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Sharing Perspectives

Teens open up at Building Community event.

Photos by David Reed

Msgr. Zuhair Kejbou, Rabbi Jen Lader and Rev. D. Alexander Bullock

Students react to comments from their peers.

Lena Lewis and Alexis Smith

Joyce Wiswell | Chaldean News

D

oes your dad own a liquor store?
Do you go to a wedding every
weekend? These, said Walled
Lake Western High School student Lena
Lewis, are among the tiresome questions she
gets when people learn she is Chaldean.
Javon Gabriel, a black teen at her school,
said strangers ask him if he’s a great athlete
who can run faster and jump higher than
most.
And Aria Frawley, who attends Walled
Lake Northern, said she hears people use the
word “Jew” interchangeably with “cheap.”
The high schoolers were among the panel-
ists at the annual Teen Forum held on March
8 at Walled Lake Western. Presented as part
of the Building Community initiative of the
Chaldean News and the Detroit Jewish News,
the fifth annual forum was emceed by radio
personality Mojo of “Channel 955” (95.5 FM).
Along with the student panelists (who
also included Nathan Grodman of Walled
Lake Northern), three religious leaders sat in:
Msgr. Zuhair Kejbou of Holy Cross Chaldean
Catholic Church, Rabbi Jen Lader of Temple
Israel and Rev. D. Alexander Bullock of
Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church.
“You don’t know another person until you
know their story,” said Mojo, encouraging
the 150 or so students in attendance to open
up and share their feelings on race, ethnicity,
religious faith and stereotypes.
“Prejudice lives in all of us; it lies dormant

until we’re threatened,” Bullock said.
“I think every one of us has a racist side,”
Mojo agreed.
Kejbou pointed out that it is not unusual
for Chaldeans, particularly those who lived
in Iraq, to be trilingual and multicultural,
saying that expecting to experience prejudice
can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mojo really got things rolling when he
asked the panelists a classic question: “Why
is it that if you’re black you can say the
N-word but not if you’re white?”
Replied Gabriel, “African Americans
started to use it to take the power away, the
sting away.” He added that he believes no
one should use the word, but then sheep-
ishly admitted that he has in the past. Kejbou
drew laughter by granting him absolution
with the sign of the cross.
Alexis Smith of Walled Lake Central, a
member of the African American Alliance

care less what people say about me.”
Not everyone wanted to discuss dissimi-
larities. “It doesn’t make sense to me to point
out all the differences,” said one girl. “We are
all these tiny little specks.”
Nearly all the teen panelists admitted
that while they were open to dating people
of other races and ethnicities, their parents
would have a hard time accepting it, espe-
cially if the relationship led to marriage.
More than a dozen students lined up to
speak their minds, and many described how
difficult it is to have a sexual orientation
outside of the mainstream. Each remark was
greeted with respect and applause.
“It makes me so proud the way you treated
each other today,” Walled Lake Schools
Superintendent Kenneth Gutman told the
students as the event wrapped up.

*

Back row: Rev. D.
Alexander Bullock,
Rabbi Jen Lader, Aria
Frawley, Lena Lewis,
Msgr. Zuhair Kejbou
and Superintendent
Kenneth Gutman. Front
row: Javon Gabriel,
Alexis Smith, Usher
Khan and Nathan
Grodman.

Mojo listens as a teen makes a point.

20 March 31 • 2016

club, said it’s only acceptable for black people
to use the N-word among themselves. But
Lader disagreed, saying that Temple Israel
stresses that it’s not right for members to tell
Jewish jokes because “we won’t want to make
it seem OK for anyone else.”
Bullock took the opposite view. “I com-
pletely disagree. We control the meaning of
the word. I use the N-word on the pulpit —
that doesn’t give a racist like Donald Trump
permission to use the word.”
The two also clashed over whether it’s
acceptable for women to use derogatory
terms toward each other, even in jest. Lader’s
view was that men will think it’s OK for
them to also use such words, while Bullock
thought she was being too politically correct.
Usher Khan, a Muslim teen at Walled Lake
Central, said he has become increasingly reli-
gious in the past year, and that while he gets
hit with some “terrorist” stereotypes, “I could