STANDING AGAINST RACISM: Members of Not In Our Town: Princeton were among the participants at a Palmer Square rally against racism last week. (Photo by Ellen Gilbert)

“Each year we say that this year, more than ever, we need to do this,” said Cranbury Station Gallery founder Kathleen Maguire Morolda at a Friday-morning rally to mark “Stand Against Racism” day.

“‘Oh, there’s no racism in Princeton,’” she said in an ironic reference to those who perceive the community as being prejudice-free, drawing quiet laughter from the crowd gathered in front of the Nassau Inn.

While Ms. Morolda and other speakers that morning noted the continued existence of racism in Princeton and elsewhere, she was happy to report that Palmer Square stores were “ready and excited” to participate in the day thanks to Palmer Square Management’s help in getting the word out.

For the most part, though, speakers like Princeton Human Services Commission Chair Anastasia Mann, Borough Mayor Yina Moore, and Township Deputy Mayor Liz Lempert spoke of the need to encourage civil discourse on a day-to-day basis. As Ms. Moralda reminded listeners, racism isn’t always “black and white.”

“There is still racism all around us,” observed Ms. Mann, citing current Supreme Court consideration of Arizona’s SB1070 (“show me your papers”) law and the “stand your ground law” invoked by George Zimmerman when he shot Trayvon Martin. Describing the dangerous implications of the word “your,” she observed that “these laws lay the groundwork not just for incivility, but for indecency.”

She found inspiration, though, in the 40,000 Norwegians who recently took to the streets across their country to sing an adaptation of Pete Seeger’s “My Rainbow Race,” a tune that confessed killer Anders Behring Breivik has argued was a Marxist song used to brainwash children to embrace multiculturalism.

Township Committeeman Lance Liverman said that racism is not always clearly apparent; sometimes “it’s just within us.” He described how women in grocery store aisles sometimes shift their purses to the opposite shoulder when they see him coming. “They don’t imagine how that makes me feel,” he said.

Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes led the crowd in reciting the Pledge Against Racism, with YWCA CEO Judith Hutton noting that 2,100 organizations in 39 states were taking the same pledge that day.

“As an individual committed to social justice,” the pledge begins, “I stand with the YWCA against racism and discrimination of any kind. I will commit to a lifetime of promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all people in my community and in the world.”

Participants then walked to the next “Stand Against Racism” event, a screening of The Princeton Plan: 50 Years Later in the Bramwell House Living Room at the YWCA. Featured guest speakers included Shirley Satterfield and Henry Pannell, members of the first class to integrate in the Princeton School system.

The Princeton Plan: 50 Years Later is an historical account of what it was like to be a part of the Princeton school system in 1948, six years before Brown v. Board of Education, when Princeton integrated two schools in the Borough, the Witherspoon School for Colored Children and Nassau Elementary School.