(August 5, 1997)

Bringing People Together
By Ruth Laney

(click here for the printable version)

 

Reading the newspaper changed Rhoda K. Faust's life. In the spring of 1993, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans ran a series on race relations in the city, looking at everything from slavery and crime to income disparity.

One day, Faust, who is white, saw a response from a reader in the paper that made her furious. "It was from a white woman who said, 'Why don't black people quit whining and get a job‚'" recalls Faust, 49. She wrote a letter to the editor, sharing her distress at the "ugly, hateful, ignorant" responses of some readers. "What will help [us] come together?" Faust wrote.

At the Times-Picayune, freelance writer Brenda Thompson, 46, who is black, was working on the race series. "I heard people call in with disgusting racial comments. It started to sicken me," she says. Then she saw Faust's letter and wrote back, describing the hate-filled calls. She also added, "I would be happy to get together and work out some sort of symbol to let the world know that all of us aren't infected with hate. Are you interested?"

Together, the women founded Erace, inviting people of all races to regular meetings. "There were many painful stories," says Faust. "One darker-skinned black woman described how her fairer family always told her she was bad. Some whites remembered being taught to be racists by their parents."

 

  

 


At one meeting, a young black man named Brian mesmerized the group with a description of his teen years, when he robbed whites, partly to avenge bad treatment. "I was a stone racist," says Brian. Now the father of a young girl, he turned his life around with prayer. "I teach her right—not to be a racist, but to be black and proud." Brian has been ostracized by some blacks for attending Erace meetings. "People want to deny racism," he says. "But everything is brought out on the table here."

The group has also designed bumper stickers and T-shirts with their red, white and blue ERACISM logo. The stickers have turned up from Maine to California. And other communities have expressed interest in starting their own chapters of Erace. "Eracism is a great message," says Mayor Marc H. Morial, who ordered bumper stickers for city cars. "It's the kind of thing we need a whole lot more of."