The voice mail said it all."You were surprised?"Then, laughter. It was one of many responses to a May 14 column in which I expressed surprise at the notion that Boiseans are intolerant of ethnic diversity.
Now I know how naive that sounded to the victims of intolerance. The responses paint a disturbing picture of my hometown, a place I used to think I knew well.
The column was specifically about a Japanese American who had been a target of ugly remarks. But if my e-mails are an indication, there are Boiseans who direct their provincialism at just about anybody different from the white majority.
One e-mail was from a woman who moved here five years ago with a friend who is Hispanic.
"We have walked out of restaurants because they would not serve us," she wrote. "He has been told by employers that they could not use him because the clients would not tolerate someone who is not Caucasian. Neighbors will not speak to us, and people stare constantly."
The adoptive father of a Hispanic girl wrote about the "rude and cruel" treatment she had received at school. The most recent insult "came from a fellow student, 'They use to hang people like you.' "
A former state employee sent an e-mail saying that racial slurs and jokes were common at the large state agency where he worked. Though the official policy was zero tolerance, he claimed that supervisors tended to ignore racist comments and that those who reported them could face retribution.
A reader who moved here several years ago wrote to say that people called him names and shouted at him to go home when they saw his Southern license plates. He said he likes Boise, but has "found it to be quite xenophobic," citing groups from Hispanics to gay people to Californians as targets of disrespect.
Is Boise xenophobic? And if so, is it a recent phenomenon or has it always been that way?
Cherie Buckner-Webb, a fourth-generation Idahoan and president of the Idaho Black History Museum, says racism always has been a problem for minorities here.
"I don't know if it's worse now, but it's bad," she said. "One thing that surprises me is that people seem more comfortable to be overt with it now. It used to be if people were bigoted they'd say things behind your back. Now they're more open."
Marilyn Shuler, longtime director of the Idaho Human Rights Commission, added that "as white people we just don't observe things that happen to other people. The biggest example is the number of times when lovely, dignified, African American professional people have told me about getting followed in stores as if they were shoplifters.
" I've had athletic, dark-skinned African Americans tell me they know people are frightened of them. They're not doing anything to frighten them, but they see fear in their eyes in the grocery store."
Why?
"I think it might be a couple of things. We have more diversity in our city. We've had the introduction of a lot of refugees, and the Hispanic population has grown significantly. It might be a function of that. A lot of bias is fear of the unknown.
"The other thing is we're experiencing an economic downturn. If there are economic and job scarcities, there's competition for them and you feel other people are getting jobs you should get, and they don't belong here because they don't look like you do. It's those kind of feelings in a downturn that cause racism."
Racism will always be here. But there are ways of countering it. One is to put bigots on the defensive by speaking out. Silence condones their behavior.
"It's important to have the courage to speak out against injustice," Idaho Human Rights Education Center Executive Director Amy Herzfeld said. "If you witness an incident and can do it safely, challenge it. Then report it to the proper authorities."
Human-rights groups are working now on a response to recent incidents here and around the state. The center will sponsor an institute for teachers next month to help them address classroom incidents, and the Anne Frank Memorial will soon have audio tours.
If you know someone whose sensitivity could be heightened, there's no better place for making it happen.
Human rights groups, Herzfeld said, are working to schedule multi-cultural training this summer, including "white privilege training" for those of us who, as members of the dominant culture, are largely clueless about what others are forced to endure. Stay tuned for details.
"When an incident happens, I'm likely to hear from white people that they're surprised it happened and from minority people that it's nothing new," Herzfeld said.
As part of the surprised white majority, I'm planning to attend the training and share its lessons in a future column. We've been clueless long enough.