Searching for Lessons in Jefferson High Melee

Sandy Banks:

They had been milling around for an hour in the sun, 2,000 restless, agitated teens packed onto Jefferson High's football field, waiting for the earthquake drill to end and lunch to begin. When the bell rang they rushed the gates, shoving, elbowing, knocking classmates aside.

In the crush, two black girls began tussling over a cellphone or a boy, or maybe a boy's cellphone.

As school police officers dug them out of the center of a heckling crowd, a Latino boy launched a milk carton across the quad. It landed in a group of black football players.

"Who threw the milk carton?" one demanded, confronting the Latino boys.

"Go back to Africa!" was one shouted response.

The entire quad erupted in fights.

In that brief moment, a food fight became a race riot. And in the days and weeks that followed, racial skirmishes on this and other Southern California campuses unmasked a current of racial tension that has alarmed law enforcement and school officials.

The Jefferson fight was over in less than 20 minutes. But for two months after that April 14 battle, Jefferson's black and Latino students faced off in spontaneous skirmishes, orchestrated beatings and at least two more large-scale melees. Twenty-five students were arrested, three hospitalized and dozens suspended or transferred. Hundreds more stayed away from classes, and those who showed up did so with fear.

"I'm scared even to go to class," said 16-year-old Keiana Scott, as she stood on the lawn outside school a few days after the second lunchtime brawl. One of only about 300 blacks among the school's more than 3,800 students, Keiana warily eyed a passing group of Latino schoolmates. "I've got to look over my shoulder every five minutes to see if somebody's about to whup me," she said.

The unrest comes at a time when Los Angeles has emerged as a national symbol of racial cooperation. A coalition of black, Latino and white voters in May elected Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles's first Latino mayor since the city's pioneer days.

But the confrontations between blacks and Latinos, which have struck campuses from the South Bay to the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley, suggest that stubborn cultural differences, racially charged gang feuds and social and economic competition can combine to cleave Southern Californians along unexpected racial lines.

"This is not just at one school, and it's not just kid stuff," said Khalid Shah, whose Stop the Violence Increase the Peace foundation has been working for years to broker truces between warring black and Latino gangs in the Inglewood area.

"There's a rise in community violence as it relates to blacks and Latinos, and that is seeping into our schools. When you start seeing large groups of one race fighting against a group of the other race, we can't, as a city, afford to ignore it."

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