Tolerance

Tolerance
Karina Bland, Arizona Republic
May. 22, 2005


At 15, Mae Innabi learned a harsh lesson in tolerance when a boy at school called her a "terrorist" and put her head through a window.

Innabi, a Phoenix resident, is Arab-American, born in the United States and the oldest of three children of immigrants from Jordan.

Now 17, she graduates Monday from Thunderbird High School in Phoenix a year early. She hurried through high school by going to summer and night school and taking math, English, world politics and Arabic at nearby community colleges.

The lessons she learned in tolerance were tougher, brought into her life by the horror of Sept. 11, 2001. Then an eighth-grader, Innabi would tell people she was Hispanic or Italian. She has been cursed and spit on by people who knew she was Arab-American.

In November, Innabi was taking a night class at Cortez High School in Phoenix. Some kids gave her a hard time, calling her a "terrorist." One night, a boy choked her and then pushed her into the window, her head shattering the glass. She suffered a minor concussion: "I'm pretty hardheaded."

Her mother wouldn't let her go back to that class, so Innabi finished her course work in the office. But she refused to run away.

At Thunderbird High last year, she started an anti-discrimination group called the Change, based on Mohandas K. Gandhi's words: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

She and 30 other students raised money to buy lesson plans about different cultures.

Innabi became a beacon for students who felt discrimination: "I think it was easier to come to me because I was their age." She would stand by them while they reported what happened.

Now, Innabi is working to create a Phoenix chapter of the national Anti-Arab-American Discrimination Committee. She has plans for a program to send Arab-American teenagers into schools to talk about their culture.

What Innabi didn't do was learn to hate the people who tormented her: "If I retaliate against them, it's just more reason for people to hate me."

Innabi will attend Arizona State University West this fall.