Racial Slurs

Third male charged with hate crime in spray-paintings A third person has been charged with malicious destruction of property and violating Maryland's hate-crime law after racial slurs and vulgar phrases were spray-painted on four Mount Airy homes Monday night, state police said yesterday. Justin Eugene Wright, 20, of the 200 block of Watersville Road, Mount Airy, was charged with nine counts of malicious destruction of property and one count of racial or religious harassment, authorities said.

A third person has been charged with malicious destruction of property and violating Maryland's hate-crime law after racial slurs and vulgar phrases were spray-painted on four Mount Airy homes Monday night, state police said yesterday. Justin Eugene Wright, 20, of the 200 block of Watersville Road in Mount Airy was charged with nine counts of malicious destruction of property and one count of racial or religious harassment, authorities said. Wright was released on his own recognizance to await a court appearance, police said.

Two teen-agers were charged with malicious destruction of property and with violating Maryland's hate-crime law after racial slurs and vulgar phrases were spray-painted on four Mount Airy homes, police said yesterday. Residents in the Friendly Acres neighborhood woke up Tuesday morning to find that the homes, a car, a sidewalk and two signs had been vandalized, said Sgt. David Warner of the state police Westminster barracks. Racial slurs were painted on at least one house occupied by African-Americans, Warner said.

One morning last month - a few days after someone spray-painted a message threatening the lives of black students on a stairwell at South River High School - Ashley Scott decided not to get out of bed. The 17-year-old African-American student told her mother that she wasn't returning to the school. She was tired of being where she felt unwelcome and, lately, afraid. "Obviously, they don't want our presence there," said Ashley, a junior. "You can't get more blunt than that. ... I'm a black person, and they want me to die."

A series of racial disturbances at South River High School has prompted Anne Arundel County school officials to suspend more than a dozen students during the past year and provide sensitivity training schoolwide, school system officials said at a briefing yesterday. Two recent incidents involving graffiti prompted county police to investigate several students and offer a $500 reward for information leading to arrests and convictions, officials said. In the first incident, in the middle of last month, someone spray-painted graffiti on a school stairwell threatening the lives of black students.

Kenneth E. Hardy, 45, a former college professor who challenged his employer's decision not to rehire him after a student complained about a classroom discussion of racial slurs, died Saturday of lung cancer in Louisville, Ky. His widow, Adreinne Regnier, a professor and coordinator of Jefferson Community College's philosophy department, said she would continue with her husband's lawsuit charging that the college took his job for using epithets in...

Velesha Burke said she dreamed about how she was going to turn her English project into an "A" that other students would envy. "The project really meant a lot to me," the River Hill High School senior said. When her group's collage depicting native Africans and their customs was mounted on a hallway bulletin board -- emblazoned with an "A" -- Burke's pride swelled. But now pain surpasses pride when she thinks about the poster. "The whole point of the poster was to show that racism is not tolerated anywhere," said Burke, 17. "[But]

A lieutenant at Carroll County Detention Center said yesterday that Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning's pledge to work with the NAACP to correct inappropriate behavior, such as the use of racial slurs, is not enough to quell his concerns about discrimination. Lt. Salvertore Brown has filed several complaints with the sheriff and one with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal anti-discrimination agency, alleging he has been harassed at work because of his race. Brown is African-American.

Carroll County Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning pledged yesterday to work with the local chapter of the NAACP to "maintain a work environment free of adversity," after meeting with the group's president to discuss inappropriate racial remarks made by a correctional officer and the warden of the county detention center. "We're going to continue to do what we've done in the past, which is to provide training to all employees and to make sure that cultural diversity and sensitivity is part of our training," Tregoning said in a telephone interview.