Orange County Voices : COMMENTARY ON HATE CRIMES : Is It a Fanatic Few Who Are ‘Anti,’ or Our Society at Large? : It may be easier to explain ugly incidents as unrepresentative--but the more they happen the harder that is to buy.

As I listen to the play of my children in the background and hear an occasional “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” I wonder if hate is just a normal part of growing up, something that we say, but don’t really mean. I think also of all of the times when I think, or even say to my friends or colleagues, I hate this or that, with real feeling.

When swastikas were painted on the walls of a synagogue in Westminster, some asked if hate crime is really just kids looking for attention. Youth acting out in the most outrageous way they can imagine, seizing the most odious symbols without even understanding what they stand for. Surely they are not little Nazis intent on exterminating millions of people they consider inferior, or a threat.

When vicious, nasty, racist anti-Latino flyers were distributed at schools in Newport, Laguna and Capistrano several weeks ago, many assumed that it was probably done by people from outside the school, outside the community--not from here. We wanted to believe that this hateful behavior was not from within, it must have been perpetrated by “outsiders.” We all know that “outsiders” bring all sorts of evil into our midst. They are responsible for the decline of our economy. They are responsible for the slipping academic standards in our schools. They are responsible for the growing violence in our neighborhoods. They are responsible for the breakdown in the moral fabric of our county, state and country.

When an African American student at Saddleback College was repeatedly threatened with racist notes, people asked if this was the work of a madman, certainly not coming from one of our normal students--certainly not indicative of the mainstream.

When anti-gay literature was distributed in Fountain Valley, we wanted to believe that it was just a disagreement over a religious issue, that no one would actually act out these hateful expressions.

When anti-Asian epithets were painted on the library elevator walls at UC Irvine, we assumed that the perpetrators were not university students in the library to study, but instead probably were non-students looking for trouble.

But when a handsome, popular, athletic high school student and his friends from the beautiful middle-class suburban city of San Clemente got together and traveled to Laguna Beach in an area frequented by gay men and jumped a man they presumed to be gay, and beat him beyond recognition, within an inch of his life . . . we could no longer comfort ourselves with the thought that this hate was not a part of the very fabric of our community.

When that young man initiated that vicious attack:

What was the responsibility of his friends who stood by and did nothing to stop this heinous act?

What was the responsibility of his parents for the attitude this young person had about a fellow human being?

What was the responsibility of the neighbors who interacted with this young man as he developed his values toward different people?

What was the responsibility of his teachers and schools to teach him to value diversity and respect all people?

What was the responsibility of the Orange County Human Relations Commission to prevent this hate from taking seed and growing in our county?

What is your responsibility to get involved in protecting those who are vilified, teaching respect through all of the institutions that you participate in, holding accountable opportunists who preach hate to galvanize their followers, supporting human relations institutions to move us toward a future where we are brought together in our rich diversity, not torn apart by our differences.

Among the 180 hate-related incidents that the Orange County Human Relations Commission documented in 1993, there were considerable reasons for concern:

* White supremacist literature was distributed in lockers at high schools all over the county.

* The offices of the Jewish Family Services had their windows shattered and swastikas painted in 2-foot-high red letters on their walls.

* Death epithets against Latinos were painted on a high school.

* An African American woman had a truckload of white men yell racial epithets and fire three shots.

* A bar had a Molotov cocktail thrown at it by a person who drove by yelling anti-gay slurs.

* A Vietnamese American woman was assaulted in a parking lot by three men who berated her with obscene anti-Asian epithets as they surrounded and pushed her around.

* A white victim was shot and robbed by an African American who told a friend he was going to get “whitey.”

The overall number of incidents was down slightly and incidents against African Americans and Asians were down significantly, but incidents against gays and Jews were up.

These statistics are the result of the collaboration of every law enforcement agency in the county and hate crime victim groups in the Hate Crime Network. We are as a community doing better in responding to hate crimes.

We must as a community now focus on prevention. We must look at the way in which the vilification of elements of our community, if unchecked, unleashes our fringes with a violent vengeance. We must examine the standards of behavior that we accept in dealing with people who we just don’t believe the same as. We must look at our communal responsibility for educating all with whom we come into contact.