10 Suspended in Racial Fracas at High School : Conflict: Cafeteria brawl at Aliso Viejo involved white supremacist and African American gangs, district official says.

Ten students were suspended from Aliso Niguel High School on Thursday after a racially charged incident that culminated in a brawl involving at least 20 students, most from white supremacist and African American gangs, authorities said.

School officials said late Thursday that they expect another 10 students to be suspended today and plan to recommend expulsions for at least three from the entire group, pending school board approval.

The trouble began last Friday night at a McDonald’s restaurant in Laguna Niguel, where members of an African American gang began taunting their white counterparts with gang-like “hand signs,” according to Tom Anthony of the Capistrano Unified School District.

The signs “are a come-on--a way of communicating that there’s going to be a fight,” said Anthony, the district’s assistant superintendent for secondary schools. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

Actual fighting, however, did not take place until Wednesday, when the conflict moved to the grounds of the high school. Around 11:45 a.m. in the school lunchroom, members of the Vandals, a white supremacist gang, began throwing pieces of fruit at members of the Brothers United Cartel, the African American gang, Anthony said.

The fracas involved what he termed an equal number “of white and black kids,” noting that most but not all are gang members. School officials called the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which made no arrests. No weapons were involved, investigators said, but two students with minor cuts were treated at a local hospital.

A 16-year-old junior at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity, witnessed the clash, which she called “incredibly unpleasant, vicious. . . . It took the proctors, the adults at our school who regulate fights, 10 minutes to even show up.”

Anthony said the disturbance lasted no longer than “30 seconds, tops,” but students interviewed on the grounds of the sprawling campus Thursday afternoon strongly disagreed, and most blamed the white skinheads for starting the trouble.

The fight “was at least 10 minutes,” the 16-year-old said. “It started with a white kid throwing fruit and the black kid yelling, ‘Who’s throwing that. . . ?’ He said something like, ‘If somebody throws it again, I’ll start something,’ and then he did.

“His friends got involved, and then the other kid’s friends, and pretty soon, they were standing on tabletops, screaming and doing some pretty heavy fighting. They were punching each other in the face with their fists, and some were slapping each other really hard. It was really ugly.”

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Regina Jones, 36, the mother of a freshman at the school, reacted angrily to the news Thursday that her son--who she said is neither a gang member nor a violent person--was one of those suspended.

Jones, who is African American, said her son was “eating lunch, minding his own business,” when a white student, “a skinhead, knocked his glasses off and started hitting him. What I want to know is, why was my son suspended for defending himself?”

The mother said she was told by witnesses that the skinheads started the disturbance, “which I wouldn’t call a simple fight.” She disagreed with school officials about the number of students involved, as well as the racial breakdown.

“I hear it was more like 30 skinheads and 11 black kids--who were minding their own business,” Jones said. “There were way more skinheads. This really upsets me. I send my kid to school thinking he’ll be completely safe--from skinheads or anyone else.”

Anthony, the school district official, said, “It was 10 students from each side, 20 in all,” but declined comment on the allegations involving Jones’ son or whether he was even involved, citing confidentiality.

Among the students suspended or facing suspension, the school listed 11 whites, seven African Americans, two Latinos and one “Persian,” the only female involved. One student videotaped the entire fight, “and we’re trying to get our hands on the tape to gain an even sharper knowledge of what really went on,” Anthony said.

The incident at the school apparently spilled over into Laguna Niguel on Wednesday night, when sheriff’s deputies were called to an apartment complex. There, two students involved in the lunchroom incident--one white, the other black--”began assaulting one another,” Lt. Dan Martini, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, said Thursday.

“No other people were involved, and neither was arrested or injured,” Martini said. “The incident Wednesday night and the lunchroom incident appear to center around two students.”

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School officials decided Thursday to suspend the two students, one from each gang, whom Anthony labeled the primary instigators. Later in the day, eight more were added to the list. Because the students are minors, no names were released.

The incident revealed what Anthony called “the rapidly changing demographics of south Orange County” and its growing number of school-based, teen-age gangs. He said school officials are aware of at least 13 operating in the Capistrano district alone.

“Because of kids moving in from outside Orange County and from northern Orange County, and because of new housing developments in South County, it’s changing drastically,” he said. “We’re concerned and are working constantly with local authorities on gang suppression.”

Anthony said he’s most concerned with the rise of white supremacist, or skinhead, gangs. “They potentially represent a huge population,” he said.

Joyce Greenspan, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County and Long Beach, said the skinhead problem “is not huge in terms of numbers” but is growing more worrisome because hate crimes and related incidents are occurring with greater regularity.

“It’s an in-your-face kind of issue, and it’s definitely in the schools, more so all the time in South County,” Greenspan said. “Principals in schools down there seem to be increasingly concerned.”

With Orange County’s African American population at 2.5%, Greenspan said a “clear antagonism often exists between the black students and these skinhead students.” The black population at Laguna Niguel High School is even less than that of the county: 1.8%, or 29 students, according to figures supplied by the school district.

The racial breakdown of other minority groups at Laguna Niguel High School is as follows: American Indian/Alaska Native, seven students; Asian American, 118; Pacific Islanders, three; Filipino, 27; Hispanic, 118, and white, 1,351.