Racial Incidents

High school students in Maryland were involved in more hate activities than any other age group in 1990, state police records show.Almost 170 teen-agers between 15 and 17 were involved in hate incidentsor crimes that ranged from assaults to vandalism to verbal threats in 1990, the first time police kept records of race, religious and ethnic incidents under the state's hate-crime law. That's also the most recent year for which statistics are available.In...

Two years ago, Howard County school officials pledged they would nottolerate racial bias, discrimination, insensitivity or disrespect.Since then, they have tolerated plenty.Today, racial incidents in the schools are on the rise. And educators have inadvertently created an environment where many incidents are dismissed.In documents and in interviews with more than 150 students, parents, principals and administrators, as well as community leaders and hate-crime experts, The Howard County Sun found that:* Administrators do not monitor race incidents, which students say occur routinely in the schools.

School Superintendent Michael E. Hickey should be disciplined and Julene Crooks, board of education executive assistant, fired for inappropriate responses to a Dec. 4 racial incident, a parent has told the Howard County Human Rights Commission.Evonnie Gbadebo, who is black, says Dr. Hickey should be disciplined for refusing to see her until nine days after her 14-year-old daughter was told she stinks and was sprayed with a can of disinfectant on a school bus by a 13-year-old white boy.Dr.

The Maryland Commission on Human Relations will investigate county schools to determine whether minority students' rights were violated in several recent racial incidents, it announced yesterday.Jennifer Burdick, state commission executive director, said a four-member committee will review the schools' responses to the incidents to determine whether they were appropriate and sufficient."We don't dispute these incidents did happen," Burdick said. "They're well documented. The question is: What exactly did the school system do in response?

County residents concerned about a string of recent hate incidents are calling for creation of neighborhood support groups and more multiracial programs in public schools to help deter such actions.About 70 people attended a community meeting in Harper's Choice Thursday night to discuss how to crack down on any future incidents and copingwith what's happened.The group included people like Helen Ruther of Wilde Lake, who for six days in November and December went from one light pole to the next on Vantage Point Road peeling off hate stickers that proclaimed, "Save the White Race: Subscribe to Racial Loyalty."

* Seema Bhat, 35, of Columbia, chemist in Montgomery County:No, it should come from the people. Unless the people have the right attitude, racism will still be prevalent and the laws will be broken. . .. Nothing changes with force. The children should be taught better values, to go to church. Parents are not with their children enough. There is too much television, no morality or respect. Outwardly, everyone talks about no racism, but in their homes it's a different story.The children pick it up and it grows with them.

There are two subjects I feel a need to address, and in a way both are related: Vandalism and racial incidents in Howard County.They are related in that many of these occurrences appear to be random in nature. In many of these cases no particular individual is being targeted.Take, for example, the recent explosions and pipe bombings in theColumbia and Ellicott City areas. These appear not to be the acts ofany terrorist groups, but perhaps only the acts of teen-agers with more time on their hands than they should have.

Members of the local NAACP branch say county officials have responded inadequately to several recent racial incidents in the county, including the distribution of white supremacist literature, vandalism of a black church and an attack on a black student riding a school bus.At a news conference Saturday, Bowyer G. Freeman, president of thecounty NAACP chapter, called for aggressive prosecution of those involved in racist crimes and a public condemnation of...

When eighth-grader Qaira Butler sits in class at Robert Poole Middle School, she doesn't always concentrate on the three R's, her father says. Instead, she's worries about "Skinheads" and her safety after school."