Racial tensions at a San Ramon high school: do they exist on Walnut Creek campuses?

Maybe we don't live all live in post-racial harmony after all.  

That's becoming evident in our state and national arena.  Just yesterday, State Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco told reporters  he had received racist-tinged death threats since demanding greater transparency over Sarah Palin's June visit to Cal State Stanislaus. One fax he received contained an image of an American-flag-adorned truck dragging a noose.

But what about post-racial harmony in our safe, happy suburbs?

More information emerged this week about racial slurs and a noose-hanging incident at a San Ramon skate park that triggered at least one fight at California High School last week. 

A reporter with the news website, San Ramon Patch, interviewed students at the skate park who said that two white boys and a white girl initiated a dispute with racial slurs aimed a group of black girls. "Witnesses said the boys left the park and returned a short time later hanging a noose from their car window and shouting 'white power,'" the story said.

That incident apparently triggered a fight on the California High campus two days later involving an African American girl who was being attacked by two other girls. When Principal Mark Corti and other adults tried to break up the fight, the girl, a former Cal High student who recently transferred to a continuation high school, struck the principal. School officials describe it as a "glancing blow."

Maybe such racial tensions are not unique to San Ramon--or to its public school campuses. 

Back in October, I reported that police were investigating a number of racist incidents in Walnut Creek and other surrounding cities. These included an employee at a North Main Street Midas auto service who said he endured repeated racial slurs, racist graffiti scrawled in a restroom at Miramonte High School in Orinda,  and a teenager in Martinez harassing an African-American family at a park near the town's marina and shouting "white power!"

I don't remember things like this happening in Walnut Creek when I was growing up, or while attending middle or high school. Either I didn't hear about them or us white kids didn't have many non-white kids to have tensions with. In flipping through the pages of my high school year books from (dating myself!) the early 1980s, I don't see many non-white faces. I remember going to school with a few Hispanic and Asian kids but I don't remember any African-American classmates. I didn't get to know anyone African-American until I went to college outside Chicago. 

While student demographic information for when I was in high school is not easily available, I would venture to say that our Walnut Creek public school campuses are more diverse today than back then. Sure, our campuses and communities are not "diverse" by Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco standards, but they are certainly less white than when I was a student here.

Las Lomas High, which my son will attend in a couple years, is 69 percent white, 10 percent Asian, 7 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent African-American 

Northgate High is 68 percent white; 18 percent Asian, 8 percent HIspanic; and  2 percent African-American.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Walnut Creek's campuses are more diverse than they were 20, 30 years ago. Does it follow that kids today are more tolerant? From what I've observed of my son and his friends, they seem to be more tolerant. Do kids of different races and ethnic backgrounds mix in easy harmony in the cafeteria, off campus? Or do they self-segregate?

Maybe the kids--generally and with a few exceptions--are all right. Maybe it's the adults around these few exceptions who have the problem and who are advocating the idea that it's okay to yell things like "white power" and to hang nooses out of their cars while driving past community parks. 

Walnut Creek noose-hanging controversy update: community service not termination for Midas employees

A North Main Street Midas shop mechanic who used racial slurs and hung a noose in the workplace, and the manager who supposedly allowed it to continue, won't get fired, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Even though their boss, Mike Glad, initially wanted to, the Times says. Instead Glad, the owner of the shop, has listened to the suggestion of a Pittsburg minister, who led a protest outside the shop on Monday. The minister agreed that the mechanic and manager committed offenses worthy of termination, but suggested to Glad that they be given the chance to try community service and counseling first. These options provide an opportunity for change and redemption, the minister said.

The complaints about the mechanic and manager came from an employee, Donovan McBride. He was so frustrated about repeated racial slurs, the hanging of the noose, and the manager's failure to reprimand the mechanic that he took his complaints to KTVU. McBride, who is white but who is married to a black woman, agreed that community service might be the way to go--"as long as you get something postive out of it."