June 28, 2015

The Criminalization of Black Children in Schools Across America
By Richard Cohen

News Analysis

Top: A White police officer restrains Dajerria Becton at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. Bottom: Another White police officer subdues a 10-year-old Black student with autism in Jefferson Parrish, Louisiana, after she had an outburst in class.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Southern Poverty Law Center

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It’s hard to watch the video of the 15-year-old, swimsuit-clad African-American girl at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, being shoved into the ground by a White police officer and not be shocked.There was nothing that could have justified the use of force in that situation.

But the reality is, this kind of police overreaction to the perceived misbehavior of Black children is happening every day across America – not just on the streets but in our schools. Although the circumstances were different, what happened to Dajerria Becton in McKinney was quite similar to what happened to one of our clients – a 10-year-old African-American girl – this past March in Kenner, Louisiana. The little girl, who has been diagnosed with autism, had an outburst in class. She jumped out of a window and climbed a tree.

But rather than call a counselor or mental health professional, the school called the police. At least five officers arrived. The girl was grabbed by the ankles and dragged from the tree. Then, an officer cuffed her hands behind her and held her face down with a knee planted in her back as she yelled, “Help, I’m hurting.”

When her grandmother arrived, the girl’s face was pressed so close to the ground she was struggling to breathe. Now, she asks: “Why do they [police] hate me?”

Part of the problem is that educators across America have adopted overly harsh “zero tolerance” policies and have invited police into schools to handle routine discipline. As a result, the lines between actual crime and typical adolescent behavior have been blurred to the point where police in many areas seem to recognize no difference whatsoever.

In our work, we’ve represented many, many children across the Deep South who were marched out of school in handcuffs – often in front of their classmates – and thrown into jail cells, sometimes for days, for trivial offenses that aren’t even criminal.This brand of “justice” for schoolchildren is anything but colorblind.

Study after study show that Black children are treated far more harshly than White kids. And the racial disparity has grown dramatically over the past four decades, a period that roughly coincides with the integration of public schools.Researcher Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA, has pointed out that in the 1972 school year, suspension rates at the secondary level were 6 percent for White children and 12 percent for African-Americans.

The most recent figures show a 7 percent rate for White children, almost unchanged in four decades. But for Black children, the rate is now a staggering 24 percent. As for Black girls, who comprise the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population, some studies show they are suspended at up to six times the rate of White girls. These disparities also apply to children arrested in school.

In Jefferson Parish, La., where the little girl with autism lives, African-American children make up about 42 percent of the student population in public schools. Yet, they were 80 percent of the nearly 600 students arrested in school during the 2013 year. Black girls were 23 percent of those arrested; White girls were just 6 percent. Monique Morris, co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, told our Teaching Tolerance magazine recently that African-American girls in school are often held to rigid societal norms that don’t take account of possible cultural differences.

In her research, Morris found that Black girls often reported being reprimanded for being “loud” or “defiant” when they were simply trying to express themselves in ways that were natural for them. This dynamic may have been at work in McKinney. According to numerous reports, the incident at the suburban, neighborhood swimming pool began when two adult White women – apparently concerned that the pool was being overrun by rambunctious Black children – began yelling at a teenage girl who had organized a pool party. They used racial slurs and one of them reportedly hit the girl.

But when the police arrived, it was the Black girls who were treated like criminals.In McKinney, as in Kenner, no apparent crime had been committed. So why were police so heavy-handed? It’s a question we, as a society, must answer – soon. We can’t continue criminalizing children simply for being children, especially when the sword of justice falls most heavily on those society gives so little margin for error to begin with.

June 22, 2015

Former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. Released to Home Confinement in Washington
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, was released June 22  from a Baltimore-area halfway house to his Washington, D.C., home to complete the remainder of his prison sentence, a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson tells NorthStar News Today.

"Former Congressman Jackson is now under home confinement to complete the rest of his sentence, which ends September 20, 2015," said BOP spokesman Edmond Ross.

Jackson, who represented Chicago's 2nd Congressional District, entered a halfway house on March 26, 2015, after serving prison terms in Butner, N.C. and Montgomery, Ala.

Jackson reported to a federal prison in Butner Oct. 29, 2013, to begin serving a 30-month sentence. He pled guilty to misusing $750,000 of his campaign funds. He later was transferred to a federal prison in Montgomery.

Before resigning from Congress in 2012, Jackson, a rising star in the Democratic Party, represented the 2nd Congressional District 17 years. The district includes part of Chicago's South Side and parts of the South Suburbs.

His wife, Sandi or Sandra, a former Chicago alderman, was sentenced to one year in prison for filing false tax returns that failed to report the campaign money as income. The couple has two young children.

Under a plea deal, a judge ordered Mrs. Jackson to report to prison 30 days after her husband is released to reduce the impact on their two children.

Jesse Jackson Jr. cannot leave his house without prior permission from the Bureau of Prisons, Ross said. Ross added, "Jackson is under supervision 24/7."

June 22, 2015

Charleston Church Terrorist Attack Backfires on Hate
S. C. Governor, Others Call for Removal of Confederate Flag

By Hazel Trice Edney

Rev. Clementa Pinckney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Shock and sadness over the murders of a Black pastor and eight Bible students by a young White supremacist during a Bible study inside a historic South Carolina church June 17 continued to sweep the nation this week.

President Barack Obama will attend and give the eulogy at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church, on Friday, June 26. Pinckney, 41, was also a South Carolina State Senator. 

The others who died in the massacre are Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, an Emanuel pastor and high school track and field coach; Ethel Lance, 70, a 30-year church employee; Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49, a choir member; Susie Jackson, 87, a longtime and faithful church member; Cynthia Hurd, 54, a librarian devoted to education; Tywanza Sanders, 26, 2014 graduate of Charleston’s Allen University; Myra Thompson, 59, active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; and Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, a retired pastor from another Charleston church.

The aftermath of the massacre has taken the opposite direction from what was intended by the 21-year-old terrorist who spent an hour with the group before announcing he had come “to kill Black people.” Arrested the next morning, Dylann Roof, driving with a Confederate flag license plate on his car, told police he had “wanted to start a race war.”

But his plan has not worked. Instead, even those who have defended the Confederate flag in the past joined with civil rights leaders this week to call for the removal of the hate symbol that flies on the South Carolina Capitol grounds. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. and Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, in a late Monday afternoon press conference,  all called for the removal of the flag, which stood for slavery during the Civil War and has been the banner for race hate groups ever since.

 “Our state is grieving, but we are also coming together. The outpouring of love coming from all corners of people across this state and country has been amazing,” Haley said. She said she worshipped at Emanuel Sunday to show respect for the victims and their families.

“We know that taking down the Confederate flag will not bring back the nine kind souls that were taken from us nor rid us of the hate and bigotry that drove a monster through the doors of Emanuel that night…We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is something that we cannot stand. The fact that it causes pain to so many is enough to remove it from the Capitol grounds.”

Since the murders, a manifesto has also been discovered with photos of Roof proudly waving the Confederate flag and also burning and even standing on the U. S. flag. Despite the terror that he had inflicted, most of the family members of the victims who spoke during his arraignment told him that they had forgiven him despite their devastating grief.

U. S. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, stood with Haley at the press conference. He said he had been conversing with Haley about the issue since the vicious killings.

“On yesterday she reached out to let me know that she had reached the place where we heard from her today,” Clyburn said in a CNN interview. “I so I proudly stood with her as she made that announcement.”

Under current law, the removal requires a two-thirds or supermajority of the General Assembly. But, Clyburn said the current legislature could resend that law and have the flag removed by a simple majority. Though Republican presidential candidates appeared reluctant to agree, it was a tweet from former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney that seemed to have exacerbated the move to take the flag down.

Romney’s tweet said, “Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.”

President Obama tweeted in response, “Good point, Mitt”.

The murders have come amidst unrest across the nation because of unarmed African-Americans being shot down by police and authority figures. Roof claimed he was first angered by the controversy surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed Florida teen shot and killed by a Latino neighborhood watchman three years ago. Incidentally, Roof is reportedly incarcerated in the same jail as Michael Slager, a former Charleston police officer who was fired and is now indicted in the back shooting of an unarmed Black man, Walter Scott, as Scott fled.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, hundreds packed into the church lovingly called “Mother Emanuel”. Despite the unthinkable grief, the resolve and determination of the Black Church as an institution was clear: "The doors of the church are open," proclaimed interim pastor, the Rev. Norvel Goff during the widely televised service. "No evildoer, no demon in hell or on Earth can close the doors of God's church.”

The storied “Mother Emanuel” is no stranger to attacks nor is it a stranger to fighting for justice. In 1822, Denmark Vesey, one of the church’s founders, had planned a slave revolt in Charleston. But, after an informant foiled the plot and Vesey and 36 other slaves were hanged, the church was burned to the ground. Parishioners rebuilt the church, but after a decade, South Carolina outlawed churches that were all Black. The parishioners then worshipped underground until they publically reorganized  31 years later at the close of the Civil War in 1865.

Sunday morning prayers were held in solidarity with Emanuel in churches across the country. After praying for the hearts of those in grief, Bishop Alfred Owens, pastor of the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church in Washington, DC, spoke to his congregation about what he described as the “merciless incident” in Charleston.

“Racism is alive and well in our country. Hate is rampant,” he said. “But, I refuse to live in fear,” he said to applause from the congregation as he exhorted them to depend on God. “You cannot walk around in fear. You must be cautious, but do not walk around in fear.” 

The rampant hate is indeed wide spread says Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a foremost authority on hate groups in America. “Since 2000, we've seen an increase in the number of hate groups in our country — groups that vilify others on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity,” he said in a statement. “Though the numbers have gone down somewhat in the last two years, they are still at historically high levels.  The increase has been driven by a backlash to the country's increasing racial diversity, an increase symbolized, for many, by the presence of an African American in the White House.”

Cohen concluded, “Our hearts go out to the victims and their families.  Black churches, including those in South Carolina, have been the targets of hate crimes throughout our country's history. We know that they will remain resolute and their faith unshaken in the face of this tragedy.”