Play Article

Could a fatal scenario have been averted in March 1991 if Latasha Harlins had entered the Compton market and greeted Korean grocer Soon Ja Du with, “An yong ha sae yo?” (Hello, how are you in Korean)?

Could courteous service to African-American customers have kept blacks from torching Korean businesses in the 1992 Los Angeles riots?

Is there a way to avoid ethnic conflict and racially motivated tragedy? How does one build bridges of understanding? What strategies effectively combat hatred, derogatory stereotyping and inflammatory interactions between people of different cultures?

These were questions Renford Reese asked himself as a USC presidential scholar. Reese was among 24 of the university's finest academic minds challenged to develop innovative, community-oriented projects to address the foibles of humanity. He had already completed a bachelor's degree in political science at Vanderbilt University, a master's at Vanderbilt's Institute for Public Policy Studies and doctoral dissertation research at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, Switzerland. But the public administration doctoral candidate still felt frustrated about race relations in America.

Pondering these self-imposed queries of the human heart, Reese came to two conclusions. First, the reason for conflict is usually mistrust. And second, communication overcomes conflict.

He created Colorful Flags, a diversity appreciation program that identifies dominant cultures within geographic areas, cites courteous phrases in the languages of those cultures and gives cultural/historical tidbits to continue conversation. Colorful Flags recently transferred from USC to Cal Poly Pomona where Reese, as a first-year professor in 1996-97, received ratings for 131 of his 138 students.

Colorful Flags is now widely used by California schools, police departments, public and private agencies and corporations.

Communication was also Reese's goal in writing “Bus Stop Soliloquy,” a play with two seemingly different people sitting at a bus stop. Paul Chen, a junior majoring in theater arts, and broadcast journalism sophomore Marcus Conley respectively portrayed the Korean character Joon Kim and the African-American man Darrel Washington in the debut. Their private, stereotypical thoughts are spoken aloud for the audience, but a year passes before they actually talk to each other and realize they're no so different after all.

“Dialogue disarms hatred and mistrust,” Reese reasoned. “I wrote this play when L.A. Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas initiated Days of Dialogue, a series of community dialogues after the Simpson verdict aggravated already-polarized positions of the races.

“Mistrust is at the core of ethnic relations,” Reese said. “This bubble of mistrust exists usually because of lack of knowledge about other people. Learn something tangible about another's culture. Speak to him in his language (and) initiate dialogue.”

Reese said people tend to talk about dialogue and interaction, but think it will magically take place.

“We have to teach people how to proactively defuse tense racial situations,” he said. “We all can say we're victims in some shape or form, but we must engage cultural learning and challenge stereotypes.”

Reese credits his parents for his urge to “look at the big picture, put things within their historical place and be a positive change agent.”