Meeting Tackles Issues Sparked by L.A. Riot

Bringing ethnic, religious and gender differences to the County Hall of Administration, a cross-section of San Diegans began a sweeping discussion of race, hate and what county government should do to prevent the anger that led to upheavals in Los Angeles last month.

Out of the meeting came a series of recommendations on how to improve human relations and come down harder on hate crimes.

Representatives from more than two dozen groups--including the Anti-Defamation League, Chicano Federation, Police Chiefs’ and Sheriffs’ Assn., news media companies and the White Aryan Resistance--came to the hearing Tuesday before the Board of Supervisors. The conference was convened by Supervisor Leon Williams, the board’s lone member of color.

Williams said he began organizing the hearing as rioting in Los Angeles spilled into the second day. About 100 people came to the conference, titled “Hate Crimes and Race Relations in the Aftermath of the the Rodney King Jury Verdict.”

The number of groups represented was exceeded only by the number of issues raised. Some speakers railed against terms used regularly to refer to people of color, such as “illegal alien” and “minority.”

Others called for tougher sentences for crimes motivated by racial or religious intolerance.

Still others lamented that artists of color are shortchanged when city and county cultural grants are handed out.

What exactly supervisors sought from the townhall-like meeting was not clear. At the least, it served as a sounding board for groups who feel excluded from government.

The discussion gave a sense of the enormity of the discrimination facing people of color, gays and lesbians and minority religious groups, said Francine Williams, an administrator working on race relations in San Diego Unified School District. It also indicated how deeply racial attitudes have taken root.

“Racism today is not for the most part as overt as it has been in the past,” Williams said. “But its subtle nature can lead society to a complacency that we can ill afford.”

The under-counting of hate crimes may help foster a sense of complacency, said Margaret Iwanaga Penrose, executive director of the Union of Pan-Asian Communities.

Penrose said language and cultural barriers may prevent immigrants from reporting attacks based on hate. Unfamiliarity with how police record hate crimes may discourage their disclosure because victims fear retaliation, Penrose said.

“Sometimes it’s a matter of asking the right question the right way,” Penrose said.

The Board of Supervisors voted to adopt a series of recommendations to improve human relations and fight hate crimes:

* The county is to review “purchasing, investments and legislation which impact race and human relations in San Diego County.”

* Programs to raise sensitivity to race and human relations are to be established.

* A letter will be sent to “public and private entities, including those contracting with or doing business with the county,” encouraging them to adopt a race and human relations strategy.

In a hallway after the hearing, Tom Metzger, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who lives in Fallbrook, said the board was “posturing” with its concerns about race relations.

“This isn’t real leadership,” Metzger said. “. . . They are trying to figure out how to make people feel good so they don’t trash this city like they did Los Angeles.”