The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial : Furor in Black and White : Apologies Are Issued for Diamond Bar School Paper’s Fuhrman Cartoon

A student newspaper cartoon intended to satirize former LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman has provoked outrage among a vocal group of predominantly African American students and parents in Diamond Bar.

The cartoon, which ran last Friday in Diamond Bar High School’s Bull’s Eye, was entitled “Fuhrman 4 Mayor” and included a truncated racial epithet that left some readers wondering if racial insensitivity is still as prevalent as ever, despite years of desegregation.

The cartoon, which ran above a student editorial condemning racism in the Los Angeles Police Department, has elicited written apologies from school administrators to students, parents and staff and touched off a flurry of meetings to discuss the issue of race on campus and in the city.

Joe Moran, faculty adviser for the student paper, said he reviewed the cartoon before its publication and saw nothing wrong with it. “The intent is to be anti-Fuhrman, anti-racist,” he said. “It’s a question of misinterpretation.”

But some African American parents called for Moran’s dismissal and said the cartoon is symptomatic of problems throughout the school.

At an emotional Wednesday night meeting attended by Walnut Valley Unified School District Supt. Ron Hockwalt, a group of about 75 parents, led by the area’s Council of African American Parents, alleged a pattern of racial insensitivity in the school district and in the area.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Diamond Bar resident Robert Waters. “This is the last straw.”

Waters said he moved to Diamond Bar from South-Central Los Angeles in 1987 to give his two children a shot at a quality education, away from gang violence and drugs. But what he and other African American families found, Waters said, was an “enclave of bigotry.”

“You make sacrifices for your children so they don’t have to go through some of the things you went through,” he said. “And then you have to confront racism.”

Past examples are plentiful, parents say.

On Sunday afternoon, Waters said, a carload of high-school-age boys yelled racial epithets at three black teen-agers on Diamond Bar Boulevard. At Diamond Bar High last school year, Waters said one teacher slapped an African American boy and another slid a desk across the floor at a black girl, leaving her with a scarred heel.

In the slapping incident, Waters said, the teacher denied hitting the boy intentionally. Hockwalt said the other incident was not racially motivated.

At Wednesday’s meeting, where parents addressed a panel of three white administrators, the stories grew personal. One father said he had removed his son from Diamond Bar High School because teachers would not treat him like everyone else. Another man, fighting back tears, said he was sorry he never believed his son, who had told him how hard it was to be a black male student in the school.

African American boys, the parents said, regularly receive lower grades than their sisters and are more likely to be considered discipline problems in the district.

“We all know what’s wrong,” Waters said.

The latest controversy began last Friday at lunch, when students picked up copies of the monthly student newspaper and began to talk about the cartoon. A small group of students gathered for their regular meeting of a club called the Interracial Unity Organization, but conversation turned to the cartoon. Later that day, students brought their concerns to counselors and administrators. Then students took the paper home to show their parents.

This week, administrators, including Hockwalt and Principal Robert Corkrum, issued written public apologies and scrambled to set up a schedule of meetings. One of the letters called the slur “most offensive to us all” and offered “our strongest public apologies.” An open letter from Corkrum offered an apology not only for the controversial cartoon but also for another cartoon about the English-as-a-second-language program that ran in the same issue. That cartoon raised no apparent outcry.

In Diamond Bar and Walnut, the ethnic makeup has shifted dramatically since the early 1980s, but the school district has lagged behind in hiring nonwhites. Asian American students now narrowly outnumber white students in the 15-school district, but the district’s staff has remained 85% white. Black students make up nearly 6% of the district, while about 3% of the district staff is black, according to district figures.

Hockwalt said he recognized that the school, like others throughout Southern California, has an ongoing problem of racial insensitivity. He said he plans to do all he can to remedy it.

Brenda Henson, an African American who teaches English at Diamond Bar High and whose son was a student there, said racial insensitivity is “in the fabric” of the school.

“My son was one of the good blacks,” Henson said. “He was quarterback on the football team. We pick two or three African American students and elevate them so that we can believe we aren’t prejudiced.”

Diamond Bar Mayor Phyllis Papen said she had not seen the student paper’s cartoon but had heard about it. “I’m surprised at the insensitivity,” Papen said. “I’m disappointed. We like to think of our community like a mosaic. It’s no longer a melting pot.”

The newspaper staff, which is predominantly Asian American, issued 2,700 copies of an apology letter to students Wednesday, faculty adviser Moran said. “I’m sympathetic to anyone who takes offense seeing the word,” Moran said. “[But] the word is associated with Mark Fuhrman, and I don’t know how you can do anything about Mark Fuhrman without using the word.”

Waters, however, saw it differently.

“You do not use the word n----- in 1995,” he said. “Journalistic freedom aside, no one has the right to insult a race of people.”