Corroding Liberty With Hate

If only one outbreak of racial, ethnic or religious bigotry had occurred in Los Angeles County’s public schools last year, it would be too many. But the more than 1,000 such incidents reported last week in a study by the county’s Human Relations Commission and Office of Education constitute an unacceptable affront not only to the victims, but also to the conscience of the community at large.

The events reported ranged in severity from physical assaults to verbal taunts. And, apparently, hate is an equal-opportunity tormentor: While black students were the most frequent targets of racial animosity and Jews most often the victims of religious bigotry, numerous crimes and harassing incidents also were inflicted on Latinos, Anglos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, immigrants, gays and lesbians. Thirty-seven percent of the schools surveyed reported their students had experienced such events. That figure may well understate the problem, since slightly more than one-third of the county’s 1,570 campuses did not respond to the researchers’ request for information. Because the report is the first in U.S. history to focus solely on schools it also is impossible to fix its findings firmly in a historical context.

Whatever their broader import, the disturbing implications of these specific facts will be discussed next January at a gathering of school administrators, county officials and other interested parties. That meeting should produce plans to attack this unacceptable situation not only as a discipline problem, but also as an instructional challenge that cannot be avoided.

Over the past decade, communal relations across America have coarsened. There is a noticeable increase in people’s--particularly young people’s--willingness to tolerate intolerance in everything from politics to pop music. While schools do not bear the sole burden of arresting this trend, their responsibility in the matter is pivotal.

There is no guarantee that a free society will necessarily be a decent one. Freedom is, to borrow the Scholastic philosophers’ elegant formulation--nothing more the ability to choose as one should. Failure to ensure that America’s children understand their obligation to choose respect for the humanity of others over the corrosive indulgence of hatred makes the bequest of liberty itself a sterile thing indeed.