My Big Bad Mouth

By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: February 8, 2007

LOS ANGELES

Fernando Leon/Getty Images

Isaiah Washington.
Axel Koester for The New York Times; Henry Romero/Reuters
FIRST STEPS Timothy R. Zaal, top, severed ties with a supremacist group and worked hard to overcome
prejudices. He now speaks at a center run by Rabbi Marvin Hier, center. Mel Gibson, above, and Michael
Richards sought help after bigoted outbursts.

IT has become a Hollywood cliché: Utter bigoted language in anger. Issue a

carefully fashioned apology. Announce “I need help.” Meet with civil rights
leaders for support. Set out on the path to salvation.

Mel Gibson went this route after exploding into an anti-Semitic rant after
being stopped for drunken driving. So did Michael Richards after being booed
off the stage of a comedy club for a racist tirade. Then came the actor Isaiah
Washington, of the ABC series “Grey’s Anatomy,” who used a homophobic
slur on the set last fall against one of his co-stars, T. R. Knight, who is gay but
had not publicly announced his sexual orientation. Mr. Washington set off a
firestorm anew last month when he repeated the slur at the Golden Globes by
denying he had ever said it.

Like the other two celebrities, Mr. Washington adhered to the script for
public penance. But while Mr. Gibson went into alcohol treatment and Mr.
Richards began psychiatric counseling, Mr. Washington took an extra step to
show remorse, mollify detractors and probably save his career. He spent
several days at a center offering a combination of psychological assessments,
counseling and sessions on anger and stress management, saying he needed
to understand “why I did what I did.”

It could be argued that Mr. Washington, 43, was guilty of just a poor word
choice. But his decision to delve into his innermost feelings raises a question:
Can bigotry be kicked, like drugs or smoking?

Mental health professionals are divided on the question and psychiatrists

have long debated whether racism and extreme prejudice should be classified
as mental disorders. There are currently no treatment guidelines for such a
condition, according to the American Psychiatric Association. But those
seeking “rehab” for prejudices are offered help in a variety of forms, from
therapy and sensitivity coaching to behavior modification and anger
management classes.

As for whether true transformations can occur, even counselors who believe
in the possibility say the best-case scenario for most people is to change
behavior and not necessarily beliefs.

“Beliefs are nurtured in childhood and through exposure,” said Dr. Jack
Drescher, a psychiatrist in New York and former chairman of the American
Psychiatric Association’s committee on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.
“Some people can take new experiences and some people can’t.”

Researchers say that most people harbor some form of bias, but that denial is
rampant. The degree of the problem varies from deep-seated bigotry to more
benign issues like ignorance or immaturity. Last week, Senator Joseph R.
Biden Jr. showed that, for whatever reason, he was afflicted by a malady of
the mouth when he described his fellow Democratic presidential candidate,
Senator Barack Obama, as “the first mainstream African-American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Senator Biden’s gaffe aside, Deena Pargman said the most common scenario
she sees in her work as a corporate sensitivity coach is that of a generally
decent person who says “one stupid thing.”

Ms. Pargman, of Atlanta, said the ogre who blatantly spews prejudice is pretty
much gone from the workplace. What gets people in trouble these days, she
said, is usually an inappropriate remark at a holiday party, or an offensive
joke passed around by e-mail message, or name calling during a game with
the company sports team.

In five-hour sessions, Ms. Pargman said she homes in on techniques to help

clients adhere to professional behavior, like identifying what she calls “red
light” situations.

“Jokes that include ethnicity are a red light,” she said. “Talking about body
parts or how clothing fits is a red light. A green-light situation is talking about
your dog.”

To get to the roots of bias, though, some people seek therapy. Matthew
Weissman, a clinical psychologist in Washington whose patients include
people struggling to accept a relative’s or co-worker’s homosexuality, said he
starts by probing how biases may have seeped into the patient’s
consciousness.

“What did you hear at the dinner table?” he asks. “Did you hear your dad
making slurs? It’s a lot like curing a disease. You have to get to a cause.”

A second step, Mr. Weissman said, is to find out what is going on in that
person’s life. “They may be going through a difficult financial time,” he said.
“They lost a job, a relationship is falling apart. Prejudice helps them feel
superior at a time they themselves are feeling oppressed.”

He said patients must undergo a process of re-education in order to change

views — visiting a Holocaust museum in the case of anti-Semitism, for
instance, or befriending a co-worker of another race.

Patricia G. Devine, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin who

researches how people learn to control their prejudices, said that for most
people, it doesn’t take an outburst of derogatory language to indicate a
problem. A friend may point out an insensitive remark, she said, or the
person may make a wrong assumption, like mistaking a female doctor for a
nurse.

Professor Devine, too, said that those who find such responses unacceptable
can overcome the tendency to think in stereotypes, but it takes vigilance. One
strategy, she said, can be as simple as putting up posters or computer screen
savers with images that counter stereotypes — such as pictures of female
government leaders.
Realizing the cost of prejudice can provide a powerful motivation for change.
Timothy R. Zaal, who said he became a full-fledged “Aryan warrior” as a
teenager, found the motivation to overcome his hatred of nonwhites after
becoming a father.

Mr. Zaal, 42, who once served a year in a county jail for assaulting an Iranian
couple, now shares his tale of redemption as a speaker for the Simon
Wiesenthal Center here. He said personal experiences helped shape his
bigotry: a brother was shot by a black stranger, and his parents moved the
family out of his childhood neighborhood in Los Angeles when they felt
outnumbered by Latino newcomers.

But then his son was born. “I spent sleepless nights thinking, ‘What am I
doing to my child?’ ” he said. “‘Is it detrimental to his health and happiness?’”

The answer came one day at a grocery store, he said, when his son, then 2,
blurted a racist epithet when he spotted a black customer and “people looked
at me and saw the demon poisoning this child’s mind.”

Mr. Zaal, who at the time worked as an industrial electrician, said he first
moved to Arkansas to sever ties with his supremacist group. He then took
advantage of business trips to Miami, New Orleans and other cities to get to
know people of other ethnic groups and soon realized his perceptions had
been symptoms of fear and resentment. One person he befriended, a Jewish
woman, is now his wife.

Mr. Zaal offers his experience as evidence that some people can succeed, but
says there is no magic bullet. “I didn’t become a racist in one day,” he said,
“and I didn’t get out of it in one day.”

The founder of the Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, said he measures
sincerity by actions, like Mr. Zaal’s willingness to make amends. But Rabbi
Hier, who met with Marlon Brando when the actor faced criticism after
making anti-Jewish remarks in a television interview, said he is generally
skeptical of apologies by celebrities.

“How do you know when an actor is not acting?” he asked. “It has to be taken
to heart.”

The gay-rights groups that have met with Mr. Washington say they do take
him at his word. And, perhaps surprisingly, they argued that an anti-gay
pejorative may not be a reliable indicator of homophobia.
“Huge numbers of people are using this language repeatedly in schools,” said
Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight
Education Network, who has met with the actor along with Neil Giuliano,
president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “They think it
really doesn’t hurt anyone. Most people using this language are using it
unthinkingly.”

Mr. Jennings said Mr. Washington was receptive to the idea of doing public-
service announcements and speaking at schools. It would not be
unprecedented. Bob Hope did an announcement after uttering an anti-gay
slur on “The Tonight Show” in 1988, Mr. Giuliano said. “Prejudice hurts,
kills,” Mr. Hope intoned in the ad. “Please don’t be a part of it.”

And that may be the upside of rehab of the mouth.

“This is a great opportunity to tell people that this language is not

acceptable,” Mr. Jennings said.