The Freedom Writers Diary (20th Anniversary Edition): How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them

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Ethnic and racial communities were also in direct rivalry with each other, as African-American, Asian, and Latino gangs engaged in a ruthless war for power and territory. They come to realize that peace and tolerance are much more inspiring messages than ethnic hatred and rivalry. My children will learn how special it is to bond with another person who looks different but is actually just like them. The students come to terms with the fact that separating people among racial or ethnic groups can generate injustice and harm. After having seen her friend Paco kill another man, she is supposed to defend Paco and lie about his involvement in the murder, so as to defend her fellow Latino “people,” her “blood.

Gruwell wanted us to realize that we could change the way things were, and Miep wanted to take Anne’s message and share it with the world. It’s just two sides who tripped on each other way back when and to this day make other people suffer because of their problems. Reading the diaries of Anne Frank, who was killed in Nazi Germany for being a Jew, and of Zlata Filipović, a young girl caught in the contemporary Bosnian war, divided among nationalities and religions, allows the students to examine ethnic divisions from a distance. When the police officers were acquitted for this act, six days of violent rioting erupted in Los Angeles, protesting the long-standing discrimination and abuse that the African-American community has suffered from the police.The students at Wilson High School are immersed in the urban world of Long Beach, where racial tensions and a vicious gang war divide the population along ethnic and racial lines. In this moment, she realizes that both sides of the conflict are affected by the same, senseless violence, and that protecting injustice in the name of her group identity will only tear more families apart. As a result, one’s social identity and appearance determine one’s entire life, from one’s friend group to one’s chances of survival in the street. To remain safe, people generally stayed loyal to their own group, as one could be shot at for the mere fact of having the wrong skin color—regardless of whether or not one actually belonged to a rival gang. However, in court, she sees the despair in the eyes of the accused man’s mother—who is black—and realizes that this woman reminds her of her own Mexican mom.

The rivalry between black, Asian, and Latino gangs affect their everyday lives, constantly making them potential victims in a war where only external appearances and group loyalty matter. Gruwell’s students discover that these black and white activists were ready to sacrifice their lives to champion equal rights, they realize that they can use this episode in American history as inspiration in their own fight for diversity and tolerance. Gruwell’s teaching, the students discover that racial and ethnic tensions have deep historical consequences in other places in the world.Gruwell’s students soon note similarities between their own lives and the senseless violence that these two young girls had to endure. I would think about it for a minute and reply, “See, being poor, black, and living in the ghetto was kind of like a disease that I was born with, sort of like AIDS or cancer. From that moment on, I would try to bring history to life by using new books, inviting guest speakers, and going on field trips. I]t’s obvious that if you’re from a Latino gang you don’t get along with the Asian gang, and if you’re from the Asian gang, you don’t get along with the Latino gang. I still carry my gun with me just in case I run into some trouble, and now I’m not afraid to use it.

In early-1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina, another young girl, Zlata, is forced to hide in a basement to escape the brutal ethnic war that is tearing her country apart.When I was born, the doctor must have stamped “National Spokesperson for the Plight of Black People” on my forehead; a stamp visible only to my teachers. The majority of my teachers treat me as if I, and I alone, hold the answers to the mysterious creatures that African Americans are, like I’m the Rosetta Stone of black people. When, as a student teacher, Erin Gruwell intercepts a racist caricature of an African-American boy in her class, she becomes furious and tells her students that such stereotyping is precisely what led to horrific events such as the Holocaust.

Most of them have been shot at, have directly witnessed gang-related violence, and have seen their friends die over the course of the years due to gang rivalry.Two years earlier, in 1992, officers in the Los Angeles Police Department were filmed brutally beating Rodney King, an unarmed black man, before arresting him. I immediately decided to throw out my meticulously planned lessons and make tolerance the core of my curriculum. I don’t even remember how the whole thing got started, but it’s obvious that if you’re from one family, you need to be loyal and try to get some payback. Gruwell’s students learn to see beyond the barriers of race and ethnicity, discovering that peace and tolerance are infinitely greater goals than remaining focused on people’s different identities.