,
as a white guy sits down on a plane next to a brown-skinned man
wearing a turban.  We hear their spoken dialog interspersed
with the white guy's panicky internal monolog ("What do you do?
[terrorist in a sleeper cell!]" "I'm an engineer.")

They've posted a comment board, and got a wide variety of comments --
many supportive, many wildly hostile, showing the need for such a
campaign.  For example:

   Islam is NOT a religion. It is a TERRORIST organization that
   masquerades as a religion. It is a cancer that should be
   wiped off the face  of the earth. This was a bad idea and
   GRTC should be ashamed for allowing this mess on its busses.
 -
   Good job what you doing ,,keep up the good work ,,we have
   dirtbags in every race,nationality,and groub ,,arabic people
   are good people like us here ,,all what they wanna do is
   work,pay bills and feed their kids ,,extremeists exist
   in all ethinc groups,,thanks
 -
   The Virginia Interfaith Center is engaging in apologist
   misdirection in an attempt to generate guilt in the community.
   Those FEELING guilty will submit and comply to assuage
   their guilt, Islamofacist gain power.
   Donate money i dont think so.  What and where will it go?
   To Iraq to sponser there holly war
 -
   As U.S. Soldiers, we often handed out toys to Iraqi
   children, and gifts of clothing and household goods to
   adults. On many such gifts I would pen the only Arabic
   word I knew how to write by heart..."FRIENDS".
 -
   This effort really touches my heart, I am an Amercian
   Muslim, and my husband is of Arab descent.  Even though
   there is a fairly large Muslim community in the
   Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex, I am rather surprised to see
   the number of people afraid of us because we are Muslim
   or speak Arabic. 


Links:
  Radio report (5-min windowsmedia segment of 12/21 The World program),
  interview with Douglas Smith of Virginia Interfaith Center:

    http://theworld.org/?q=node/6807

  Virginia Interfaith Center:

    http://www.virginiainterfaithcenter.org/

  Anti-bias campaign, from "A More Perfect Union",
  a Virginia Interfaith Center program:

    http://www.rethinkbias.org/

  Some comments received about the campaign (also linked in above):

    http://www.rethinkbias.org/feedback.html

  Public-service announcements ("PSA" link in above).
  They invite contact from people who'd like to get these shown
  on local TV stations (should we?):

    http://www.rethinkbias.org/PSACampaigns.html

  My browser couldn't follow the links to the web versions of
  the three PSAs embedded in the above page; in case others
  have the same problem, here they are.   They're pretty big --
  15, 22, 11 megabytes:
  
    http://www.rethinkbias.org/PSACampaign/Airplane%20-%2030%20secs.mov
    http://www.rethinkbias.org/PSACampaign/Airplane%20-%2060%20secs.mov
    http://www.rethinkbias.org/PSACampaign/Lonely.mov