To stay alive, racism must be very carefully taught. Easily remembered nuggets of misinformation and distortions of reality are used to reinforce hatred. I was recently reminded of this fact when I attended a sports dinner honoring athletes for their many achievements. In response to a speaker’s innocent remark about his failed attempt to throw a javelin, a school board president, himself an award recipient, rose to the microphone to say, "I guess you have to be from Uganda or someplace like that to throw a javelin."

Cluelessly, he went on with remarks. Most of the 300 or so in the audience seemed unmoved by the remark. I wasn’t sure if their silence was a "Yeah, what’s your point?" response or they were just too embarrassed to make any move. There were children in the room, many sons and daughters of the award recipients. Presumably, the assembled adults represent the town’s best and brightest. And here they were, like a throwback to the 1950s, teaching racism in a public forum with all the trappings of validation — a banquet hall full of men in suits and ladies in fancy dresses seemingly unaware of what had just happened.

Locally, headlines revealed that school district officials and staff were tangled in a "racist" e-mail communication. Again, adults were reinforcing racial misinformation and hatred in a child’s environment. Is it any wonder that plans made by Harrisburg City’s Downtown Improvement District call for "ambassadors" — people who will be "paid" to say "hello" and make visitors feel comfortable. Imagine that. We have to pay people to say hello to each other.

Do you think the persistent image of the City as an unsafe place is kept alive when school officials make racial remarks? Do you think racist remarks by school officials are a service to our children? Is this an overreaction? Consider the following: Florida investigators looking into the practices of insurance companies have discovered that they were charging African American policy holders 25 percent higher premiums than their Caucasion counterparts. Retired door-to-door insurance salesman James D. Crane repeated to the Wall Street Journal his boss’s instructions about rate books when he began selling in 1964. The boss had said, "You write the white people out of this one, and the niggers out of this one." After almost 40 years, the practice continues. I suppose it had to be very carefully taught by one salesman to another.

Remember Denny’s food chain and all the negative headlines over refusals to serve minorities and employee concerns over minority issues? The Council on Economic Priorities, a New York nonprofit group promoting social responsibility, named Denny’s "one of the most successfully diverse places to work in America." Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) won the organization’s global ethics award. I suppose the Denny’s turnaround and the demonstrated socially responsible corporate practices of BMS had to be "taught" with the same intensity and commitment to purpose it takes when teaching racism.

The choice is ours. Greg Rothman, president of Harrisburg Young Professionals (HYP) made his organization’s choice clear in recent testimony to a Pennsylvania Senate committee when he said, "We don’t have the racial hang-ups or myopic prejudices that haunt previous generations. We are all going to do our best to make cities stronger. " Judging from the current composition of HYP’s board of directors, the organization puts its money where its mouth is. Of the 17-member board, 10 are male — five African-American, one Indian, and four Caucasians. The remaining seven seats are filled by women — one African-American and six Caucasians. In addition, the local executives of the African-American Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Colored People, and the Urban League of Harrisburg are seated as advisors to the group.

At least someone out there is trying. But it’s one hell of an uphill battle, still.