Soon after I transferred into Hilo High from Los Angeles, the teacher was called out of the room and another student came to my seat and launched a barrage of pidgin at me that I understood little of except for "f------ haole."

It didn't particularly bother me; where I'd come from, I was used to being called a "f------ Jew," or worse, and I'd developed a pretty thick skin. At least in Hilo, those who knew what a Jew was didn't seem to care.

Like anybody else, I view the utterance of a racial slur in the vicious beating of a military couple in Waikele by a father and son through the lens of my own experiences.

I'm struck by the raw nerves exposed as the furor still rages well over a month after the fact, with two articles discussing the matter in this Sunday's newspaper.

The wide range of opinion is fascinating, from legalistic dissertations to passionate emotionalism.

Among Caucasians, some want to make a federal case of it, particularly those who exploit racial discord to fight against Native Hawaiian political rights in Washington. It's hard to take seriously haoles who think name-calling against them compares to apartheid in South Africa or the oppression of American blacks held in slavery.

On the other extreme, Caucasians who aspire to blend in with the local culture meekly shrug off racial insults as the price of getting by. Should they have to?

Reaction among locals ranges from a sense that haoles are overly sensitive and "ask for it," to a more benign view that, "Yeah, racial slurs are deplorable, but there are about 10,000 things in the world I find more deplorable."

That would be fair, except if a Caucasian uttered a racial epithet at a member of another ethnic group accompanied by that particular adjective, it would fly up the list of deplorable things.

To me, it's a very personal matter that has more to do with how I treat others than how they treat me.

I love Hawai'i's ethnic diversity and consider it worthy of celebration. I enjoy good-natured racial ribbing and self-effacing humor practiced by artists like Frank DeLima.

But any racial slurs intended to be hurtful are unacceptable to me, especially when they affect kids who suffer enough angst growing up without having to deal with ugly prejudice. Racial antagonism that results in people being beaten unconscious needs the sternest attention of the law.

I was raised in a family of Jewish immigrants forced out of Russia, Germany and Poland. My grandparents and parents worked jobs like horn players, hairdressers, taxi drivers, hotel maids and nannies to the babies of the rich. My family never oppressed anybody.

We were occasionally targets of racial and religious bile, but our ethic was that we learned from the hurt and never directed offensive racial remarks at others.

My grandmother's lectures on tolerance and respect, especially, took with me. As a young boy, I gave a severe tongue lashing to an adult relative who referred to Chinese food with a racially insensitive term. I went to the mat with a union leader who directed a racial slur at one of my supervisors (not a Caucasian). I took one of my favorite nephews to the woodshed for making a jungle reference about a black athlete.

My bottom line is that people who have nothing better going than to judge themselves and others by race and other superficial circumstances of birth have proven to be some of the biggest losers I've known.

Those who can't see the individual beyond stereotypes and generalizations seldom command my attention, and never my respect.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.