Some Skinheads Resent Racist Rap -- Nonracists Are Proud Of Origins, Tidiness, Jobs And Their Haircuts

Late into the night, skinheads in a house near Northgate stomped to the oldies, the old record player in the living room playing ska, a music similar in its Jamaican roots to reggae but more kinetic in its rhythm.

The music was startling because it wasn't the let's-bash-this-desecrate-that head-banging you might expect skinheads to be listening to.

Many of the songs were actually sort of sappy. They were simple skinhead-boy-meets-skinhead-girl songs, with lyrics like: "I told her `I like your braces and your blue jeans'/ She said, `I like your broken nose'/ It's a skinhead love affair."

Yet they were sung mostly by black groups in thick Jamaican or British accents, and it was the music of the original skinheads who emerged in England in the 1960s.

The youths at the party, aged between 16 and 27, consider themselves disciples of those early skinheads. They adhere to the old skinhead beliefs, which included being street-tough and working for a living. The old skinhead ways did not include racism.

Indeed, the mix of the 20 or so young people at the party might seem contrary to the image of skinheads as seig heiling young Nazis.

There were whites, an African-American, a Korean, a Filipino and a woman of Mexican and Native-American ancestry, all with cropped hair and calling themselves skinheads.

"Obviously, I wouldn't be one of them if racism had to be a part of being a skinhead," said Jemal Williams, a 23-year-old

African-American man who used to live in Stone Mountain, Ga., home of an annual Klu Klux Klan rally.

He said that, over the years, racists have twisted what being a skinhead means. And because only the racists have gotten media attention, skinheads have a bad name.

The skinheads of the old school say that about half of the skinheads in the Puget Sound area are nonracist like them. They don't consider white supremacists as skinheads at all. Instead, they call them "boneheads."

But by no means are traditional skinheads saints.

"We're angels with dirty faces," said Eric, a white skinhead who looked spiffy in a white tennis sweater and jeans, traditional skinhead wear. Eric usually wears a goofy grin, but tonight he was lamenting the absence of his new girlfriend.

She'd been arrested a few hours earlier by King County police, who said she wore spikes on her knuckles and pummeled a girl who was rude to her at work.

That wasn't a turnoff for Eric. Violence has always been as big a part of being a skinhead as the haircut. That was true in the early days when skinheads gained notoriety for battling each other at soccer matches.

That's true now. A popular song among skinheads is a remake of the Nancy Sinatra's, "These Boots are Made for Walking." The words have been changed to "These Boots are Made for Stomping."

Cali Wooten, whose 22nd birthday they were celebrating at the party, said traditional skinheads today are involved in few random violent sprees, like those that occurred at soccer matches. But after a few drinks, skinheads are known to go looking for trouble, she said.

Unlike hate groups, though, traditional skinheads don't target people because of race or religion, she said.

There's plenty of others to fight because fights often come looking for them. White-power skinheads give them a hard time about not being racist. Nonskinheads also confront them, assuming they're racist skinheads.

Because skinheads "never take crap from anybody," Wooten said the confrontations often end in violence.

True, traditional skinheads could avoid trouble by changing their look. But they're not going to do that.

"Why should we have to change," said Wooten, who wears at the party a black T-shirt with "Skinhead" on the front and "Proud of It" on the back. "We're the real skinheads."

The skinheads take their look seriously, because it's so tied to how they see themselves fitting into society.

They're like a lot of young people who don't see themselves fitting in. But they don't identify with the other subcultures that have emerged in America. The hippies and the punks they consider lazy, unkempt druggies. The preppies, the jocks, the fraternity crowd, they consider rich kids.

Instead, they're like Williams, who became a skinhead six years ago when he was an Army brat living in Germany. There, he met traditional skinheads "who were poor but believed in working hard and not living off the public dole. I thought that was cool."

The look reflects this. It's conservative, working-class fashion: short hair, jeans, work boots and a premium put on neatness. A skinhead at the party, for instance, talked about how much he likes his Fred Perry tennis shirts. He said they taper at the waist, which make them look "smart."

Eric looked on with admiration. The line of clothes named after Perry, the former British tennis star, has always been popular among skinheads. Eric was impressed that the other boy had a shirt with four buttons down the front instead of the modern style of two buttons.

And as strange as it might sound, hair styles also have great meaning among traditional skinheads. Wooten said honor is tied to the wisps of hair down by her ears. Among Skinhead Girls, as they call themselves, only those considered to truly be skinheads are worthy of wearing them.

The hanks of hair distinguish them from the racist female skinheads, who tend to shave off all their hair. So important are the hanks, Wooten said, that fights between Skinhead Girls have been known to end up with one going after the other's hanks with a pair of scissors.