Racial Relations

As the story goes, the East Coast Crips robbed a Florencia 13 drug connection of a large quantity of dope nearly a decade ago. Since then, the tale of how a black street gang ripped off a Latino rival has taken on mythic proportions. But to this day police are uncertain if the fabled heist ever occurred. "You hear so many different variations of this crime," said Terry Burgin, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang detective. "Who knows what really happened?

Shoot, shoot. Shoot the Boer. Shoot, shoot. Shoot the Boer. Shoot, shoot. -- From an apartheid-era song revived recently by African National Congress youth leader Julius Malema :: It was a terrible week for race relations in South Africa. Exhibit A: A photo of a bloody tooth of slain white supremacist Eugene TerreBlanche knocked out during his killing, splashed across front pages of newspapers. Exhibit B: The expensive court battle on whether the song calling for the killing of Boers, referring to white farmers, is hate speech or a noble part of the history of liberation from a racist regime.

Rock 'n' roll is in the hot seat again. Call it media hype or justifiable outrage, but an acrimonious debate is raging over whether hard-rock heavyweights Guns N' Roses--as well as rap idols Public Enemy and speed-metal kings Slayer--are promoting bigotry and hatred. Guns N' Roses has been under fire for a host of inflammatory lyrics in its song "One in a Million," which uses derogatory epithets to describe blacks and gays.

The UC San Diego student reportedly responsible for hanging a noose last week in a campus library issued a public, but anonymous, apology Monday and said she had no racist motivation. The noose's discovery set off protests at a school that is already tense from recent racially charged episodes and triggered condemnations from UC leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a letter published Monday on the front page of the UC San Diego student newspaper, the Guardian, the student wrote that the incident was "a mindless act and stupid mistake" and was not meant to recall the lynching of blacks.

Race has bedeviled this country from the start, when the Founding Fathers ducked the slavery issue for fear of killing the nation in its cradle. Obviously, much has changed. For one thing, Americans are seriously weighing the prospect of elevating a black man to the White House in November. But as this past week's debate over "the race card" illustrates, there is still no subject in American politics as fraught as the color of a candidate's skin.

QUANELL X stared confidently into the television camera and told a heart-tugging tale about the frail man sitting by his side: Dennis Garnier was roughed up and disrespected, all because police didn't have their facts straight. A SWAT team burst into his house and hogtied him. It had the wrong address; the drug dealer lived a few doors down. Garnier has suffered memory loss and has become so scared of guns that he can't work as a security guard anymore.

A newly issued series of postage stamps showing a once-popular black comic book character with exaggerated thick lips has reignited controversy over racial attitudes in Mexico, six weeks after President Vicente Fox was forced to apologize for remarks perceived as insensitive toward black Americans. The five new stamps show a cartoon figure named Memin Pinguin, a picaresque urban child who gets by on wits and moxie, that has been one of Mexico's best-selling comic book characters.

When a black teen-ager was killed in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn last summer after a run-in with a gang of whites, mayoral candidate David N. Dinkins made it clear what New York should expect from its top leader: "The tone and climate of the city does get set at City Hall." The perception that Dinkins could soothe racial tensions was probably the single biggest force behind his election as New York's first black mayor.

Blacks and whites together. Has the eruption of violence in Los Angeles altered the way people of different races deal with one another? Yes, said Kate Rubin, a 33-year-old law clerk who was riding in an elevator Thursday night with a primly dressed black woman leaving work in a Woodland Hills office tower. "I wanted to say hello," Rubin said. But she was hesitant because she remembered the hostility between racial groups after the riots in her hometown of Detroit in 1967.

Sometimes, in his off hours, Yie Eun-woong does a bit of investigative work. He uses the Internet and other means to track personal data and home addresses of foreign English teachers across South Korea. Then he follows them, often for weeks at a time, staking out their apartments, taking notes on their contacts and habits. He wants to know whether they're doing drugs or molesting children. Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else.

A UC San Diego student admitted Friday to hanging a rope noose from a campus library bookcase in an act that triggered more protests at a school already roiled by other recent racially charged incidents. Angry students responded to the incident by storming and occupying the office of UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. The sit-in continued for about six hours Friday and ended without arrests, and a sympathy protest at UCLA lasted about an hour, officials said. UC San Diego police confirmed that the student contacted them Friday morning and acknowledged responsibility for placing the noose the night before on a lamp fixture atop a seventh-floor bookcase in the campus' main library.

A student walkout Wednesday disrupted a UC San Diego teach-in that was intended to promote tolerance in the wake of two recent racially charged incidents. Many of those involved said the protest showed how difficult it will be for the beachside campus to overcome long-standing concerns about the small number of African American students enrolled there. More than 1,200 students, faculty and staff packed an auditorium in the student center for the teach-in, which campus administrators organized in response to the incidents, including an off-campus party Feb. 15 that mocked Black History Month.

UC San Diego leaders and civil rights activists have condemned a student party that mocked Black History Month with a ghetto-themed "Compton Cookout." Campus administrators said Wednesday that they were investigating whether the off-campus party, held Monday, and its Facebook invitation violated the university's code of conduct and whether its sponsors should be disciplined. Members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were identified as among the organizers, but the fraternity president has criticized the event and said his club did not sponsor it. In an e-mail to students and staff, UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said the party showed "blatant disregard of our campus values."

The growth of charter schools has promoted segregation both in California and nationwide, increasing the odds that black, Latino and white students will attend class with fewer children who look different from themselves, according to two new studies. Charter school advocates contend that the researchers' presumptions about racial separation are out of date. They said parents -- including low-income minority parents -- are turning to charters for a quality education that traditional schools have not provided.

Sometimes, in his off hours, Yie Eun-woong does a bit of investigative work. He uses the Internet and other means to track personal data and home addresses of foreign English teachers across South Korea. Then he follows them, often for weeks at a time, staking out their apartments, taking notes on their contacts and habits. He wants to know whether they're doing drugs or molesting children. Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else.

A Santa Clarita councilman's shout-out at a recent anti-illegal immigration rally that he is a "proud racist" has ignited an angry war of words in a suburban community over whether the longtime civic leader is a hatemonger who should be driven from office or a patriot unafraid to speak out for fellow Americans. Bob Kellar, a veteran councilman and two-time mayor, said his words have been taken out of context, but he declined to offer an apology at a City Council meeting Tuesday night.

Like Henry Louis Gates Jr., they are professionals, men of status and achievement who have excelled in a nation that once shunned black men. And for many of them, their only shock -- upon learning of the celebrated scholar's recent run-in with police -- was the moment of recognition. They know too well the pivotal moment Gates faced at his Massachusetts home.

Despite widely reported fears of violence, there has been no upsurge in attacks against Asian inmates in the Los Angeles County Jail system since they were returned to the general population in late January after a decade of protective separation. The inmates were segregated in 1994 after the Mexican Mafia placed a "green light" on some Asian gang members -- authorizing Latino gangs to target them for beatings and stabbings, according to Capt.

Hawa Farah was living in Minneapolis three years ago making $8 an hour at a bakery when her fiance, Hussein Hussein, got a call about good jobs that paid better. So the couple, like many Somali immigrants who follow work around the country, headed 600 miles southwest to Nebraska, state slogan: "The Good Life." They settled in Grand Island, a blue-collar railroad town on the flat Midwestern prairie. They got married and brightened their worn apartment with plastic flowers and colorful rugs.

Aaron Glimme's Advanced Placement chemistry students straggle in, sleepy. It is 7:30 a.m. at Berkeley High School. The day doesn't officially begin for another hour. They pull on safety goggles, measure out t-butyl alcohol and try to determine the molar mass of an unknown substance by measuring how much its freezing point decreases. In the last school year, 82% of Berkeley's AP chemistry students passed the rigorous exam, which gives college credit for high school work. The national passing rate is 55.2%.