Racial Problems

Even as Carroll County's Human Relations Commission strives for racial harmony locally, county officials are ignoring a metrowide effort to end racism."

Local black leaders have been holding meetings with officials of Howard County General Hospital to address what they call mounting racial problems at the Columbia hospital.The continuing series of meetings, which began about two months ago, have come amid claims of racial tension among staff members at all levels.In more than a dozen recent interviews with The Sun, former and current doctors, nurses and administrators -- black and white -- charge that minority employees consistently are barred from positions of authority at the hospital, including managerial posts and committee appointments.

Local black leaders have been holding meetings with officials of Howard County General Hospital to address what they call mounting racial problems at the Columbia hospital.The meetings, which began about two months ago, have come amid claims of racial tension among hospital staff members at all levels.In more than a dozen recent interviews with The Sun, former and current doctors, nurses and administrators -- black and white -- charge that minority employees consistently are barred from positions of authority, including managerial posts and committee appointments.

WASHINGTON -- When six black Secret Service agents accused a Denny's restaurant in Annapolis of denying them service earlier this year, the lawyers representing them called the incident "a remarkably clear-cut" discrimination case.The six black agents sitting together at one table were ignored by the same waitress who promptly served groups of white agents at other tables with first and second helpings.When the black agents filed their lawsuit against the Denny's restaurant chain in May, they maintained that they were sitting together simply because they had worked together for several months.

Jessica Peddicord, 6, of the predominantly white Hampden community in north Baltimore, has some black classmates at her school but doesn't know any of them well.Ife Semper, 7, who lives in West Baltimore's predominantly black Walbrook neighborhood, knows a few white children but hasn't visited their houses or invited them to visit hers.Asked why they don't socialize with kids of other races, both girls shrugged and failed to offer answers.But today, the girls will be part of an effort to promote racial harmony in the city.

DENTON -- Perched on a bluff overlooking the Choptank River, this town of fewer than 3,000 residents seems quintessential rural America. Children and old folks gather for afternoon concerts on the courthouse green. Farmers sell sweet corn from their pickups. Neighbors swap gossip at the corner lunch counter.On the surface, life appears as peaceful as a box turtle walking through a flower patch.But there's an undercurrent of unrest, a snake in the garden that has upset the notion that little towns have only little problems.

White Reflections on Malcolm XI'm not at all surprised to find a major movie about Malcolm X and a broader interest in his life and ideas by the public.As a young Baltimorean in the 1950s, I can remember accidentally discovering and listening to several recorded radio transcriptions by Malcolm X -- which I likened to sermons.As a youngster, I often explored the complete spectrum of the local radio dial. This included Saturday and Sunday religious programming, which is when I heard some of the 15-minute Malcolm X segments sandwiched among a quilt work of evangelical tracts and fund raising appeals.

Here is what Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is uncoincidentally black, has to say about race in America:"The time has come for honesty within the black community. A generation of well-meaning social scientists has made the notion of "the culture of poverty" taboo. . . . It's time to concede that, yes, there is a culture of poverty."How could there not be? How could you think that culture matters and deny its relations to economic success? In general, a household made up of a 16-year-old mother, a 32-year-old grandmother and a 48-year-old great-grandmother is not a site for hope and optimism.

Mayor Kurt Schmoke, seeking straight talk on race relations in Hampden, got an earful from students at Robert Poole Middle School."A lot of kids and their parents are for the white race . . . and they don't want any black people around here," said a white girl, one of 18 students in a free-wheeling discussion with the mayor yesterday."