EDITORIAL

The news that a heinous, deplorable hate crime allegedly happened

earlier this month in Huntington Beach has rightly raised a collective

cry of anger and resolution among city leaders, school officials and

activists.

It was a familiar story: Three teenagers accused of beating a man of

Filipino descent while taunting him with ethnic slurs and other racist

comments. Given the city’s sad history -- white supremacist gangs in the

80s, murders and scores of hate crimes in the 90s -- it was actually an

all-too familiar one.

It is a story that needs to have a firm, immediate and decisive ending

now.

The cries of leaders pushing for more education about different

cultures and beliefs is a laudable start. Our schools, City Hall, our

police stations should be places where children -- and adults, certainly

as well -- learn tolerance for others and where any spark of racist hate

is quashed before it can flame into the motivation for despicable

violence.

But most of all, our homes need to be where hate is least tolerated.

What children learn from parents, from siblings or other family members

has a profound effect on their attitudes, their beliefs and their

actions. And all the “tolerance” education in the world will have little

sway when a parent is filling a house with hate.

Huntington Beach cannot afford and should not go back down the road it

was once on. We all have the power to ensure it does not.