Confronting Racial
and Religious
Tensions
When community demographics change,
tensions often erupt. Bringing students—
even the most volatile—into dialogue
is key to restoring safety.
Stephen Wessler
In my work addressing bias, harass- ment, and violence in schools, there are few truisms. One of the few is this: When communities change demographically based on race, ethnicity, and religion—particularly when
change occurs quickly—tension almost
always surfaces.
The place where that tension is most
likely to erupt into open discord and
even violence is school. The school is
often the only place where people from
different racial, ethnic, national, and
religious backgrounds spend considerable time together. What separates one
school from another is not whether
that tension occurs, but how the school
community addresses it.
Several years ago, an assistant high
school principal called me to ask for
help. Her school, in a New England
city of 25,000 people, had seen signifi-
cant demographic change. Two years
earlier, a large group of refugees from
Somalia had moved into this commu-
nity, in which the majority was white
and American born. The refugees’
children, who were African, black, and
Muslim,began attending the school.
