Reno Gazette Journal
November 9, 2001

Ex-Racist Preaches Against Hate

by Rhina Guidos

At first sight, Thomas Leyden is an average looking,36-year-old with an ex-wife and two kids. But there's a secret that many averrage looking guys, just like
him, carry.

"Trust me," he said. "Not all racists are rednecks who drive pick-up trucks and drink beer."

In his Thursday lecture at the University of Nevada, Reno, the former neo-Nazi showed a crowd of about 400 college and high school students that the faces of racism can be the faces of doctors, pastors and inventors - the faces we encounter every day.

Through a slide show explaining Nazi symbols, hate philosophies and a view of the modern fathers of racism, Leyden documented his life as a former skinhead.

"He's leading a walk through a lesson of hate," said Sandra Rodriguez, assistant director of student activities at UNR.

Several departments at the university mobilized to bring Leyden to Reno to provide a lesson in contemporary race issues.

He has withdrawn from the Aryan movement and become a speaker for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international center for Holocaust remembrance and the defense of human rights and the Jewish people.

"We wanted to take the discussion of race to the next level," Rodriguez said. "Who better than someone who walked in that path?"

His path changed almost a decade ago when he had children and began seeing in the hate in their eyes when they saw people of different races.

"My kids started doing racist things thinking it was cool, " he said. "They would see TV shows with someone black and say, 'Turn it off, we can't watch shows with (them) on. It's one thing doing these things but when you see your kids doing it…

Kelly Pastelle, a sophomore at UNR, said she was interested in the events that made him change. And there was that sense of novelty that drew Pastelle hundreds of other students to the packed room.

"You never think you'd be in front of guy who used to be a (skinhead)," she said.

Although Leyden talks mostly about the Aryan movement, he said gangs and school cliques augment the problems that create hate in the world.

Levi Saah, 19, of Reno, attended so he could get some extra credit for his government class but said he walked out with deeper understanding.

"I can relate to what he's saying," he said. "It helps me to understand that people can change."

His friend Shayan Shahsavari, 18, said, the social cliques and some of the inequalities that Leyden mentioned still exist in today's schools.

Leyden said that inherent inequalities created within school systems, like over-funding sports programs for some children but not others, begin creating bad feelings for thoseleft out.

In turn, the children make their own cliques that can sometimes lead them down the wrong path.

But by seeing what had happened to Leyden, it may make others re-evaluate their actions, Shahsavari said.

"It clicked, what he was talking about," he said.