THE KING CASE AFTERMATH : Youths Stare Into the Face of Bias Every Day : Prejudice: Many teen-agers who grew up in Ventura County say they are bombarded by messages of fear and intolerance.

Ask Ventura High School student Ramon Tellez, 19, if there’s racism around him and he says yes, there’s plenty of it.

“Four months ago, a guy tried to beat me up,” said Tellez, a Mexican immigrant. “He was calling me ‘wetback,’ he was telling me to go back to my country, all that kind of stuff. He was just looking to make trouble.”

Ask Simi Valley High School student Renee Wargnier, 16, and she delivers the same answer.

Some adults are very prejudiced, said the blond, blue-eyed sophomore.

“It’s very unfortunate, but that’s a decision they made,” she said. “I’m not that way--I’ve dated black kids. It’s up to us to persuade past and future generations that racism is a bad thing.”

In the wake of the not-guilty verdicts for four police officers in the beating of Rodney G. King, local officials and civic leaders have gone out of their way to defend Ventura County from charges of racism.

“The most important thing I want to emphasize is that the Rodney King verdict is not necessarily representative of Simi Valley or this county, and much less of our kids,” said Simi Valley High Principal David L. Ellis.

But many teen-agers who have grown up in this county say their upbringing has been far from colorblind. They see color-consciousness on the playground, in the grocery store, in their own homes. In subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways, they are bombarded by messages of fear, suspicion and even intolerance.

“Right here we have a lot of Filipinos,” said Sandra Lemus, 18, a Latina who attends Channel Islands High School in Oxnard. “You get a lot of Filipinos against blacks and Latinos because they (Filipinos) are the majority.

“Today we’re preparing our Cinco de Mayo celebration, and only a few Filipinos are helping out,” she said. “When they celebrate their holidays, we all help out. But today, the only Filipinos doing any work are the ones who are forced by the teachers.”

Michael Bui’s parents are Vietnamese, and he doesn’t have many Vietnamese-American classmates at Channel Islands High School. So on most recesses and lunch breaks he finds himself hanging out with Filipinos.

“It’s nothing racial,” he said. “I have white and black friends, but they don’t like to hang out with me because they get teased. I don’t take it personally. The school is full of cliques, and everybody likes to hang out with their clique.”

Bui doesn’t quite understand why his Filipino classmates accept him more readily--the question takes him by surprise.

“I don’t know, I guess. . . . I guess it’s inside you. It’s in your blood,” he said. “If it’s easier being with them, it must be something in your blood.”

Leandro Luna is an athletic 18-year-old Ventura High School student who loves to practice football, basketball, baseball and soccer.

He just wishes he didn’t spend so much time watching his classmates from the sidelines.

“It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re just never at their level,” Luna said, referring to his predominantly white classmates.

Luna, who was born in Tepic, Mexico, insists there is nothing wrong with his skills. He can play with the best of them. Yet his classmates simply don’t like to pick Mexicans when they choose teams, he says.

Luna is especially upset about not being picked for the soccer teams; it’s a sport he has practiced all his life.

“In the end, all of us Mexicans end up forming our own team and we always beat them,” he said, smiling at the thought of his revenge.

Tammy Ward, 18, said she understands what’s happening in Los Angeles. Like other African-Americans, she said she shares the rage of a race that sees a system stacked against it.

“Its the anger, the frustration of living in a society that is unjust,” the Channel Islands High School student said. The black community, she said, “is like a wounded dog that bites your hand, taking out the frustrations on anyone.”

Ask her if she knows what racism is and she sharpens her focus with an intensity that belies her youth.

“You can’t pinpoint one thing--racism is undercover, especially here in Oxnard,” Ward said. “You may know a person all your life, and then you find out he’s prejudiced.”

Ward said she can sense a feeling of suspicion when she walks into her neighborhood grocery store, which happens to be owned by Koreans.

“You can feel it. You walk into the store and they think you are going to steal something.”

Mike Esperanca has dark skin and a Spanish-sounding surname, but he said he doesn’t hang out with Latinos.

Not that it bothers him to be taken for a Latino, he said.

“But I’m mostly Spanish and French. I like to be considered European.”

Jahvar Harris, 16, is black and wears his Malcolm X baseball cap with pride, even though he lives in Simi Valley. He said he encounters racism often, and it’s only getting worse.

“Sometimes I’m around . . . white students and they start talking like blacks,” he said. “They think it’s funny. I feel bad; I don’t understand how they can be so racist.”

Mike Paugh, 15, said that because he is of Japanese descent he has also experiences his share of racism at Simi Valley High.

“I’ve felt it,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of white power people come up to me and say, ‘You don’t belong here, this is white pride.’ I get angry and want to hit them, but in the end I ignore them.”