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..who's with me? (For the record, I'm not a fan of this "Sandy Banks" but she was the only black San Diego writer I could find...go figure)
Racial incidents at UC San Diego illuminate a younger generation's fears and hopes.
The adults in the church sanctuary were itching for a fight, eager to redress years of indignities absorbed growing up black in San Diego.The black UC San Diego students were nursing a different sort of wrath: the psychic pain of hardworking high achievers, envisioning post-racial acceptance but reduced to crude racial stereotypes instead.
The generations met at a San Diego community forum that drew more than 600 people who were upset over a string of racial incidents spawned by a party promoted by white fraternity members from UC San Diego, "in honor of" Black History Month, that promised a taste of "life in the ghetto" -- cheap clothes, watermelon, malt liquor, gold teeth.
When I first heard about the "Compton Cookout," I was more disappointed than angry. I wished somebody would round up those frat boys, drop them off in Compton and let those "thugs" and "ghetto chicks" they mocked have at them.
I cringed when black students responded with demands and black politicians with press conferences.
Can we not play the "victim" card? I thought. Let's denounce the ignorance and move on.
But the church forum and a visit to campus this week taught me that I was wrong.
Like so many things involving race, the incident was not the issue; the party was just the spark. The problems it unmasked and the venom it unleashed -- waves of anger and backlash -- are far more troubling and dangerous.
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A few days after news of the party broke, a student-run television program used racial slurs to mock black students. A noose was found dangling from a library bookcase. A pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood was slipped over the head of a campus statue.
On campus, there were anti-racism rallies and counterdemonstrations defending "free speech." There have been heated classroom discussions, angry conversations and awkward silences.
The atmosphere is so "toxic" that David Ritcherson stopped going to his classes last week. "It's hard to sit in class thinking one of those people at the party might be sitting next to you," he told the crowd at the church forum.
Ritcherson, head of the campus Black Student Union, is a product of tiny Community Harvest, a charter school in South Los Angeles. His 300 schoolmates were mostly black, compared with less than 2% of UC San Diego's student body.
That makes for a sad and isolating ratio and leaves minority students feeling vulnerable.
"You wonder what people are thinking of you," said Jennifer, a Latina who grew up in Compton. She seethes silently, she said, during classmates' "free speech" diatribes.
Other students told me similar stories of being afraid to speak up or even walk on campus alone.
So many students have missed classes or gone home that university officials have agreed not to penalize them academically.
Strolling the sunny, tree-lined campus, I found it hard to imagine backpack-carrying students as hooded racists. But it's clear the fear is real.
"I don't think anything is going to happen," said Zowie Agbaosi, a third-year student who -- like our president -- has a white mother and Nigerian father.
"But the noose, the hood . . . those are symbols intended to instill fear. It makes you wonder how far it will go," she said.
