Hate hotline draws flak
'Hate hotline' draws flak
Boulder City Council to decide on $30,000 proposal next week
BOULDER - A proposed "hate hotline" is "the Boulder liberal, generous, good-hearted mentality gone crazy," says the former head of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
But others are warmer to the idea.
The City Council will consider Tuesday whether to give $30,000 to start the hotline, which would give residents a place to report incidents in which people are treating others insensitively, based on their race, gender, sexual orientation or other differences.
"This isn't going to cure racism," said Carla Selby, former Boulder County ACLU chairwoman. "It's going to cause more hate and divide the community further."
Selby said the hotline would endorse a victim mentality and the propensity to be overly sensitive.
Boulder residents "really want to be inclusive, to be nice and not be divisive, to acknowledge that other people can be offended - all that good liberal stuff," she said. "But it's gone nuts. Instead of being inclusive, this would be divisive. People are sentimentalizing and overly individualizing everybody.
"We all get offended - I get offended by people spitting on the sidewalk - but you have to live with it."
A recent incident that contributed to the discussion on whether Boulder needs a hate hotline involved a Hispanic man who punched a black University of Colorado student after racial slurs were used. But skeptics point out that the man was from Lafayette, and drunk, which says little about whether Boulder needs a hotline to report racism.
Selby said Boulder "absolutely is not a racist town."
City Councilman Andy Schult- heiss agrees, but may endorse funding for the hotline anyway.
"It can be a useful tool if some dangers can be avoided," he said.
Schultheiss said the hate hotline shouldn't be run by the city, nor should it be used to initiate a formal charge against anyone.
"It's a way for people who've experienced the kind of behavior we're trying to address to tell someone about it and receive counseling, have someone in their corner.
"It's not like this would be a hotline to the police. That's the kind of thing that would make matters worse, not better. The only way to deal with racial issues in the city is to expose them, and this can do that," Schultheiss said. "But it's not a way to tattle on your neighbors and get them in trouble."
City Councilman Richard Polk said hate in Boulder goes beyond a few isolated incidents.
"We interviewed at-risk youths and heard this echo that, yes, there is a problem," he said. "Not a terrible problem like people are physically hurting each other, but certainly they're emotionally hurting each other.
"Now council has to face the music and make a decision. It's not easy because some really responsible people are pooh-pooh-poohing the idea, while others think it's a good thing."
Hotline supporter Bill de la Cruz, a former Boulder Valley school board member, said it provides a way to document and catalog incidents, and to point resources toward reducing the frequency of people making judgments about others based on their looks, gender or ethnicity.
Judd Golden, chairman of the Boulder County ACLU chapter, said any time government intervenes to limit speech, "we want to take a very careful and cautious approach to that."
He notes that if the funding goes to a nonprofit that mans the hotline, the people answering the phones won't have the privilege of confidentiality that a lawyer or a priest enjoys. So, potentially, they could be compelled to testify in court about their conversations.
On the other hand, "if people want to talk about their experiences with discrimination, that's good - speech is good," he said.
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