Countywide : 2 Students Offer Views on Bigotry

Ahmed Jones was sitting at a lunch table at Cypress High School last year with about 20 other African American and Latino students when dozens of white students, including several skinheads, surrounded his table and began to pick a fight, he said.

School staff broke up the groups before anyone could throw a punch. But the incident left Jones, a sophomore at Cypress, with the feeling that hate crimes against minority high school students are too common both on and off campus.

“We’re living in a hateful world,” said Jones, who is African American. “There are a lot of hateful people out there. Every day people drive by me and yell racial slurs. I don’t know that there is much anyone can do to change hateful people, but I want to help try.”

Jones was one of two students who told their stories and expressed their frustrations about racism Thursday to the Hate Crime Network, a group of law enforcement agencies and community organizations in Orange County that supports victims of hate crimes.

Other students were scheduled to speak to the panel Thursday, but several parents refused to give their permission in order to protect their children’s privacy, said Orange County Human Relations Commission specialist Swinder Jheeta Cooper, who helped organize the meeting.

Jones and fellow Cypress High sophomore Paul Miranda, a Latino, told the panel that they want to encourage high school administrators, teachers and other high school students to start programs that will help students talk about their racial attitudes and learn to respect each other.

The county’s Human Relations Commission logged 182 hate crimes in 1994, about the same as the previous year. No statistics are available on the level of hate crimes and incidents at high schools, but Cooper said that in the past two years she has heard increasing reports of hate flyers being stuffed in students’ lockers, violent confrontations and graffiti.