San Ramon Teens Recall Ugly Racial Fight at Skate Park

More details are emerging about an argument sparked by racial slurs at the San Ramon Skate Park, which triggered fights at California High School on Thursday.

Students at the park Monday said that on Tuesday last week, two days before the Cal High fights, several white youth, two boys and a girl, initiated a dispute with racial taunts aimed at a group of black girls. Witnesses said the boys left the park and returned a short time later hanging a noose from their car window and shouting, "White power."

No information was available Monday from the San Ramon Police Department.

None of the youths interviewed for this story were willing to allow their names to be used. They either expressed fears for their safety or did not want to be labeled a "snitch."

A 16-year-old Cal High sophomore said she and some friends were hanging out at the skate park Thursday near a bowl-shaped feature that skaters and bikers use to practice tricks.

Two boys were riding bikes in the bowl, she said. As they rode up the bowl's sides to its rim, they began to taunt her and her friends. It started with a repetition of the "N" word, then became more extreme. 

"They were saying, 'N-----, tie my shoes,' and 'N-----, lick my boots,'" the sophomore said Monday afternoon in the park. "People shouldn't use that word. I feel like I shouldn't be disrespected and called that. I shouldn't have to feel like a different species because of the color of my skin."

A Diablo Valley College student who watched the fight said the slurs got worse.

"I was standing between the two groups, and two boys who are known for being racist started calling the girls monkeys and making ape noises," said the 18-year-old, who lives near Dublin. 

The black girls responded, calling the boys "honkeys" and "crackers," he recalled.

"At first I thought he (one of the boys) was going to hit one of 'em," he said. "The kid came up on his bike like he was going to punch her in the face. The black girl was saying, 'Don't call me that.'"

One of the black girls then started to make phone calls, he said, and the boys left. A white girl who had been with them, and participated in the name calling, according to witnesses, stayed in the park alone. 

"She was calling them 'trashy a-- hoes,'" the college student said. Then the argument took a physical turn.

"I fought her," admitted the Cal High sophomore. "She started calling us n-----s, too. There was an altercation."

As the girls fought, the college student said he pulled them apart. The white girl left and, not long afterward, the two boys returned in a car.

"One guy drove by calling out, 'White power,'" he said. The group in the car followed the black girls as they walked west toward the basketball court. "They had a noose hanging out of their car window."

It didn't end there. There was a lot of talk at school on Wednesday, the sophomore girl said. Then, Thursday, someone called her "n-----" in the hall at school, which led to at least one fight on campus that day. 

While some students interviewed Monday near campus said they thought there were 11 fights, Principal Mark Corti said administrators only found evidence of three, and that the three were not related to each other. Corti received "a glancing blow" Thursday when one former Cal High student lost control as adults tried to separate her from a fight, said San Ramon Valley Unified School District spokesman Terry Koehne.

Since last week's fights, the sophomore girl said, a lot of white students have approached her and her friends to say, "We're not like that," "We don't want trouble" and "We're not racist." She just moved to San Ramon a month ago and most people, she said, seem nice enough. But that didn't dissolve the emotion she felt during last week's incident at the park. 

"It hurt a lot, what they said," she said. "As a foster kid, I have a lot of anger built up. I'm not going to let someone call me that. But I don't see any reason to tell the school. What's the school going to do?"

According to another boy at the park, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at Cal High, kids of all races hang out together in the park without problems. 

"Look around. There are kids who are Indian, black, Pacific Islander. That guy's from Iceland," he said.

He said there was nothing like a "turf issue" at the park, as district spokesman Koehne said last week.

"I know some of the kids from this event (last week)," the 10th-grader said. "And they were purely just being malicious."

Cal High will hold a voluntary "town hall" style event Friday to allow students to air their views about last week's violence, said Principal Corti. For more information, call 925-803-3200.

Stay tuned to Patch for more information later this week about the fights at school, Cal High's response and how students perceive race relations on campus.