LAST WEEK, Baltimore state Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings spoke before a group of juniors and seniors at the Harbor City Learning Center. Figuring he needed to get their attention, he began his speech with an interesting hook.

"I can help you win a half-million-dollar lottery, and it won't cost you a dime," Rawlings told the students. He then urged all to get a college degree and told them the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school graduate and a college graduate was about $500,000.

Rawlings was rolling right along there, telling the students to think of attending Baltimore City Community College after graduation, talking about the importance of discipline, of setting goals, of making good decisions. He gave them a little biographical information, reminiscing about his life in the Poe Homes housing project just across the street from HCLC, which is at the corner of Saratoga and Schroeder streets. Such talk was, Rawlings estimated, more than 99 percent of his speech.

But one part stuck out in an unidentified caller's mind.

"Rawlings used a racist term," the woman said. What was the term?

Redneck. Rawlings, who heads the House Appropriations Committee, referred to former Del. John Hargraves, who was the committee's chairman when the West Baltimore Democrat entered the House 20 years ago, as "a redneck from the Eastern Shore."

Redneck a racist term? The caller thought so. She claimed she and others "were offended" by Rawlings' use of the word.

"John Hargrave was a redneck from the Eastern Shore, and he was proud of it," Rawlings said in his defense yesterday. "It was an affectionate term people would kid him about. He was conservative, gruff and rough. I think redneck was accurate. I didn't call him a racist or anything like that. If I knew he was a bigoted racist, I would have called him that. But I have no proof of that."

Rawlings said it was three years before he met with Hargraves in the then-chairman's office. He mentioned Hargraves only "to show the students that they can overcome odds and achieve leadership positions." Who would have thought a black Democrat raised in poor West Baltimore would one day hold the post once held by a white conservative from the Eastern Shore?

It would be easy to dismiss the woman caller as hankering to create a tempest in a teapot, but there's still that nagging question: Is "redneck" a racist term?

Not according to this paper, which goes out of its way to police such things. An electronic library search revealed the word has appeared 57 times in this paper the last two years. In most of the references, "redneck" was used in stories in which whites referred either to themselves or other whites as rednecks. Here's a sample: Redneck caviar -- grits blackened with squid ink. This was from a story about the Battle of Gettysburg.

Redneck Wonderland -- name of a compact disc by a music group called Midnight Oil.

A Dundalk resident said Baltimore County Councilman Louis DePazzo "perpetuated a redneck, narrow-minded, illogical" image of the community.

Redneck Bubba -- the name of a racehorse.

Former Anne Arundel County Executive John Gary: "I grew up in a very hard-core, what I might call redneck community."

Rick Miller of the music group SCOTS (Southern Culture on the Skids): "We're 'Renaissance Rednecks.' "

Lloyd George Parry in a review of Ray Jenkins' book "Blind Vengeance": "In the Atlanta of my youth, there was a barbershop near home operated by four rednecks."

The town of Dublin, Ga., features the Annual Summer Redneck Games.

White student at South Carroll High School in May 1997: "In my school cafeteria, you have a freak section, a redneck section, a jock section and an ethnic section."

Two years ago, two white Sun columnists referred to a "redneck bar" in the town of Kiln, Miss. There were no reports of anyone complaining about the columnists using a racist term. That honor has been reserved for Rawlings, who is the victim of what might be called the "post-Greaseman syndrome."

It's been nearly three weeks since Doug "Greaseman" Tracht, a morning DJ of Washington's WARW rock station, was canned for making a grotesquely racist comment about the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas. Some folks, desperately seeking a little "separate but equal" in this matter, need a black villain making a similar statement. One even e-mailed a tirade dredging up the sins of one -- according to his elegant spelling -- "Lewis Farakan."

There are blacks who have made and will continue to make racist comments. But Pete Rawlings of Maryland's House of Delegates isn't one of them.

Pub Date: 3/13/99