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. 

The Suburban Wall 2009

As local police investigate a growing number of racist incidents in Walnut Creek and other surrounding cities, I received a note from Brian Copeland, the KGO 810 radio host and creator of the successful one-man stage show, Not a Genuine Black Man. He wanted to let me know that such ugliness is nothing new in our supposedly placid, pleasant suburban communities.

With respect to local incidents, word came Tuesday that Orinda police are investigating racist graffiti scrawled in a restroom at Miramonte High School. Meanwhile, Walnut Creek police recently provided details about two Volvos that were vandalized with ethnic slurs in front of their home sometime in the middle of the night on Friday, September 25.

In this Walnut Creek case specifically, the two cars were parked in front of the family’s Fyne Drive home, says Sgt. Tom Cashion. One of the cars had a “Support Free Iran” sticker affixed to a rear window. Sometime between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., someone scratched F--- Iran below the window on the trunk. The vandal or vandals appeared to extensively “key” the second car, leaving scratches all over it.

“There is a possibility that the race of one of victims had something to do with it since one family member is Iranian,” Cashion said in an e-mail to me. He asked for the public’s help in identifying the vandals. “Out police department takes these incidents very seriously and will use all of our resources in investigating these types of crimes.”

Oh and remember this happening in Walnut Creek? In August, an employee at a North Main Street Midas auto service shop reported to KTVU that he endured repeated racial slurs from a mechanic and, as some kind of sick joke, seeing a noose hung in a work area.

Meanwhile, an update came in regard to the KKK-style cross found in front of a Moraga driveway over Labor Day weekend. Lamorinda blogger East Bay Daze says that the FBI's San Francisco field office is turning the investigation back over to Moraga police. The investigation involves a small cross, wrapped in cloth and with KKK scrawled on it, found on September 8 outside the home where an inter-racial couple were visiting.

Finally, last I heard, Pleasant Hill police are still investigating racist-tinged vandalisms at an elementary and middle school in their town, while Martinez police are looking for the teenager who last month was reportedly harassing an African-American family at the park near that town’s marina by shouting “White power!” and waving a Confederate flag in their direction.

These Pleasant Hill and Martinez cases prompted my recent post, asking "What's up with white pride crime in suburbia?" That story in turn prompted Copeland to e-mail me and briefly share his perspective.

"Unfortunately, discrimination in the 'burbs (and in Northern California) is nothing new," he said.

I listen to Copeland's show on Sunday mornings when I get the chance, and I’ve cited his concerns about a growing atmosphere of hate and racism in our society--perhaps sparked by some people's resentment about our nation's first African-American president being in office.

However, I haven’t seen Not a Genuine Black Man yet, even though it comes to the Lesher Center a couple times a year. It is supposed to be great, and it just celebrated its fifth anniversary.

This show, which was also the basis of a best-selling book by Copeland, chronicles the challenges, including outright taunts and harassment, that he, as an 8-year-old, and his family faced when they were one of the few African-American families moving into the lily white suburb of San Leandro in the early 1970s. In 1971, San Leandro was named one of the most racist suburbs in America, and a systematic pattern of housing discrimination prompted Congressional hearings. In his show, Copeland also talks about what asks the questions of what it means to be a "black man."

Copeland sent a link to information about a multi-part CBS documentary on San Leandro's housing discrimination that put the suburb in the national spotlight. While researching and writing his stage play, Copeland heard about the documentary from several long-time residents but had trouble tracking it down and learned that copies of it might no longer exist. It wasn't until after his show opened that he managed to obtain an audiotape copy of it, with the help of two former San Leandro residents who had come to see his show and who themselves had been involved in efforts to fight white flight from their city.

The documentary, "The Suburban Wall," looks at the concerted effort by local realtors and politicians to keep black people from moving into San Leandro. Copeland describes listening to an hour from San Leandro's past that "made my jaw drop." You can view "The Suburban Wall" at Copeland's website. He also provides a link to "The Invisible Wall," a 1981 follow-up of the original documentary.

Thanks, Brian, for sharing this disturbing but true aspect of East Bay suburban history.

A KKK-style cross in Moraga: And who are the Neo-Nazis lurking beneath our happy suburban surface?

The FBI is investigating the discovery of a "KKK-style cross" left in the driveway of a Moraga home. The San Francisco Chronicle says the home belongs to a white couple whose son was visiting over the weekend with his African-American wife. According to the East Bay Daze, the 3-foot-tall object was a "fairly sophisticated rendering of the klan's 'flaming cross'--with this one wrapped in t-shirts and the KKK insignia.

It's natural to worry that this latest incident in Moraga is part of something very dark going on in our society, in the wake of the United States electing its first non-white president nearly a year ago.

On Sunday, I was listening to Brian Copeland on his regular Sunday morning talk show on KGO radio, and he was expressing alarm at the hysteria surrounding Obama's speech to school children Tuesday.

He contended this hysteria represented a growing atmosphere of hate and racism in our society--sparked by some people's resentment about a black man being in office. Copeland noted the nastiness, anger, and resentment in rhetoric behind the birther movement, the town hall shout-downs, and people showing up at Obama appearances armed with guns. Copeland also said there had been an increase in the number of threats against the president's life.

Copeland first addressed this issue back in November, shortly after Obama was elected. Around that time, as I reported, an African-American family in Pleasanton was targeted by anti-Obama vandalism. Vandals had slashed their elect Obama lawn sign and all the tires on their two cars. Obama's name and profanities were spray-painted onto their garage and cars, and their home was egged and toilet papered.

Right after Obama was elected, news reports were coming in from across the country of cross burnings, school children in Idaho chanting "Assassinate Obama," black figures hung from nooses, and racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

More recently, in Walnut Creek, an employee at a North Main Street Midas auto service shop reported to KTVU that he endured repeated racial slurs from a mechanic and, as some kind of sick joke, seeing a noose hung in a work area. The employee complained to his manager but the manager failed to reprimand the mechanic or get him to stop his behavior. The Midas shop's owner has since said that the mechanic and the manager won't be fired, though they might deserve it, but will try counseling and community service.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, an internationally renowned civil rights organization that tracks the activities of hate groups, reports that right-wing militias, after a decade of largely disappearing from public view, are making a comeback, appearing in large numbers around the country. What's got them irked is that the federal government, their longtime target, is now headed by a black man.

"That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate," the center reports. "One result has been a remarkable rash of domestic terror incidents since the presidential campaign, most of them related to anger over the election of Barack Obama. At the same time, ostensibly mainstream politicians and media pundits have helped to spread Patriot and related propaganda, from conspiracy theories about a secret network of U.S. concentration camps to wholly unsubstantiated claims about the president's country of birth."

Great.

The center says there are 84 active hate groups operating in California.

And guess what?!? According to the center, we're lucky enough to have a local group of racist skinheads. The group is called Volksfront, and it has a chapter in Concord. Volksfront, an international fraternal organization for "persons of European descent," says it represents "the independent voice of the white working class." Since October 1994, Volksfront has been at "the forefront of the struggle for white autonomy, white self-determination and the issues of the white working class."

The Anti-Defamation League calls this band of brothers, the most active neo-Nazi group on the West Coast, "virulently racist and anti-semitic."

So, are things really getting ugly out there, not just in the places you'd usually expect, but in so-called decent, respectablec ommunities like Moraga, Pleasanton, and Concord? If so, what do you think we should do about it?