Texas has 185 high schools, including 42 in the eight-county Houston area, that are hemorrhaging students fast enough to be called "dropout factories" in a new national report.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who conducted the study for The Associated Press, applied that label to high schools with an attrition rate of 40 percent or higher — which amounted to one in 10 high schools across America.
The report's release coincides with a Texas study by the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association showing a 34 percent statewide attrition rate for the 2006 graduating class.
"This is the time bomb. This is the tsunami that started already," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a member of the Senate Education Committee.
"If you look at our demographics, we have got to solve this problem," she said of school dropouts, which she considers probably our No. 1 problem in the state of Texas.
Losing 40 percent of each high school class eventually will bring on a colossal economic crisis for Texas, Van de Putte said.
As a group, Hispanics have the highest dropout rate in Texas, some 45 percent, according to the IDRC report. Hispanics also make up the largest percentage of the state's 4.6 million public school students.
State officials said they are addressing the problem by increasing funding for dropout prevention, including $25 million a year for a new initiative lawmakers approved last spring, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.
The national report defines a dropout factory as a school where at least 40 percent of an entering freshman class does not make it to their senior year.
"It's a very difficult issue and the community seems to have a real good understanding of that," said Terry Abbott, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, which had 22 high schools on the list. "HISD is probably one of the leaders in the country in addressing it."
While they don't think the study is solid, HISD officials acknowledge the district's dropout rate is too high. They've tried to tackle the issue by holding an annual door-to-door walk in the fall to look for students who haven't returned to school. The district also has a team of specialists who do a similar job year-round.
Abbott echoed the mobility issue, citing a ninth-grader who starts in one school and graduates in another can count as a dropout, and HISD has many transfers within the district.
"Calling them 'dropout factories' is just wrong. It's offensive to the many great men and women who give their lives to teaching children every day," he said.
Maria Cuca Robledo, director of the Intercultural Development Research Association, said the term is "accurate" and noted that about 70 percent of the 2.7 million Texas students who left school during her group's study period were Hispanic or black.
Schools plan for a 30 percent student attrition rate when hiring teachers, developing curriculum and building new schools, she said.
A list of the 42 Houston-area high schools deemed to have dangerously high dropout rates in a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University:
• Aldine ISD: Carver• Alief ISD: Elsik, Hastings
• Angleton ISD: Angleton
• Brazosport ISD: Brazosport
• Channelview ISD: Channelview
• Cleveland ISD: Cleveland
• Columbia-Brazoria ISD: Columbia
• Dickinson ISD: Dickinson
• Goose Creek ISD: Baytown Lee
• Houston ISD: Austin, Chavez, Davis, Furr, Jones, Kashmere, Law Enforcement-Criminal Justice, Lee, Madison, Middle College for Technology Careers, Milby, Reagan, Sam Houston, Scarborough, Sharpstown, Sterling, Waltrip, Washington, Westbury, Wheatley, Worthing, Yates
• La Marque ISD: La Marque
• New Caney ISD: New Caney
• North Forest ISD: Forest Brook, Smiley
• Pasadena ISD: Pasadena, Sam Rayburn, South Houston
• Splendora ISD: Splendora
• Spring Branch ISD: Northbrook, Spring Woods
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Dropout Factories
It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America.
"If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory."
There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, about the same level as a decade ago.
While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren't to blame for the low retention rates.
The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones -- the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.
Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages.
"Part of the problem we've had here is, we live in a state that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina department of education. He noted that residents in that state previously could get good jobs in textile mills without a high school degree, but that those jobs are gone today.
Washington hasn't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing.
House and Senate proposals to renew the five-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve on graduation performance, and the Bush administration supports that idea.
The current NCLB law imposes serious consequences on schools that report low scores on math and reading tests, and this fallout can include replacement of teachers or principals -- or both. But the law doesn't have the same kind of enforcement teeth when it comes to graduation rates.
Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half.
The legislative proposals circulating in Congress would:
Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic, and other subgroups and are judged on those results. That's to ensure that schools aren't just graduating white students in high numbers, but also are working to ensure that minority students get diplomas.
Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.
Ensure that states count graduation rates in a uniform way. States have used a variety of formulas, including counting the percentage of entering seniors who get a diploma. That measurement ignores the obvious fact that kids who drop out typically do so before their senior year.
Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss those benchmarks. Most states currently lack meaningful goals, according to The Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for poor and minority children.
The current law requires testing in reading and math once in high school, and those tests take on added importance because of the serious consequences for a school of failure. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores.
"The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools. "To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."
Little said some students pushed out of high schools are encouraged to enroll in programs that prepare them to take the GED exam. People who pass that test get certificates indicating they have high-school level academic skills. But the research shows that getting a GED doesn't lead to the kind of job or college success associated with a regular diploma.
Loretta Singletary, 17, enrolled in a GED program after dropping out of a Washington, D.C. high school that she describes as huge, chaotic and violent. "Girls got jumped. Boys got jumped, teachers (were) fighting and hitting students," she said.
She said teachers had low expectations for students, which led to dull classes. "They were teaching me stuff I already knew ... basic nouns, simple adjectives."
Singletary said a subject she loved was science but she wasn't offered it, and complaints to administrators went unanswered. "I was interested in experiments," she said. "I didn't have science in 9th or 10th grade."
A GED classmate of Singletary's is 23-year-old Dontike Miller, who attended and left two D.C. high schools on the dropout factory list. Miller was brought up by a single mother who used drugs, and he says teachers and counselors seemed oblivious to what was going on in his life.
He would have liked for someone to sit him down and say, "'You really need to go to class. We're going to work with you. We're going to help you'," Miller said. Instead,"I had nobody."
Teachers and administrators at Baltimore Talent Development High School, where 90 percent of kids are on track toward graduating on time, are working hard to make sure students don't have an experience like Miller's.
The school, which sits in the middle of a high-crime, impoverished neighborhood two miles west of downtown Baltimore, was founded by Balfanz and others four years ago as a laboratory for getting kids out on time with a diploma and ready for college.
Teachers, students and administrators at the school know each other well.
"I know teachers that have knocked on people's doors. They want us to succeed," 12th-grader Jasmine Coleman said during a lunchtime chat in the cafeteria.
Fellow senior Victoria Haynes says she likes the way the school organizes teachers in teams of four, with each team of teachers assigned to a group of 75 students. The teachers work across subject areas, meaning English and math teachers, for example, collaborate on lessons and discuss individual students' needs.
"They all concentrate on what's best for us together," Haynes said. "It's very family oriented. We feel really close to them."
Teachers, too, say it works.
"I know the students a lot better, because I know the teachers who teach them," said 10th-grade English teacher Jenni Williams. "Everyone's on the same page, so it's not like you're alone in your mission."
That mission can be daunting. The majority of students who enter Baltimore Talent Development in ninth grade are reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade level.
To get caught up, students have 80-minute lessons in reading and math, instead of the typical 45 minutes. They also get additional time with specialists if needed.
The fact that kids are entering high schools with such poor literacy skills raises questions about how much catch-up work high schools can be expected to do and whether more pressure should be placed on middle schools and even elementary schools, say some high-school principals.
"We're at the end of the process," says Mel Riddile, principal of T.C. Williams High School, a large public school in Alexandria, Va. "People don't walk into 9th grade and suddenly have a reading problem."
Other challenges to high schools come from outside the school system. In high-poverty districts, some students believe it's more important to work than to stay in school, or they are lured away by gang activity or other kinds of peer or family pressure.
At Baltimore Talent Development, administrators try to set mini-milestones and celebrations for students so they stay motivated. These include more fashionable uniforms with each promotion to the next grade, pins for completing special programs and pizza parties to celebrate good attendance records.
"The kids are just starved for recognition and attention. Little social rewards matter to them," said Balfanz.
Balfanz says, however, that students understand the biggest reward they can collect is the piece of paper handed to them on graduation day.
Without it, "there's not much work for you anymore," he said. "There's no way out of the cycle of poverty if you don't have a high school diploma."
"If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory."
There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, about the same level as a decade ago.
While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren't to blame for the low retention rates.
The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones -- the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.
Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages.
"Part of the problem we've had here is, we live in a state that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina department of education. He noted that residents in that state previously could get good jobs in textile mills without a high school degree, but that those jobs are gone today.
Washington hasn't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing.
House and Senate proposals to renew the five-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve on graduation performance, and the Bush administration supports that idea.
The current NCLB law imposes serious consequences on schools that report low scores on math and reading tests, and this fallout can include replacement of teachers or principals -- or both. But the law doesn't have the same kind of enforcement teeth when it comes to graduation rates.
Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half.
The legislative proposals circulating in Congress would:
Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic, and other subgroups and are judged on those results. That's to ensure that schools aren't just graduating white students in high numbers, but also are working to ensure that minority students get diplomas.
Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.
Ensure that states count graduation rates in a uniform way. States have used a variety of formulas, including counting the percentage of entering seniors who get a diploma. That measurement ignores the obvious fact that kids who drop out typically do so before their senior year.
Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss those benchmarks. Most states currently lack meaningful goals, according to The Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for poor and minority children.
The current law requires testing in reading and math once in high school, and those tests take on added importance because of the serious consequences for a school of failure. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores.
"The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools. "To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."
Little said some students pushed out of high schools are encouraged to enroll in programs that prepare them to take the GED exam. People who pass that test get certificates indicating they have high-school level academic skills. But the research shows that getting a GED doesn't lead to the kind of job or college success associated with a regular diploma.
Loretta Singletary, 17, enrolled in a GED program after dropping out of a Washington, D.C. high school that she describes as huge, chaotic and violent. "Girls got jumped. Boys got jumped, teachers (were) fighting and hitting students," she said.
She said teachers had low expectations for students, which led to dull classes. "They were teaching me stuff I already knew ... basic nouns, simple adjectives."
Singletary said a subject she loved was science but she wasn't offered it, and complaints to administrators went unanswered. "I was interested in experiments," she said. "I didn't have science in 9th or 10th grade."
A GED classmate of Singletary's is 23-year-old Dontike Miller, who attended and left two D.C. high schools on the dropout factory list. Miller was brought up by a single mother who used drugs, and he says teachers and counselors seemed oblivious to what was going on in his life.
He would have liked for someone to sit him down and say, "'You really need to go to class. We're going to work with you. We're going to help you'," Miller said. Instead,"I had nobody."
Teachers and administrators at Baltimore Talent Development High School, where 90 percent of kids are on track toward graduating on time, are working hard to make sure students don't have an experience like Miller's.
The school, which sits in the middle of a high-crime, impoverished neighborhood two miles west of downtown Baltimore, was founded by Balfanz and others four years ago as a laboratory for getting kids out on time with a diploma and ready for college.
Teachers, students and administrators at the school know each other well.
"I know teachers that have knocked on people's doors. They want us to succeed," 12th-grader Jasmine Coleman said during a lunchtime chat in the cafeteria.
Fellow senior Victoria Haynes says she likes the way the school organizes teachers in teams of four, with each team of teachers assigned to a group of 75 students. The teachers work across subject areas, meaning English and math teachers, for example, collaborate on lessons and discuss individual students' needs.
"They all concentrate on what's best for us together," Haynes said. "It's very family oriented. We feel really close to them."
Teachers, too, say it works.
"I know the students a lot better, because I know the teachers who teach them," said 10th-grade English teacher Jenni Williams. "Everyone's on the same page, so it's not like you're alone in your mission."
That mission can be daunting. The majority of students who enter Baltimore Talent Development in ninth grade are reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade level.
To get caught up, students have 80-minute lessons in reading and math, instead of the typical 45 minutes. They also get additional time with specialists if needed.
The fact that kids are entering high schools with such poor literacy skills raises questions about how much catch-up work high schools can be expected to do and whether more pressure should be placed on middle schools and even elementary schools, say some high-school principals.
"We're at the end of the process," says Mel Riddile, principal of T.C. Williams High School, a large public school in Alexandria, Va. "People don't walk into 9th grade and suddenly have a reading problem."
Other challenges to high schools come from outside the school system. In high-poverty districts, some students believe it's more important to work than to stay in school, or they are lured away by gang activity or other kinds of peer or family pressure.
At Baltimore Talent Development, administrators try to set mini-milestones and celebrations for students so they stay motivated. These include more fashionable uniforms with each promotion to the next grade, pins for completing special programs and pizza parties to celebrate good attendance records.
"The kids are just starved for recognition and attention. Little social rewards matter to them," said Balfanz.
Balfanz says, however, that students understand the biggest reward they can collect is the piece of paper handed to them on graduation day.
Without it, "there's not much work for you anymore," he said. "There's no way out of the cycle of poverty if you don't have a high school diploma."
Monday, October 29, 2007
Genarlow Wilson’s Release from Georgia Prison
The mother of Genarlow Wilson said she's still in shock over the Georgia Supreme Court's decision to overturn her son's conviction and order him released from prison on Friday.
"It feels pretty good, but it hasn't really sunk in yet," said Juannessa Bennett.
On Friday, the state’s highest court ruled 4-3 that Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, now 21, served 32 months of a 10-year prison sentence after he was convicted in 2005 on aggravated sexual molestation charges after having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a party at a motel on New Year’s Eve 2004. He was 17 at the time.
Wilson and four other young men admitted to detectives that they had sexual intercourse with one teenaged girl and that another had performed oral sex on them at a party involving about a dozen youths at a Douglasville, Georgia hotel. Under Georgia law at the time, oral sex with anyone under the age of 16 could be classified as aggravated child molestation, even if it occurred between consenting teenagers fewer than three years apart in age. The offense carried a mandatory sentence upon conviction of 10 years in prison.
Sexual intercourse was, and remains, a misdemeanor under Georgia law. The code governing oral sex was amended in July 2006 to treat consensual oral sex between teenagers no more than four years apart as a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than 12 months in prison with no sex offender registry requirement.
Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion last week that the changes in the law “represent a seismic shift in the legislature’s view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.”
Further, Sears wrote, the original sentence made “no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment” and that Wilson’s crime did not rise to the “level of adults who prey on children.”
The original law, under which Wilson was convicted, was intended to protect women and children from sexual predators.
District Attorney David McDade, in his filing at the time, asked the court to reject the motion to grant Wilson a new trial, arguing that the constitutional issue was not raised during the trial, that the argument for it was rejected when the high court returned the case to the state Court of Appeals, which had ruled against Wilson, and that it should not be raised again before the state Supreme Court.
Wilson, McDade and two assistant district attorneys argued in the filing, wanted to change the law after the fact.
In December 2006, the Georgia Supreme Court turned down the appeal seeking a new trial for Wilson.
Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein noted that in easing the penalties for teens, “the Legislature expressly chose not to allow the provisions of the new amendments to affect person convicted under the previous version of the statute.”
Hunstein added she was “very sympathetic” to Wilson’s plight, but that the court was bound by the limits set by the legislature.
In January, state Sen. Emmanuel Jones and four primary co-sponsors introduced a bill that would allow a court imposing a sentence on several charges, including sodomy and aggravated child molestation charges, on convictions before July 1, 2006 to “correct or reduce the sentence and to suspend or probate all or any part of the sentence imposed.” That would have allowed a judge to revere Wilson’s conviction.
The bill never made it out of committee during the legislative session.
In April, Bernstein filed a habeas action that allowed her to raise legal questions that Wilson’s original trial lawyer did not. The filing was basically a civil suit that contended that Wilson had been imprisoned improperly.
In June, Monroe Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation to Genarlow Wilson) threw out Genarlow Wilson’s conviction and ordered him released, but a little more than an hour later, the office of Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker announced it would appeal, meaning Wilson would remain in prison.
After Friday’s ruling, Baker said in a statement he would not file another appeal.
“I have received and reviewed the decision by the Georgia Supreme Court in this matter, and I respectfully acknowledge the Court’s authority to grant the relief that they have crafted in this case,” Baker said. “As the Supreme Court found, the habeas court’s order resentencing Mr. Wilson, however well-meaning, was unauthorized under Georgia law. It was for this reason that I appealed, in order to insure a fair and consistent application of the law not just to Mr. Wilson, but to others similarly situated.
"I hope the Court’s decision will also put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest in this case,” said Baker.
About 2,000 people rallied in Atlanta in July calling for Wilson’s release. He also received support from the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Al Sharpton and former President Jimmy Carter. The case received national attention on CNN and ABC, and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and CEO of HDNet, which produced a special report on the case, helped fund Wilson’s defense.
A group of citizens organized by an investment manager and philanthropist in New York had pledged $1 million for bond that could be wired on Wilson’s behalf with 24 hours notice, if a bond had been approved.
“Thank God that common sense, the will of the General Assembly and the popular opinion of most Georgians still has a place before the powers of government,” Georgia NAACP State Conference President Edward O. Dubose said Friday in a statement reacting to the court’s decision. “America's history is littered with instances when laws have been misused -- their intended purposes subverted and lives destroyed. The NAACP monitors and intervenes when necessary because, all too often, the misuses of said laws are predicated by race or results in racial disparity.”
“The Wilson case, along with Jena 6 and countless lesser known rulings, speak to a systemic flaw in our nation’s criminal justice system,” Rep. Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement on Friday. "There must be a thorough assessment of both state and federal laws to ensure that the punishment parallels the crime. Overzealous prosecutors must be condemned for allowing their political aspirations to prejudice the judicial process."
Meanwhile, Wilson and his family are looking forward to getting back to a normal life, his mother and lawyer said Sunday.
Wilson’s first few days of freedom, were filled with sleeping, getting a haircut, shopping for new clothes for church, which he attended on Sunday, and “he kept peeping in the fridge,” Bernstein said with a laugh.
Bernstein said Wilson wants to focus on school and preparing for college, adding that “he’s already getting calls from different schools.”
Asked if he was bitter about the experience, Bernstein said Wilson is trying to stay focused on the future.
“He says he’s facing forward, and really what he’s paying attention to [is] if he gets caught in that [situation again], he’ll be right where he started from,” Bernstein said.
After this initial rounds of interviews to thank his supporters, Bernstein said, Wilson and his family will try to lie low for a while as they ponder his future.
“We don’t want to put too much on him. We have to be careful,” Bernstein said. “He was in prison for 32 months. It’s a fine line you’re asking him to walk. He’s actually appreciative of the help, but we want to protect him a little bit because we don’t want him to fail.”
“We’re trying to get to the household things,” mom Juannessa Bennett said, noting the media attention following her son's release has kept the family from settling back into a family routine. She hasn’t had time to run errands or go grocery shopping, she says, because “people have been in and out interviewing.”
"Probably in a week or so, it'll feel normal again,” Bennett said. “(But) it feels normal to have him back in the house."
"It feels pretty good, but it hasn't really sunk in yet," said Juannessa Bennett.
On Friday, the state’s highest court ruled 4-3 that Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.
Wilson, now 21, served 32 months of a 10-year prison sentence after he was convicted in 2005 on aggravated sexual molestation charges after having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a party at a motel on New Year’s Eve 2004. He was 17 at the time.
Wilson and four other young men admitted to detectives that they had sexual intercourse with one teenaged girl and that another had performed oral sex on them at a party involving about a dozen youths at a Douglasville, Georgia hotel. Under Georgia law at the time, oral sex with anyone under the age of 16 could be classified as aggravated child molestation, even if it occurred between consenting teenagers fewer than three years apart in age. The offense carried a mandatory sentence upon conviction of 10 years in prison.
Sexual intercourse was, and remains, a misdemeanor under Georgia law. The code governing oral sex was amended in July 2006 to treat consensual oral sex between teenagers no more than four years apart as a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than 12 months in prison with no sex offender registry requirement.
Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion last week that the changes in the law “represent a seismic shift in the legislature’s view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.”
Further, Sears wrote, the original sentence made “no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment” and that Wilson’s crime did not rise to the “level of adults who prey on children.”
The original law, under which Wilson was convicted, was intended to protect women and children from sexual predators.
District Attorney David McDade, in his filing at the time, asked the court to reject the motion to grant Wilson a new trial, arguing that the constitutional issue was not raised during the trial, that the argument for it was rejected when the high court returned the case to the state Court of Appeals, which had ruled against Wilson, and that it should not be raised again before the state Supreme Court.
Wilson, McDade and two assistant district attorneys argued in the filing, wanted to change the law after the fact.
In December 2006, the Georgia Supreme Court turned down the appeal seeking a new trial for Wilson.
Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein noted that in easing the penalties for teens, “the Legislature expressly chose not to allow the provisions of the new amendments to affect person convicted under the previous version of the statute.”
Hunstein added she was “very sympathetic” to Wilson’s plight, but that the court was bound by the limits set by the legislature.
In January, state Sen. Emmanuel Jones and four primary co-sponsors introduced a bill that would allow a court imposing a sentence on several charges, including sodomy and aggravated child molestation charges, on convictions before July 1, 2006 to “correct or reduce the sentence and to suspend or probate all or any part of the sentence imposed.” That would have allowed a judge to revere Wilson’s conviction.
The bill never made it out of committee during the legislative session.
In April, Bernstein filed a habeas action that allowed her to raise legal questions that Wilson’s original trial lawyer did not. The filing was basically a civil suit that contended that Wilson had been imprisoned improperly.
In June, Monroe Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson (no relation to Genarlow Wilson) threw out Genarlow Wilson’s conviction and ordered him released, but a little more than an hour later, the office of Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker announced it would appeal, meaning Wilson would remain in prison.
After Friday’s ruling, Baker said in a statement he would not file another appeal.
“I have received and reviewed the decision by the Georgia Supreme Court in this matter, and I respectfully acknowledge the Court’s authority to grant the relief that they have crafted in this case,” Baker said. “As the Supreme Court found, the habeas court’s order resentencing Mr. Wilson, however well-meaning, was unauthorized under Georgia law. It was for this reason that I appealed, in order to insure a fair and consistent application of the law not just to Mr. Wilson, but to others similarly situated.
"I hope the Court’s decision will also put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest in this case,” said Baker.
About 2,000 people rallied in Atlanta in July calling for Wilson’s release. He also received support from the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Al Sharpton and former President Jimmy Carter. The case received national attention on CNN and ABC, and Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and CEO of HDNet, which produced a special report on the case, helped fund Wilson’s defense.
A group of citizens organized by an investment manager and philanthropist in New York had pledged $1 million for bond that could be wired on Wilson’s behalf with 24 hours notice, if a bond had been approved.
“Thank God that common sense, the will of the General Assembly and the popular opinion of most Georgians still has a place before the powers of government,” Georgia NAACP State Conference President Edward O. Dubose said Friday in a statement reacting to the court’s decision. “America's history is littered with instances when laws have been misused -- their intended purposes subverted and lives destroyed. The NAACP monitors and intervenes when necessary because, all too often, the misuses of said laws are predicated by race or results in racial disparity.”
“The Wilson case, along with Jena 6 and countless lesser known rulings, speak to a systemic flaw in our nation’s criminal justice system,” Rep. Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement on Friday. "There must be a thorough assessment of both state and federal laws to ensure that the punishment parallels the crime. Overzealous prosecutors must be condemned for allowing their political aspirations to prejudice the judicial process."
Meanwhile, Wilson and his family are looking forward to getting back to a normal life, his mother and lawyer said Sunday.
Wilson’s first few days of freedom, were filled with sleeping, getting a haircut, shopping for new clothes for church, which he attended on Sunday, and “he kept peeping in the fridge,” Bernstein said with a laugh.
Bernstein said Wilson wants to focus on school and preparing for college, adding that “he’s already getting calls from different schools.”
Asked if he was bitter about the experience, Bernstein said Wilson is trying to stay focused on the future.
“He says he’s facing forward, and really what he’s paying attention to [is] if he gets caught in that [situation again], he’ll be right where he started from,” Bernstein said.
After this initial rounds of interviews to thank his supporters, Bernstein said, Wilson and his family will try to lie low for a while as they ponder his future.
“We don’t want to put too much on him. We have to be careful,” Bernstein said. “He was in prison for 32 months. It’s a fine line you’re asking him to walk. He’s actually appreciative of the help, but we want to protect him a little bit because we don’t want him to fail.”
“We’re trying to get to the household things,” mom Juannessa Bennett said, noting the media attention following her son's release has kept the family from settling back into a family routine. She hasn’t had time to run errands or go grocery shopping, she says, because “people have been in and out interviewing.”
"Probably in a week or so, it'll feel normal again,” Bennett said. “(But) it feels normal to have him back in the house."
Thursday, October 25, 2007
President Bush dismissed comparisons between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires
President Bush dismissed comparisons between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires Thursday, saying that getting help to people who are hurting is the most important thing.
"There's all kinds of time for historians to compare this response to that response," Bush said during a tour of the state's fire-ravaged communities.
The president walked down a street of the hard hit community of Rancho Bernardo, where homes have been burned to rubble, at one point offering comfort to Jay and Kendra Jeffcoat, standing near where a single spiral staircase rested amid rubble that used to be their home and near their burnt-out car melted into the scorched earth.
"For those of us here in government, our hearts are right here with the Jeffcoats," the president said, his armed draped around Mrs. Jeffcoat. Holding her small brown dog on a leash, she fought back tears.
Bush ferried several California lawmakers with him on Air Force One and was greeted on the tarmac at Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar here by his tour guide for the day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the smell of smoke.
On the White House's South Lawn before the long flight, the president said he aimed to bring to weary Southern Californians the assurance of federal help, support for those who've lost home and businesses and thanks to weary firefighters.
He took at the start of a four-hour tour in a helicopter to get an aerial tour of the devastation. Masks and small, wet towels were distributed to the presidential entourage to help cope with the smoky conditions. A white film covered the sky and, as the choppers drew closer to San Diego, Bush saw homes that had been reduced to piles of sticks.
Bush then got a look at the situation on the ground.
In Rancho Bernardo, Bush strolled among Mediterranean-style homes, where houses that remained unscathed were interspersed with what amounted to mere shells of the American dream.
Stepping through rubble, he talked with the Jeffcoats about belongings they hoped to salvage. He shook hands at a makeshift disaster assistance center where government agencies and private companies are providing help to residents.
From there, the president's motorcade passed charred hillsides on the way north to Escondido, where he was to assess that area's damage, talk about recovery efforts and have lunch with emergency responders.
Amid all this pain were lingering memories of Washington's slow response to Katrina over two years ago, and how it damaged Bush's standing.
As the first natural disaster to begin to approach the scale of the Gulf Coast storm, the fires represented a tough test for the administration. Katrina, however, affected a far larger geographic area, knocked out all communications and nearly all key infrastructure, and impacted a relatively poorer population and much less-prepared states.
With the White House determined to convey a picture of a speedy and effective performance this time around, Bush was asked to compare the two.
"You better ask the governor how we're doing," he said, with Swarzenegger next to him on a cul de sac. "I will tell you this: In all of these responses, the thing that has amazed me most is the courage of the first responders."
Schwarzenegger said Bush called him even before he could reach out to the president for help. "I call this quick action — quicker than I expected, I can tell you that," the governor said.
Fran Townsend, Bush's White House-based homeland security adviser, said the disaster response is unfolding "exactly the way it should be" and is "better and faster" that the administration's performance after Katrina.
"This is not the end of federal assistance. It's just the beginning," she said.
Bush declared the fires a major disaster on Wednesday, setting in motion long-term federal recovery program.
The fires have destroyed about 2,200 structures since Sunday and led to the largest evacuation in California history. The flames have burned at least 431,000 acres across five counties, from Ventura in the north all the way into Mexico. Property damage has reached at least $1 billion in San Diego County alone.
A break in this week's high, hot winds, and a helpful change in their direction, had officials hoping they could make progress Thursday against the still-threatening fires.
"There's all kinds of time for historians to compare this response to that response," Bush said during a tour of the state's fire-ravaged communities.
The president walked down a street of the hard hit community of Rancho Bernardo, where homes have been burned to rubble, at one point offering comfort to Jay and Kendra Jeffcoat, standing near where a single spiral staircase rested amid rubble that used to be their home and near their burnt-out car melted into the scorched earth.
"For those of us here in government, our hearts are right here with the Jeffcoats," the president said, his armed draped around Mrs. Jeffcoat. Holding her small brown dog on a leash, she fought back tears.
Bush ferried several California lawmakers with him on Air Force One and was greeted on the tarmac at Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar here by his tour guide for the day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the smell of smoke.
On the White House's South Lawn before the long flight, the president said he aimed to bring to weary Southern Californians the assurance of federal help, support for those who've lost home and businesses and thanks to weary firefighters.
He took at the start of a four-hour tour in a helicopter to get an aerial tour of the devastation. Masks and small, wet towels were distributed to the presidential entourage to help cope with the smoky conditions. A white film covered the sky and, as the choppers drew closer to San Diego, Bush saw homes that had been reduced to piles of sticks.
Bush then got a look at the situation on the ground.
In Rancho Bernardo, Bush strolled among Mediterranean-style homes, where houses that remained unscathed were interspersed with what amounted to mere shells of the American dream.
Stepping through rubble, he talked with the Jeffcoats about belongings they hoped to salvage. He shook hands at a makeshift disaster assistance center where government agencies and private companies are providing help to residents.
From there, the president's motorcade passed charred hillsides on the way north to Escondido, where he was to assess that area's damage, talk about recovery efforts and have lunch with emergency responders.
Amid all this pain were lingering memories of Washington's slow response to Katrina over two years ago, and how it damaged Bush's standing.
As the first natural disaster to begin to approach the scale of the Gulf Coast storm, the fires represented a tough test for the administration. Katrina, however, affected a far larger geographic area, knocked out all communications and nearly all key infrastructure, and impacted a relatively poorer population and much less-prepared states.
With the White House determined to convey a picture of a speedy and effective performance this time around, Bush was asked to compare the two.
"You better ask the governor how we're doing," he said, with Swarzenegger next to him on a cul de sac. "I will tell you this: In all of these responses, the thing that has amazed me most is the courage of the first responders."
Schwarzenegger said Bush called him even before he could reach out to the president for help. "I call this quick action — quicker than I expected, I can tell you that," the governor said.
Fran Townsend, Bush's White House-based homeland security adviser, said the disaster response is unfolding "exactly the way it should be" and is "better and faster" that the administration's performance after Katrina.
"This is not the end of federal assistance. It's just the beginning," she said.
Bush declared the fires a major disaster on Wednesday, setting in motion long-term federal recovery program.
The fires have destroyed about 2,200 structures since Sunday and led to the largest evacuation in California history. The flames have burned at least 431,000 acres across five counties, from Ventura in the north all the way into Mexico. Property damage has reached at least $1 billion in San Diego County alone.
A break in this week's high, hot winds, and a helpful change in their direction, had officials hoping they could make progress Thursday against the still-threatening fires.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
We Don’t Have to Simply Be Saddened About Congo’s Widespread Rapes – We Can Do Something
The New York Times recently wrote about how in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is as much of a national pastime there as baseball is here. The difference being that instead of using a ball or bat as the medium for their recreational release, soldiers and militias there use women and girls instead.
And their sport isn’t filling ballparks. It’s filling hospitals and graveyards.
According to the United Nations, around 27,000 women and girls, and even men and boys, are believed to have been raped in eastern Congo during the past nine years -- a time in which 4 million people were killed during a war topped off by instability and ethnic violence. Right now, United Nations officials say, sexual violence in Congo is the worse in the world.
Tales of that violence sent hot waves of anger washing over me.
There’s the story of five-year-old Uzele who, as documented by Amnesty International, was tending a fire outside her home in March 2004 when she was raped by a combatant of one of the rebel militias that existed then.
There’s the story of 72-year-old Stephanie, who was abducted by a rebel group in 2003 and held for three months.
“Every day, I was raped by up to three men,” she told Amnesty International. “When we tried to refuse, they would beat us. They also pushed wooden sticks into my vagina. Now I have a prolapsed uterus. They treated us all in the same way, whatever our age … ”
And there are pictures of rows and rows of women in Panzi Hospital, where 10 women and girls show up each day with horrific physical and psychological damage from the rapes. There are the hollow eyes of the girls who are too young to understand what happened to them, much less digest the notion that they will never be able to have children; the women bleeding from rusty nails, stones and bayonets that were plunged into their vaginas as if they were pockets on a pool table.
There are the women who now have to wear a colostomy bag as an accessory.
As I said, it angers me. It angers me that men, men who I assume were born of human women and not demons, could look at a woman, a child even, and inflict that degree of brutality.
It angers me that there are places on this earth where women can be treated that way and have no place to turn for justice. In Congo, the judicial infrastructure is so unstable that rapists are rarely brought to trial. And because even the Congolese government troops also participate in the rapes, there is no assurance that the ones meting out the punishment won’t be more sympathetic to the ones meting out the abuse.
That situation doesn’t sound like one that will lead to justice as much as it sounds like one that will lead to more piling-on.
As I said earlier, reading about the plight of Congo women sent me into a "Thelma and Louise" moment. It made me think about what would happen if the girls and women there were unshackled by the passivity that their culture commands -- a passivity which now has made them more susceptible to become victims than to be prized as valuables -- could find themselves some AK-47s and shoot whoever decides to use their bodies as a medium for a perverted pastime.
Of course I know that would be unrealistic. Yet there is a lot that we can do to help alleviate the suffering of our sisters in Congo.
For starters, we can vow to be angry, rather than depressed, about the problem. We can call our representatives in Congress, especially our black representatives, and urge them push for solutions -- the first of which should be the isolation of Congo.
Until it does something to end the mass rapes, which a colleague of mine calls “gendercide,” that government should be treated like a pariah state.
We can, through our sororities and fraternities and service organizations, as well as our historically black colleges and universities, develop awareness campaigns.
And we can donate money to humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning organization that provides emergency medical care to Congo and other struggling areas of the world. We can also donate money to human rights organizations working in Congo and organizations that support the efforts of women like Marie Pacuriema, a Congo woman who runs an operation that not only helps rape victims rebuild their lives, but empowers them to stand up for themselves as well.
In other words, Pacuriema, who was featured in a Christian Science Monitor article, is showing them that in spite of what’s happened to them, they don’t have to feel helpless.
And neither should we.
And their sport isn’t filling ballparks. It’s filling hospitals and graveyards.
According to the United Nations, around 27,000 women and girls, and even men and boys, are believed to have been raped in eastern Congo during the past nine years -- a time in which 4 million people were killed during a war topped off by instability and ethnic violence. Right now, United Nations officials say, sexual violence in Congo is the worse in the world.
Tales of that violence sent hot waves of anger washing over me.
There’s the story of five-year-old Uzele who, as documented by Amnesty International, was tending a fire outside her home in March 2004 when she was raped by a combatant of one of the rebel militias that existed then.
There’s the story of 72-year-old Stephanie, who was abducted by a rebel group in 2003 and held for three months.
“Every day, I was raped by up to three men,” she told Amnesty International. “When we tried to refuse, they would beat us. They also pushed wooden sticks into my vagina. Now I have a prolapsed uterus. They treated us all in the same way, whatever our age … ”
And there are pictures of rows and rows of women in Panzi Hospital, where 10 women and girls show up each day with horrific physical and psychological damage from the rapes. There are the hollow eyes of the girls who are too young to understand what happened to them, much less digest the notion that they will never be able to have children; the women bleeding from rusty nails, stones and bayonets that were plunged into their vaginas as if they were pockets on a pool table.
There are the women who now have to wear a colostomy bag as an accessory.
As I said, it angers me. It angers me that men, men who I assume were born of human women and not demons, could look at a woman, a child even, and inflict that degree of brutality.
It angers me that there are places on this earth where women can be treated that way and have no place to turn for justice. In Congo, the judicial infrastructure is so unstable that rapists are rarely brought to trial. And because even the Congolese government troops also participate in the rapes, there is no assurance that the ones meting out the punishment won’t be more sympathetic to the ones meting out the abuse.
That situation doesn’t sound like one that will lead to justice as much as it sounds like one that will lead to more piling-on.
As I said earlier, reading about the plight of Congo women sent me into a "Thelma and Louise" moment. It made me think about what would happen if the girls and women there were unshackled by the passivity that their culture commands -- a passivity which now has made them more susceptible to become victims than to be prized as valuables -- could find themselves some AK-47s and shoot whoever decides to use their bodies as a medium for a perverted pastime.
Of course I know that would be unrealistic. Yet there is a lot that we can do to help alleviate the suffering of our sisters in Congo.
For starters, we can vow to be angry, rather than depressed, about the problem. We can call our representatives in Congress, especially our black representatives, and urge them push for solutions -- the first of which should be the isolation of Congo.
Until it does something to end the mass rapes, which a colleague of mine calls “gendercide,” that government should be treated like a pariah state.
We can, through our sororities and fraternities and service organizations, as well as our historically black colleges and universities, develop awareness campaigns.
And we can donate money to humanitarian organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel prize-winning organization that provides emergency medical care to Congo and other struggling areas of the world. We can also donate money to human rights organizations working in Congo and organizations that support the efforts of women like Marie Pacuriema, a Congo woman who runs an operation that not only helps rape victims rebuild their lives, but empowers them to stand up for themselves as well.
In other words, Pacuriema, who was featured in a Christian Science Monitor article, is showing them that in spite of what’s happened to them, they don’t have to feel helpless.
And neither should we.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Why is It Always the Learned, ‘Intelligent’ Racists Who Spout Nonsense About Black Intellect?
Oh, no -- not again.
It appears to be that time once more for the race and IQ debate to rear its foolish head by dint of something said or published by a person of purportedly high intelligence.
We were last here in 1994, with the release of "The Bell Curve," in which Charles Murray, a historian, and Richard Hernstein, a behavioral psychologist, argued that black people, on the whole, are of lower intelligence than whites as a whole.
A firestorm erupted, with loads of dissenters and critics on one side and loads of defenders and believers on the other. Murray swam through the turbulence, laughing all the way to the bank as the book climbed the bestseller lists. His co-conspirator in the publishing crime had died shortly before the book came out.
Now comes the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a scientific research facility in New York, telling a British audience that he sees a dire future for Africans because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.”
You may not have heard about this because, unlike Murray, Dr. James D. Watson has not been treated as a great white hope giving comfort to racists and inviting the slicker ones to hop onto his “science” for safe transport out of the closet, but rather, Watson has been excoriated. The board of Cold Spring Harbor suspended him and, in Britain, his book tour was cancelled, and Watson has gone silent. The kibosh has been put on this sucker -- and fast.
Now, one may ask why anyone should care that an old man has made such a demeaning -- and, I might add, widely debunked -- declaration. Even when that old man is a Nobel laureate, feted four decades ago for helping discover and unravel the genetic double helix, the twin vines of DNA, why should we care?
Besides, what about freedom of speech, some are asking.
That freedom does not guarantee immunity from all consequences, of course; only governmental ones, and we must note that Watson has not been charged, fined or arrested.
Freedom from ostracism is not a constitutional protection.
As to what does it matter, consider this: Murray and Hernstein did not stop with their vile conclusion about “inherent” intellectual inferiority; they extended it to a public policy proposal in what might be called “applied racism.” “The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution,” they wrote. “We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.”
This, mind you, was as the “welfare reform” debate was ascending.
Again, a gift to those who want validation for their prejudices and ignorance, which has real-life consequences when such people have control over jobs, housing or other opportunities.
And there’s this from the president of the Federation of American Scientists: “At a time when the scientific community is feeling threatened by political forces seeking to undermine its credibility, it is tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession.” Remember that, in some dim corners of science, global warming is still questioned.
In the end, it’s not what one man -- not even a learned man -- said. It’s what people with power are eager to believe and how that translates into decisions that affect us all.
The question is not whether there are IQ disparities between ethnicities, but rather, what do we do about the slack IQ’s of people who swallow this bunk?
It appears to be that time once more for the race and IQ debate to rear its foolish head by dint of something said or published by a person of purportedly high intelligence.
We were last here in 1994, with the release of "The Bell Curve," in which Charles Murray, a historian, and Richard Hernstein, a behavioral psychologist, argued that black people, on the whole, are of lower intelligence than whites as a whole.
A firestorm erupted, with loads of dissenters and critics on one side and loads of defenders and believers on the other. Murray swam through the turbulence, laughing all the way to the bank as the book climbed the bestseller lists. His co-conspirator in the publishing crime had died shortly before the book came out.
Now comes the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a scientific research facility in New York, telling a British audience that he sees a dire future for Africans because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.”
You may not have heard about this because, unlike Murray, Dr. James D. Watson has not been treated as a great white hope giving comfort to racists and inviting the slicker ones to hop onto his “science” for safe transport out of the closet, but rather, Watson has been excoriated. The board of Cold Spring Harbor suspended him and, in Britain, his book tour was cancelled, and Watson has gone silent. The kibosh has been put on this sucker -- and fast.
Now, one may ask why anyone should care that an old man has made such a demeaning -- and, I might add, widely debunked -- declaration. Even when that old man is a Nobel laureate, feted four decades ago for helping discover and unravel the genetic double helix, the twin vines of DNA, why should we care?
Besides, what about freedom of speech, some are asking.
That freedom does not guarantee immunity from all consequences, of course; only governmental ones, and we must note that Watson has not been charged, fined or arrested.
Freedom from ostracism is not a constitutional protection.
As to what does it matter, consider this: Murray and Hernstein did not stop with their vile conclusion about “inherent” intellectual inferiority; they extended it to a public policy proposal in what might be called “applied racism.” “The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution,” they wrote. “We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended.”
This, mind you, was as the “welfare reform” debate was ascending.
Again, a gift to those who want validation for their prejudices and ignorance, which has real-life consequences when such people have control over jobs, housing or other opportunities.
And there’s this from the president of the Federation of American Scientists: “At a time when the scientific community is feeling threatened by political forces seeking to undermine its credibility, it is tragic that one of the icons of modern science has cast such dishonor on the profession.” Remember that, in some dim corners of science, global warming is still questioned.
In the end, it’s not what one man -- not even a learned man -- said. It’s what people with power are eager to believe and how that translates into decisions that affect us all.
The question is not whether there are IQ disparities between ethnicities, but rather, what do we do about the slack IQ’s of people who swallow this bunk?
Monday, October 22, 2007
Philly’s ‘Call to Action’ Draws Thousands of Black Men to Aid in Anti-Violence Initiatives
Just over a month ago, Philadelphia Police Chief Sylvester Johnson called on 10,000 men to patrol the city streets to help quell a run of deadly violence in this crime-plagued city and protect their neighborhoods' more vulnerable residents.
Sunday, they answered the call. Thousands of black men filled Temple University's Liacouras Center to volunteer for "Call to Action: 10,000 Men, It's a New Day," lining up for several blocks to register.
Three months before Johnson's planned retirement, Johnson joined Mayor John Street, record industry mogul Kenny Gamble and a group of black community activists and executives at a kick-off rally for the campaign.
Volunteers who join street patrols as part of the "Call to Action" program will not carry weapons or make arrests, but will instead be trained in conflict resolution, organizers said. Officials from Concerned Black Men, Men United, Mothers in Charge, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and other organizations were also on hand Sunday to recruit volunteers.
"Nobody else is going to magically come into this community and get it done," said real estate developer Abdur-Rahim Islam, a lead organizer.
Philadelphia endures a reputation as one of America's deadliest cities, with about a slaying a day and many more nonfatal shootings.
The nation's sixth-largest city has nearly 1.5 million residents, 44 percent of them black. It has notched more than 320 homicides this year. More than 80 percent of the slayings involve handguns, most involve young black males, and most of the victims are black.
"I grew up in the streets. I don't want my son to be subjected to the same thing," said resident Christopher Norris, 34, who brought his 15-year-old son, Isaiah Saunders, to the event.
"I want to keep him on the right track and let him know there are more opportunities out there, and he doesn't have to resort to violence," Norris said.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that’s where Chief Johnson is at this point," Elsie L. Scott, president and chief executive officer of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said."He can’t get a handle on this problem, and he’s calling on the community to rally around it."
Scott, who once served as deputy commissioner for training for the New York City Police Department and executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said Johnson is returning to a "community policing" philosophy of law enforcement.
Scott pointed out that The Kerner Commission report of 1968, issued after the Detroit riots of 1967, was the nation's first comprehensive look at race issues in the United States, and it was the federal government's first official document that said racism existed and was a problem.
Part of the report, she said, explored the notion of black police officers patrolling black neighborhoods -- early forms of community policing -- to help quell crime and protect black residents.
"But," Scott said, "community policing cannot be done without help from the community."
Scott has experienced the tragedy of crime personally: Her nephew was murdered in Louisiana some time ago. Because no one in the community came forward to identify the killer -- even though people knew the person's name -- her nephew's murderer went free.
"This is why police are frustrated," Scott said. "They don’t have the support from the community. Police need eyes and ears."
Scott said Sunday’s gathering might be successful for crime fighting if there’s a larger movement.
"Black men might be more effective than police. But the question is can they mobilize people in in the community, and how long will they commit -- because criminals know they can outlast them," she said.
Johnson and Gamble, a key organizer of the effort, said the focus is on the black community because that's where the city's violent crime is concentrated.
"This isn't happening in the Irish community. It's not happening in the Italian community, and it's not happening in Chinatown," Gamble told the Philadelphia Daily News.
In an editorial published Oct. 11 in the Daily News, the newspaper asked several hard questions about the "Call to Action" movement.
"Sending citizens out on the streets as a way to deter violent crime contradicts everything Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and others have said about the homicide problem: That it's not one we can police our way out of. If policing the streets with police won't work, why will policing the streets with citizens? ... And if law-enforcement authorities now think more presence in the streets will help, why not do a radical redeployment of our current police force? We pay police to patrol the streets. Why don't we insist they do it?"
But supporters say the men who join Johnson's program will not carry weapons or make arrests but will instead emphasize conflict resolution, similar to the Guardian Angels' ground rules.
The exact number of volunteers who signed up was not immediately known.
Johnson said he believes enlisting volunteers to help address violence was better than hiring more police to lock people up.
"These (volunteers) can prevent people from being arrested. They can go out there and do things for kids to prevent them from getting in trouble with the criminal justice system," Johnson said.
Scott said, that the most effective crime-prevention programs have included participation from former gang members.
"If they go after men who perpetrate crimes, and out of this comes a movement to save black men," she said, "then it could be effective."
The program's backers include Dennis Muhammad, a former Nation of Islam official who has been hired by police departments in Detroit, Syracuse, N.Y., and other cities to conduct community-sensitivity training. Muhammad met in City Hall last summer with Johnson, Mayor Street and local business leaders.
Muhammad told the Daily News he envisions a dramatic presence in Philadelphia's most troubled neighborhoods that could inspire a national movement.
"We plan to deploy these men and distinguish them with a colored shirt or something, and our very physical presence will become a deterrent," said Muhammad. "It would be hard to commit a crime on a corner with 200 men.
"When this is successful, we hope to bottle this and take it to every major city in the country," he said.
At a gathering with community activists last month, Muhammad said the idea of enlisting 10,000 men invoked "the spirit of the Million Man March" in Washington in 1995. He said it was important that the focus be on men because most of the violence involves young black males.
"If the heart is what we are, and the hand is what we do," Muhammad said, "we need to change how people see themselves."
Sunday, they answered the call. Thousands of black men filled Temple University's Liacouras Center to volunteer for "Call to Action: 10,000 Men, It's a New Day," lining up for several blocks to register.
Three months before Johnson's planned retirement, Johnson joined Mayor John Street, record industry mogul Kenny Gamble and a group of black community activists and executives at a kick-off rally for the campaign.
Volunteers who join street patrols as part of the "Call to Action" program will not carry weapons or make arrests, but will instead be trained in conflict resolution, organizers said. Officials from Concerned Black Men, Men United, Mothers in Charge, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and other organizations were also on hand Sunday to recruit volunteers.
"Nobody else is going to magically come into this community and get it done," said real estate developer Abdur-Rahim Islam, a lead organizer.
Philadelphia endures a reputation as one of America's deadliest cities, with about a slaying a day and many more nonfatal shootings.
The nation's sixth-largest city has nearly 1.5 million residents, 44 percent of them black. It has notched more than 320 homicides this year. More than 80 percent of the slayings involve handguns, most involve young black males, and most of the victims are black.
"I grew up in the streets. I don't want my son to be subjected to the same thing," said resident Christopher Norris, 34, who brought his 15-year-old son, Isaiah Saunders, to the event.
"I want to keep him on the right track and let him know there are more opportunities out there, and he doesn't have to resort to violence," Norris said.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that’s where Chief Johnson is at this point," Elsie L. Scott, president and chief executive officer of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, said."He can’t get a handle on this problem, and he’s calling on the community to rally around it."
Scott, who once served as deputy commissioner for training for the New York City Police Department and executive director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said Johnson is returning to a "community policing" philosophy of law enforcement.
Scott pointed out that The Kerner Commission report of 1968, issued after the Detroit riots of 1967, was the nation's first comprehensive look at race issues in the United States, and it was the federal government's first official document that said racism existed and was a problem.
Part of the report, she said, explored the notion of black police officers patrolling black neighborhoods -- early forms of community policing -- to help quell crime and protect black residents.
"But," Scott said, "community policing cannot be done without help from the community."
Scott has experienced the tragedy of crime personally: Her nephew was murdered in Louisiana some time ago. Because no one in the community came forward to identify the killer -- even though people knew the person's name -- her nephew's murderer went free.
"This is why police are frustrated," Scott said. "They don’t have the support from the community. Police need eyes and ears."
Scott said Sunday’s gathering might be successful for crime fighting if there’s a larger movement.
"Black men might be more effective than police. But the question is can they mobilize people in in the community, and how long will they commit -- because criminals know they can outlast them," she said.
Johnson and Gamble, a key organizer of the effort, said the focus is on the black community because that's where the city's violent crime is concentrated.
"This isn't happening in the Irish community. It's not happening in the Italian community, and it's not happening in Chinatown," Gamble told the Philadelphia Daily News.
In an editorial published Oct. 11 in the Daily News, the newspaper asked several hard questions about the "Call to Action" movement.
"Sending citizens out on the streets as a way to deter violent crime contradicts everything Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and others have said about the homicide problem: That it's not one we can police our way out of. If policing the streets with police won't work, why will policing the streets with citizens? ... And if law-enforcement authorities now think more presence in the streets will help, why not do a radical redeployment of our current police force? We pay police to patrol the streets. Why don't we insist they do it?"
But supporters say the men who join Johnson's program will not carry weapons or make arrests but will instead emphasize conflict resolution, similar to the Guardian Angels' ground rules.
The exact number of volunteers who signed up was not immediately known.
Johnson said he believes enlisting volunteers to help address violence was better than hiring more police to lock people up.
"These (volunteers) can prevent people from being arrested. They can go out there and do things for kids to prevent them from getting in trouble with the criminal justice system," Johnson said.
Scott said, that the most effective crime-prevention programs have included participation from former gang members.
"If they go after men who perpetrate crimes, and out of this comes a movement to save black men," she said, "then it could be effective."
The program's backers include Dennis Muhammad, a former Nation of Islam official who has been hired by police departments in Detroit, Syracuse, N.Y., and other cities to conduct community-sensitivity training. Muhammad met in City Hall last summer with Johnson, Mayor Street and local business leaders.
Muhammad told the Daily News he envisions a dramatic presence in Philadelphia's most troubled neighborhoods that could inspire a national movement.
"We plan to deploy these men and distinguish them with a colored shirt or something, and our very physical presence will become a deterrent," said Muhammad. "It would be hard to commit a crime on a corner with 200 men.
"When this is successful, we hope to bottle this and take it to every major city in the country," he said.
At a gathering with community activists last month, Muhammad said the idea of enlisting 10,000 men invoked "the spirit of the Million Man March" in Washington in 1995. He said it was important that the focus be on men because most of the violence involves young black males.
"If the heart is what we are, and the hand is what we do," Muhammad said, "we need to change how people see themselves."
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Famous DNA Scientist Apologizes for Racist Remarks
James Watson, the 79-year-old scientific icon made famous by his work in DNA, has set off an international furor with comments to a London newspaper about intelligence levels among blacks.
Watson, who's chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, has a history of provocative statements about social implications of science. But several friends said Thursday he's no racist. And Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for co-discovering the structure of DNA, apologized and says he's "mortified."
A profile of Watson in the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."
While he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson is quoted as saying. He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented."
The comments, reprinted Wednesday in a front-page article in another British newspaper, The Independent, provoked a sharp reaction.
London's Science Museum canceled a sold-out lecture he was to give there Friday. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said his comments "represent racist propaganda masquerading as scientific fact. ... That a man of such academic distinction could make such ignorant comments, which are utterly offensive and incorrect and give succor to the most backward in our society, demonstrates why racism still has to be fought."
In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said it was outraged that Watson "chose to use his unique stature to promote personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science."
And Watson's employer said he wasn't speaking for the Cold Spring Harbor research facility, where the board and administration "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments."
Watson is in Britain to promote his new book, "Avoid Boring People," and a publicist for his British publisher provided this statement Thursday to The Associated Press:
"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.
"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
Watson's publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not address whether Watson was suggesting he was misquoted. "You have the statement. That's it, I'm afraid," she said.
The scientist's new book also touches on possible racial differences in IQ, though it doesn't go as far as the newspaper interview.
In the book, Watson raises the prospect of discovering genes that significantly affect a person's intelligence.
"...There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," Watson wrote. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
Watson is no stranger to making waves with his scientific views. In 2000, in a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, he suggested that sex drive is related to skin color. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
Some years earlier he was quoted in a newspaper as saying, "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."
"Jim has a penchant for making outrageous comments that are basically poking society in the eye," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said Thursday.
Collins, who has known Watson for a long time, said his latest comments "really ... carried it this time to a much more hurtful level."
In a brief telephone interview, Collins told The AP that Watson's statements are "the wildest form of speculation in a field where such speculation ought not to be engaged in." Genetic factors for intelligence show no difference from one part of the world to another, he said.
Several longtime friends of Watson insisted he's not a racist.
"It's hard for me to buy the label 'racist' for him," said Victor McElheny, the author of a 2003 biography of Watson, whom he's known for 45 years. "This is someone who has encouraged so many people from so many backgrounds."
So why does he say things that can sound racist? "I really don't know the answer to that," McElheny said.
Biologist and Nobel laureate Phil Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who's known Watson since 1971, said, "I've never considered Jim a racist. However, Jim likes to use statistics and observations to provoke people, and it is possible that he is provoking people by these comments."
Calling Watson "one of the great historical scientific figures of our time," Sharp said, "I don't understand why he takes it upon himself to make these statements."
Mike Botchan, co-chair of the molecular and cell biology department at the University of California, Berkeley, who's known Watson since 1970, said the Nobelist's personal beliefs are less important than the impact of what he says.
"Is he someone who's going to prejudge a person in front of him on the basis of his skin color? I would have to say, no. Is he someone, though, that has these beliefs? I don't know any more. And the important thing is I don't really care," Botchan said.
"I think Jim Watson is now essentially a disgrace to his own legacy. And it's very sad for me to say this, because he's one of the great figures of 20th century biology."
Watson, who's chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, has a history of provocative statements about social implications of science. But several friends said Thursday he's no racist. And Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for co-discovering the structure of DNA, apologized and says he's "mortified."
A profile of Watson in the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."
While he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson is quoted as saying. He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented."
The comments, reprinted Wednesday in a front-page article in another British newspaper, The Independent, provoked a sharp reaction.
London's Science Museum canceled a sold-out lecture he was to give there Friday. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said his comments "represent racist propaganda masquerading as scientific fact. ... That a man of such academic distinction could make such ignorant comments, which are utterly offensive and incorrect and give succor to the most backward in our society, demonstrates why racism still has to be fought."
In the United States, the Federation of American Scientists said it was outraged that Watson "chose to use his unique stature to promote personal prejudices that are racist, vicious and unsupported by science."
And Watson's employer said he wasn't speaking for the Cold Spring Harbor research facility, where the board and administration "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments."
Watson is in Britain to promote his new book, "Avoid Boring People," and a publicist for his British publisher provided this statement Thursday to The Associated Press:
"I am mortified about what has happened," Watson said. "More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.
"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have. To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
Watson's publicist, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, would not address whether Watson was suggesting he was misquoted. "You have the statement. That's it, I'm afraid," she said.
The scientist's new book also touches on possible racial differences in IQ, though it doesn't go as far as the newspaper interview.
In the book, Watson raises the prospect of discovering genes that significantly affect a person's intelligence.
"...There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," Watson wrote. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
Watson is no stranger to making waves with his scientific views. In 2000, in a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, he suggested that sex drive is related to skin color. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
Some years earlier he was quoted in a newspaper as saying, "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."
"Jim has a penchant for making outrageous comments that are basically poking society in the eye," Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, said Thursday.
Collins, who has known Watson for a long time, said his latest comments "really ... carried it this time to a much more hurtful level."
In a brief telephone interview, Collins told The AP that Watson's statements are "the wildest form of speculation in a field where such speculation ought not to be engaged in." Genetic factors for intelligence show no difference from one part of the world to another, he said.
Several longtime friends of Watson insisted he's not a racist.
"It's hard for me to buy the label 'racist' for him," said Victor McElheny, the author of a 2003 biography of Watson, whom he's known for 45 years. "This is someone who has encouraged so many people from so many backgrounds."
So why does he say things that can sound racist? "I really don't know the answer to that," McElheny said.
Biologist and Nobel laureate Phil Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who's known Watson since 1971, said, "I've never considered Jim a racist. However, Jim likes to use statistics and observations to provoke people, and it is possible that he is provoking people by these comments."
Calling Watson "one of the great historical scientific figures of our time," Sharp said, "I don't understand why he takes it upon himself to make these statements."
Mike Botchan, co-chair of the molecular and cell biology department at the University of California, Berkeley, who's known Watson since 1970, said the Nobelist's personal beliefs are less important than the impact of what he says.
"Is he someone who's going to prejudge a person in front of him on the basis of his skin color? I would have to say, no. Is he someone, though, that has these beliefs? I don't know any more. And the important thing is I don't really care," Botchan said.
"I think Jim Watson is now essentially a disgrace to his own legacy. And it's very sad for me to say this, because he's one of the great figures of 20th century biology."
Friday, October 19, 2007
Bill Cosby’s ‘Come On, People’ Proof that Good Intentions Can Go Terribly Awry
Comedian Bill Cosby is the walking -- and now writing -- proof of the ancient adage that good intentions can go terribly awry. That’s never been more painfully true than in Cosby’s latest tome, "Come On, People."
Cosby and his publisher boast that the book is a big, brash and provocative challenge to black folk to get their act together. That’s got him ga-ga raves, and an unprecedented one-hour spin job on "Meet the Press." In the book, Cosby harangues and lectures, cobbles together a mesh of his trademark anecdotes, homilies and personal tales of woe and success, juggles and massages facts to bolster his self-designated black morals crusade. Stripped away, it’s the same stock claim that blacks can't read, write or speak coherent English and are social and educational cripples and failures.
Since Cosby’s much-touted tirade at the NAACP confab a few years back, on countless talk shows and at community gatherings, he has succeeded marvelously in getting the tongues of blacks wagging furiously and their fingers jabbing relentlessly at each other’s alleged mountainous defects. They stumble over themselves to hail Cosby as the ultimate truth-giver.
He isn’t. While Cosby is entitled to publicly air black America's alleged dirty laundry, there's more myth than dirt in that laundry.
Some knuckleheads in black neighborhoods do kill, mug, peddle dope, are jobless untouchables and educational wastrels. They, and only they, should be the target of wrath. But Cosby makes a Grand Canyon-sized leap from them to paint a half-true, skewed picture of the plight of poor blacks and the reasons and prescriptions for their plight. The cornerstone of Cosby mythmaking is that they are crime prone, educational losers and teen baby-making machines.
Here are two choice Cosby whoppers from the opening pages of the book:
"There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible black males." This is a big, sweeping statement, unsupported by any survey, stats, or factual data to back it up.
"The problems start early for black boys, and we can all see it. Call it ADHD or learning differences. Young black males can act up a Level 5 storm in class." Here's another big unsubstantiated statement, and there's those broad-brush indicting words "all" see it -- who is all?; "young black males" -- all young black males?; and they "act up a level 5 storm" -- all black males are disruptive in class?
The heart wrenching and much played up news shots and specials of black-on-black blood-letting in Philadelphia, New Orleans and a handful of other big cities and the admission that blacks do have a much higher kill rate than young whites tell a tale of out-of-control, lawless blacks. The truth: homicides and physical assaults have plunged among black teens to the lowest levels in the past two decades. The rate of drug use among young blacks is no higher than among young whites. Blacks are more likely to be arrested, convicted and imprisoned than young whites, who, if arrested at all, are more likely to get drug rehab, counseling, and treatment referrals, probation or community service. This horribly distorts the racial crime picture.
Then there is the black teen girls as baby-making machine myth. The truth: The teen pregnancy rate among black girls has sharply dropped during the past decade. And it continues to fall.
The biggest myth -- that young blacks empty out the public schools, fill up the jails and cemeteries, and ridicule learning as acting white -- has risen to urban legend rank. The truth:
The U.S. Dept. of Education found that in the decades since 1975, more blacks had enrolled in school, had improved their SAT scores by nearly 200 points and had lowered their dropout rate significantly. It also found that one in three blacks attended college, and that the number of blacks receiving bachelors and masters degrees had nearly doubled. A survey of student attitudes by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an Illinois-based educational advocacy group in 2002 and confirmed in other surveys, found that black students were as motivated, studied as hard, and were as serious about graduating as whites.
Cosby publicly bristles at criticism that he takes the worst of the worst behavior of some blacks and publicly hurls that out as the warped standard of black America. Cosby says that he does not mean to slander all, or even most blacks, as derelict, laggards and slackers. Yet, that’s precisely the impression he gives, and the criticism of him for it is more than justified. Even the book title -- "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," a hint that they’re all losers -- conveys that smear.
Cosby did not qualify or provide a complete factual context for his blanket indictment of poor blacks. He made the negative behavior of some blacks a racial rather than an endemic social problem. In doing so, he did more than break the alleged taboo against publicly airing racial dirty laundry; he fanned dangerous and destructive stereotypes.
This is hardly the call to action that can inspire and motivate underachieving blacks to improve their lives. Instead, it further demoralizes those poor blacks who are doing the best to keep their children and themselves out of harm’s way, often against towering odds, while still being hammered for their alleged failures by the Cosby’s within and without their communities.
Worse, Cosby’s blame-the-victim slam does nothing to encourage government officials and business leaders to provide greater resources and opportunities to aid those blacks that need help.
"Come On, People," intended or not, continues to tar the black communities and the black poor as dysfunctional, chronic whiners, and eternally searching for a government hand-out. Come on, Cosby.
Cosby and his publisher boast that the book is a big, brash and provocative challenge to black folk to get their act together. That’s got him ga-ga raves, and an unprecedented one-hour spin job on "Meet the Press." In the book, Cosby harangues and lectures, cobbles together a mesh of his trademark anecdotes, homilies and personal tales of woe and success, juggles and massages facts to bolster his self-designated black morals crusade. Stripped away, it’s the same stock claim that blacks can't read, write or speak coherent English and are social and educational cripples and failures.
Since Cosby’s much-touted tirade at the NAACP confab a few years back, on countless talk shows and at community gatherings, he has succeeded marvelously in getting the tongues of blacks wagging furiously and their fingers jabbing relentlessly at each other’s alleged mountainous defects. They stumble over themselves to hail Cosby as the ultimate truth-giver.
He isn’t. While Cosby is entitled to publicly air black America's alleged dirty laundry, there's more myth than dirt in that laundry.
Some knuckleheads in black neighborhoods do kill, mug, peddle dope, are jobless untouchables and educational wastrels. They, and only they, should be the target of wrath. But Cosby makes a Grand Canyon-sized leap from them to paint a half-true, skewed picture of the plight of poor blacks and the reasons and prescriptions for their plight. The cornerstone of Cosby mythmaking is that they are crime prone, educational losers and teen baby-making machines.
Here are two choice Cosby whoppers from the opening pages of the book:
"There are whole blocks with scarcely a married couple, whole blocks without responsible black males." This is a big, sweeping statement, unsupported by any survey, stats, or factual data to back it up.
"The problems start early for black boys, and we can all see it. Call it ADHD or learning differences. Young black males can act up a Level 5 storm in class." Here's another big unsubstantiated statement, and there's those broad-brush indicting words "all" see it -- who is all?; "young black males" -- all young black males?; and they "act up a level 5 storm" -- all black males are disruptive in class?
The heart wrenching and much played up news shots and specials of black-on-black blood-letting in Philadelphia, New Orleans and a handful of other big cities and the admission that blacks do have a much higher kill rate than young whites tell a tale of out-of-control, lawless blacks. The truth: homicides and physical assaults have plunged among black teens to the lowest levels in the past two decades. The rate of drug use among young blacks is no higher than among young whites. Blacks are more likely to be arrested, convicted and imprisoned than young whites, who, if arrested at all, are more likely to get drug rehab, counseling, and treatment referrals, probation or community service. This horribly distorts the racial crime picture.
Then there is the black teen girls as baby-making machine myth. The truth: The teen pregnancy rate among black girls has sharply dropped during the past decade. And it continues to fall.
The biggest myth -- that young blacks empty out the public schools, fill up the jails and cemeteries, and ridicule learning as acting white -- has risen to urban legend rank. The truth:
The U.S. Dept. of Education found that in the decades since 1975, more blacks had enrolled in school, had improved their SAT scores by nearly 200 points and had lowered their dropout rate significantly. It also found that one in three blacks attended college, and that the number of blacks receiving bachelors and masters degrees had nearly doubled. A survey of student attitudes by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an Illinois-based educational advocacy group in 2002 and confirmed in other surveys, found that black students were as motivated, studied as hard, and were as serious about graduating as whites.
Cosby publicly bristles at criticism that he takes the worst of the worst behavior of some blacks and publicly hurls that out as the warped standard of black America. Cosby says that he does not mean to slander all, or even most blacks, as derelict, laggards and slackers. Yet, that’s precisely the impression he gives, and the criticism of him for it is more than justified. Even the book title -- "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," a hint that they’re all losers -- conveys that smear.
Cosby did not qualify or provide a complete factual context for his blanket indictment of poor blacks. He made the negative behavior of some blacks a racial rather than an endemic social problem. In doing so, he did more than break the alleged taboo against publicly airing racial dirty laundry; he fanned dangerous and destructive stereotypes.
This is hardly the call to action that can inspire and motivate underachieving blacks to improve their lives. Instead, it further demoralizes those poor blacks who are doing the best to keep their children and themselves out of harm’s way, often against towering odds, while still being hammered for their alleged failures by the Cosby’s within and without their communities.
Worse, Cosby’s blame-the-victim slam does nothing to encourage government officials and business leaders to provide greater resources and opportunities to aid those blacks that need help.
"Come On, People," intended or not, continues to tar the black communities and the black poor as dysfunctional, chronic whiners, and eternally searching for a government hand-out. Come on, Cosby.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The jailing of black America
The miscarriage of justice in Jena, Louisiana, where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder, and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations.
However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.
What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town?
While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.
America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country's prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: One in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts.
These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What's odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?
Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders.
An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.
But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.
Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.
In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a "bitch" and a "ho" by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was "not as much, I'm sorry to say," for a black man to do so.
Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.
O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation's recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.
These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor.
Isiah Thomas' outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.
What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers - some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers - is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.
The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face - the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children's care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods - all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial.
Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system - as we should and must do - disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.
Until we view this social calamity in its entirety - by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children - it will persist.
However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.
What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town?
While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.
America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country's prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: One in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts.
These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What's odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?
Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders.
An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.
But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.
Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.
In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a "bitch" and a "ho" by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was "not as much, I'm sorry to say," for a black man to do so.
Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.
O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation's recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.
These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor.
Isiah Thomas' outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.
What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers - some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers - is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.
The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face - the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children's care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods - all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial.
Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system - as we should and must do - disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.
Until we view this social calamity in its entirety - by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children - it will persist.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Boot Camp Jury Saw the Evidence in Black and White, But Not Like You Would Expect
The evidence was in black and white. Or at least that’s what I thought.
Right there in black-and-white video footage, there was a cluster of guards beating and kicking Martin Lee Anderson. Right there in that same footage a nurse looks on, dispassionately, as if they were subduing a wayward beast rather than a 14-year-old boy.
What I didn’t figure on was that the all-white jury in Panama City, Florida would see things in black and white too. Except the black that they saw was that of a boy who might have grown up to be a threat to their notions of law and order. The white that they saw was that of white authority; the authority that was being upheld by the white, black and Asian guards who killed Martin. To them, they were protectors, not murderers. So they just let ‘em go.
In the blink of 90 minutes, this jury acquitted seven guards and the nurse of aggravated manslaughter of a child. Hell, they didn’t even see fit to convict them of lesser charges of child neglect and culpable negligence.
You’d think that even as the jurors bought that silliness about how Martin died from sickle cell trait and not from being pummeled by the guards, they’d at least get them for being negligent for failing to find out whether the kids they are applying their “tough love” to are medically fit to deal with it.
But in their eyes, the black-and-white of it was that the police are always right, and those who get in their way are always wrong.
No matter that it’s a 14-year-old boy gasping for breath as they’re pressing ammonia against his nostrils.
Of course, I’m not particularly surprised at the verdict. Given the fact that Martin’s case generated marches and national outrage, it was a sure bet that homegrown jurors would rally behind the hometown team. They showed solidarity in the face of outside agitation, defying those who would imply that the way they handle their troublemakers is unfair or perverse.
So, in their eyes, the guards are the victims. Not Martin. And his short life and tragic death illustrates many of the struggles that black males face today.
First of all, as I wrote a year ago, Martin shouldn’t have been in boot camp. The transgression he committed -- taking a joy ride in his grandmother’s Jeep and violating his probation and curfew afterward -- was more about teenage angst than deep-seated criminality.
Some intensive family counseling might have been a better option than confining him to a boot camp program, a program which, like all other boot camp programs, bears scant evidence of any effectiveness.
The good thing is that in the wake of Martin’s death, Florida shut down its boot camps. But as the Panama City jury proved, what it didn’t shut down was this belief that black males must be broken in order to be rehabilitated.
And that’s wrong.
Then there’s the health thing.
Martin had sickle cell trait that hadn’t been diagnosed. While I certainly don’t buy that as the reason for his death, my question still is why? Why was it that this child was walking around with a potentially serious blood disorder that was unbeknownst to him?
Is it possible that Martin was a victim of racism in the health care system before he became a victim of racism in the criminal justice system?
Black males live seven years less than males and females of any other ethnic or racial group. They die more frequently from cancers and cardiovascular diseases than any other group.
They die because they are less likely to have adequate health care insurance, or no health coverage at all. Some simply are misdiagnosed because some doctors don’t want to go through the trouble of ordering extra tests.
I don’t know what category Martin fit in. All I know is that it shouldn’t have taken much to figure out that this child had sickle cell trait -- and what could happen if his oxygen supply was cut off by guards who put their hands over his mouth and fill his nose with ammonia.
Then again, I doubt if that would have mattered to the guards. From what I’ve read, they probably would have accused him of using his sickness as an excuse and abused him even more.
Nor would it have mattered to the jurors.
They wouldn’t have seen a sick child fighting for breath. They would have seen a black child fighting white authority.
And to them, protecting that authority is far more important than getting justice for a murdered black child who they believe defied it.
Right there in black-and-white video footage, there was a cluster of guards beating and kicking Martin Lee Anderson. Right there in that same footage a nurse looks on, dispassionately, as if they were subduing a wayward beast rather than a 14-year-old boy.
What I didn’t figure on was that the all-white jury in Panama City, Florida would see things in black and white too. Except the black that they saw was that of a boy who might have grown up to be a threat to their notions of law and order. The white that they saw was that of white authority; the authority that was being upheld by the white, black and Asian guards who killed Martin. To them, they were protectors, not murderers. So they just let ‘em go.
In the blink of 90 minutes, this jury acquitted seven guards and the nurse of aggravated manslaughter of a child. Hell, they didn’t even see fit to convict them of lesser charges of child neglect and culpable negligence.
You’d think that even as the jurors bought that silliness about how Martin died from sickle cell trait and not from being pummeled by the guards, they’d at least get them for being negligent for failing to find out whether the kids they are applying their “tough love” to are medically fit to deal with it.
But in their eyes, the black-and-white of it was that the police are always right, and those who get in their way are always wrong.
No matter that it’s a 14-year-old boy gasping for breath as they’re pressing ammonia against his nostrils.
Of course, I’m not particularly surprised at the verdict. Given the fact that Martin’s case generated marches and national outrage, it was a sure bet that homegrown jurors would rally behind the hometown team. They showed solidarity in the face of outside agitation, defying those who would imply that the way they handle their troublemakers is unfair or perverse.
So, in their eyes, the guards are the victims. Not Martin. And his short life and tragic death illustrates many of the struggles that black males face today.
First of all, as I wrote a year ago, Martin shouldn’t have been in boot camp. The transgression he committed -- taking a joy ride in his grandmother’s Jeep and violating his probation and curfew afterward -- was more about teenage angst than deep-seated criminality.
Some intensive family counseling might have been a better option than confining him to a boot camp program, a program which, like all other boot camp programs, bears scant evidence of any effectiveness.
The good thing is that in the wake of Martin’s death, Florida shut down its boot camps. But as the Panama City jury proved, what it didn’t shut down was this belief that black males must be broken in order to be rehabilitated.
And that’s wrong.
Then there’s the health thing.
Martin had sickle cell trait that hadn’t been diagnosed. While I certainly don’t buy that as the reason for his death, my question still is why? Why was it that this child was walking around with a potentially serious blood disorder that was unbeknownst to him?
Is it possible that Martin was a victim of racism in the health care system before he became a victim of racism in the criminal justice system?
Black males live seven years less than males and females of any other ethnic or racial group. They die more frequently from cancers and cardiovascular diseases than any other group.
They die because they are less likely to have adequate health care insurance, or no health coverage at all. Some simply are misdiagnosed because some doctors don’t want to go through the trouble of ordering extra tests.
I don’t know what category Martin fit in. All I know is that it shouldn’t have taken much to figure out that this child had sickle cell trait -- and what could happen if his oxygen supply was cut off by guards who put their hands over his mouth and fill his nose with ammonia.
Then again, I doubt if that would have mattered to the guards. From what I’ve read, they probably would have accused him of using his sickness as an excuse and abused him even more.
Nor would it have mattered to the jurors.
They wouldn’t have seen a sick child fighting for breath. They would have seen a black child fighting white authority.
And to them, protecting that authority is far more important than getting justice for a murdered black child who they believe defied it.
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