By ALEX COSTELLO
It's for that reason that ERASE Racism, a regional group devoted to eliminating institutionalized racism, chose two students from South Side High School for a film it is producing.
"[The film] is focusing on what structural racism looks like in public school education," said Elaine Gross, the president and CEO of ERASE Racism. "Structural racism is the way in which government policies and other kinds of structures have created inequities that have fallen along racial lines.
"So if you have a school in a community that is overwhelmingly African American as compared to a school that is in a community that has been majority white," she explained, "what are the different opportunities that the students will have?"
The film focuses not only on students from Rockville Centre, but on students in schools that aren't as diverse as well. The two South Side students, David Colletta and Owen Jean-Aimee, are good friends. The boys, both seniors, were chosen by the school's principal, Dr. Carol Burris, because they fit the profile that ERASE Racism was seeking -a white and a black student in good academic standing.
For Burris, the decision to pick Colletta and Jean-Aimee for the movie was serendipitous.
"I actually happened to see them walking down the hall one day together, because they're friends, and I thought, 'How neat would it be to have two students who were friends in the movie together?'" said Burris. "So I stopped them and I asked them and they were both very excited about the project, and that's how I chose them."
For the two boys, being in the movie was fun and exciting, and rather easy.
"Really, I had to just be myself," Colletta said. "Pretty much what [the director] wanted was to get a glimpse of how the high school was through us. So we didn't really have to do anything to prepare for it other than just be ourselves and show him what we go through on a day-to-day basis."
"The only thing I did was get interviewed," Jean-Aimee said. "That's about it."
For both students, the interviews opened their eyes. "When he was asking me questions about the school and my life here in Rockville Centre and what it's been like, it kind of brought to life different things in my mind that I never really thought of before," Colletta said. "Things that I had always sort of known to be true because I live here, but things I never appreciated."
But for Jean-Aimee, the realizations were less positive. "He was asking me how it was being black, and I said it wasn't bad at school, because he asked about the difference between the school and the town," Jean-Aimee said. "But I know sometimes I'll be walking, and cops will stop me for no reason, for no reason whatsoever, when I'm running around town, because I'm on the track team and I like to go out for two-mile runs. And I was explaining to him that where I used to live [in Queens], that never happened."
Members of ERASE Racism hope that the film will bring to light institutionalized racism in schools. They will not only show what the problems are, but help solve them. "I think what we do that's different from some other organizations, perhaps, is that we don't just report the bad news," said Gross. "We also include a lot of recommendations about how to address those problems that we've identified."
The film, scheduled to be completed by the end of July, is on track to be released to a target audience in the fall. The group is working on preparing additional materials to accompany the film to help further the goal of both identifying and solving problems.
"When we show the film, it won't just be show the film and go home,'" Gross said. "It's part of a discussion format. So we need to have strategic discussions about what are the issues, and what are some of the ways to address this? What are the solutions?"
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
