BY BETTY JESPERSEN

Staff Writer

Thom Harnett recalls a fifth-grade student on a civil-rights advocacy team in a Mount Desert Island school. During a team discussion about images of black figures hanged by nooses recently in his community, the youth posed a simple question.

"Why does anybody really care about the color of anyone's skin? It's so stupid," the boy asked.

Harnett, who described the youth as racially mixed, said the child had stood during the middle of a discussion to ask a question that was heavy on his mind.

"It was so simple and so eloquent, and there was an enthusiastic round of applause from everyone in the room," said Harnett, who is the assistant attorney general for civil-rights enforcement and education for the state of Maine.

As the supervisor also of the 230 civil-rights teams across the state, Harnett said his office is reporting an uptick in calls from principals and teachers since Barack Obama was elected, and they're asking for help in dealing with racially motivated incidents and hate language.

"Some relate to the election of the country's first African-American president, but there are also the hate-filled individuals who see this as a moment to capitalize on their beliefs," Harnett said.

The two-dozen or so reported incidents in Maine include graffiti, effigies hanging from a noose or shot through with arrows or the now-infamous poster in a Standish general store that asked people to make a wager on the day Obama would be assassinated.

Then there are the countless unreported racial jokes and epithets that find their way into daily conversations.

There have been more than 200 hate-related incidents reported around the country, a record in modern presidential elections, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala.

"The same issues we are seeing in communities and schools in Maine are being seen nationwide," said Steven Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, based in Portland.

Wessler's office is working with the Maine Principals Association to set guidelines on ways to deal with the incidents, and to supply them to every school principal in Maine. He said he expects the number of incidents to accelerate as Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration approaches.

"The vast majority of students in Maine, like adults across the country, regardless of their political views, understand what an important moment this is in the history of our country -- to have an African-American man elected president," Wessler said.

Wessler was among the 150 people who gathered in Hallowell on Wednesday to speak out against what they believe to be a blatant sign of racism in Maine's smallest city. More than 20 red-and-black "KKK" signs -- an acronym for the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic militant group that advocates white supremacy -- were found under a Hallowell bridge and along the Kennebec River Rail Trail.

Wessler said racial incidents "have to do with a small minority of adults and young people who are expressing a level of racial prejudice that is totally unacceptable."

The school-based incidents being reported largely deal with language at this point. "But we know language presents a real risk of violence," Wessler said.

"If people are using words and nobody interrupts them, they get the message that it is acceptable and can take it to the next level. That can become violent if it is directed at somebody who gets upset," he said.

"We take the use of degrading language seriously," he said.

The language of disrespect mouthed by young people can usually be traced to the anger they hear from the adults in their lives, Wessler said.

"These words are not being generated out of thin air by teenagers. They are hearing them from adults who are so wired in their racial prejudices that they have stopped thinking about what is best for their community or country," he said.

Wessler said the acts of racial hatred surfacing in Maine following the elections are cowardly because they are done anonymously.

"That is a common element, as if they know they are acting disgracefully and know what they are doing is wrong," he said.

Twelve-year-old Gwenyth Fraser, an eighth grader at Carrie Ricker Middle School in Litchfield, is a new member of the school's civil-rights team, one of the state's founding teams 13 years ago.

She said the group is reading newspaper accounts and discussing the racial incidents. She called them eye-opening.

"It is appalling," she said.

Fraser has not heard racial epithets in school, which she believes is a credit to the atmosphere set by students and staff that hate words and bullying are not acceptable.

Lucy Rioux, the team's adviser and School Union No. 44's affirmative-action officer, said one incident she is aware of was dealt swiftly by the administration and was not repeated.

She said high school students on a school bus with young children on board started chanting, "Kill Obama."

"It really frightened the younger children," she said.

In many cases, she said there can be confusion over the meaning of "free speech."

"There are people who claim they have a 'right' to say what they want," she said.

But schools have the right to limit speech and request courtesy and consideration, one of the messages civil-rights team members promote, she said.

Harnett is pleased with the response from schools and the growing numbers of students on civil-rights teams who are setting examples to their peers and their communities.

"We need to hear more about kids doing the right thing," he said.

In the 13 years since the teams were launched in Maine, Harnett has worked with more than 100,000 students. This year, there are 5,000 students in 230 teams across the state. Since the elections, he and his staff have provided training for 150 teams in elementary to high schools.

The students learn about the power of language, the need for civility and personal respect and the importance of being role models of appropriate behavior, and they organize events to get the word out that prejudice and hateful language will not be tolerated.

"Silence is not an option, Harnett said. "If students don't feel capable of speaking up, we tell them to get an adult who will," he said.

Don't give up on challenging someone who uses racial, religious or sexual epithets -- advice just as apt for adults as well as children.

"If we give up, we are acquiescing," he said.

For more information, contact Harnett at 626-8897.

Betty Jespersen -- 778-6991

bjespersen@centralmaine.com