Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 970
August 8, 2012
Worrying about My Black Boy’s Future in America
Worrying about My Black Boy’s Future in America by Allison R. Brown | America’s Wire Writers Group
My husband and I fuss and fret over our black boy.
Like other parents, we worry about a lot. We want him to use his smarts for good. Do we coddle him too much? We want him to be tough and kind, but assertive and gentle, and not mean. His boundaries of independent exploration are radiating outward, concentric circles growing farther and farther from us.
We wring our hands and pretend to look away in acknowledgment that he’s ready to claim his freedom, even as we cast furtive glances his way. We’re beginners in the worry department. He’s only 9 years old.
Our angst certainly isn’t unique among parents of black boys. What’s unique for us and for other such parents is that when we peek inside the matrix, we panic. Agents out there are bearing down on our son — bloodthirsty for his dignity, his humanity — as if he were the one. We feel outnumbered, but we hunker down for battle.
This is not a paranoid conspiracy rant. Recent data from the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education reveals that black boys are the most likely group of students to be suspended or expelled from school. Black men and boys are more likely than any demographic group to be targeted — hunted, really — and arrested by police.
Meanwhile, the number of black males taking advanced courses in elementary, middle and high schools and entering college remains disproportionately low. Suicide among black boys is increasing. Media imagery and indifference have locked black boys in their sights. Prisons have become corporate behemoths with insatiable appetites for black and brown boys and men.
My husband and I rightfully agonize about our boy. We agonize alongside many who are working to help, including the federal government. I know firsthand the work that the federal government has done and is doing to improve circumstances for black boys. This includes internal memos and meetings, interagency planning sessions, public conferences, community meetings and listening sessions, and now a White House initiative.
I also know that the federal government is accountable to numerous constituencies that sometimes have conflicting needs. Federal government workers must walk a fine line among varying public interests, which occasionally has meant unintended consequences for black boys.
For instance, in 1994, the federal priority of “zero tolerance” for anyone bringing a weapon to school was signed into law as the Gun-Free Schools Act. That priority reached fever pitch after the Columbine school massacre in 1999 and subsequent copycat slayings and attempts to kill. Federal requirements were overshadowed by local authorities and school administrators who stretched the parameters of “zero tolerance” in schools beyond logical measure to include, for instance, spoons as weapons and Tylenol as an illegal drug, and to suspend and expel students as a result.
“Zero tolerance” has entered the realm of the ridiculous. Many schools have removed teacher and administrator discretion and meted out harsh punishment for school uniform violations, schoolyard fights without injury and various undefined and indefinable categories of offense such as “defiance” and “disrespect.”
Students are suspended, expelled and even arrested for such conduct without investigation or inquiry. There is no evidence to support use of exclusionary discipline practices as tools for prevention, and they have no educational benefit. The brunt of this insanity has fallen on black boys.
Recent federal priorities have targeted harassment and bullying in school to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students from peer-on-peer discrimination dismissed by, and in many cases encouraged by, school administration. Again, understandable.
The goal is praiseworthy — to protect, finally, a population of students and segment of society that has long been a whipping post for every political party, ignored in political discussions except to condemn. While my husband and I have ardently supported federal protections for LGBT students, practically speaking, we continue to lose sleep over our black boy.
Another peek inside the matrix tells me that the fever pitch around this latest federal agenda item will mean a significant cost to black boys when new categories of offense are created, new ways to characterize them as criminals unworthy of participating in mainstream education or society.
It’s one thing for educators to guide student conduct and educate students about how to care for and respect one another, which is a primary focus of the federal move against harassment and bullying. It’s quite another to change mindsets of adults who run the system, too many of whom believe and speak negatively about black boys and what they cannot accomplish or should not do.
To speak and think affirmatively, to affirm behavior and black boys as people, is to relish the silly jokes they tell within their context, to compliment them on their haircuts or groomed and styled dreadlocks and cornrows, to adopt lingo they create and add it to classroom repertoire, and to invite their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, cousins to participate in the educational experience.
To support black boys is to celebrate their physical playfulness and the unique ways in which they may support and affirm one another. As with any other children, we must teach black boys through instruction and by example how to read and write, and how to conduct themselves without erasing their identity and attempting to substitute another. We must hone their instincts, whims and knowledge base so they can be empowered to exhibit all the good in themselves. We must be willing to show them our human frailties so they know how to get up and carry on after falling down. Yes, these things can benefit all children, but many children receive them by default. Black boys do not.
To love black boys is to refuse to be an agent of forces clamoring for their souls and instead to be their Morpheus, their god of dreams, to help them believe in their power to save all of us and to train them to step into their greatness. Those agents in the matrix are real. If everyone combines forces and uses common sense, we can declare victory for black boys and eventually all of us.
But without a change in mindset, federal initiatives, no matter their good intentions or the incredible talents that give them life, will continue to leave black boys by the wayside as collateral damage.
My husband and I will continue to fret, knowing the formidable challenges our son faces. We hope that if he has a son, that boy can be just a boy.
***
Allison R. Brown is a former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Educational Opportunities Section. She is president of Allison Brown Consulting, which works with educators, students, families and other key stakeholders to improve the quality of education, especially for black boys. America’s Wire is an independent, nonprofit news service run by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and funded by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Our stories can be republished free of charge by newspapers, websites and other media sources. For more information, visit www.americaswire.org or contact Michael K. Frisby at mike@frisbyassociates.com. [image error]
August 7, 2012
New Episode of 'Fault Lines': Controlling the Web
Al Jazeera English: In January 2012, two controversial pieces of legislation were making their way through the US Congress. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, were meant to crack down on the illegal sharing of digital media. The bills were drafted on request of the content industry, Hollywood studios and major record labels.
The online community rose up against the US government to speak out against SOPA, and the anti-online piracy bill was effectively killed off after the largest online protest in US history. But it was only one win in a long battle between US authorities and online users over internet regulation. SOPA and PIPA were just the latest in a long line of anti-piracy legislation US politicians have passed since the 1990s.
"One of the things we are seeing which is a by-product of the digital age is, frankly, it's much easier to steal and to profit from the hard work of others," says Michael O'Leary, the executive vice-president for global policy at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The US government says it must be able to fight against piracy and cyber attacks. And that means imposing more restrictions online. But proposed legislation could seriously curb freedom of speech and privacy, threatening the internet as we know it.
Can and should the internet be controlled? Who gets that power? How far will the US government go to gain power over the web? And will this mean the end of a free and global internet?
Fault Lines looks at the fight for control of the web, life in the digital age and the threat to cyber freedom, asking if US authorities are increasingly trying to regulate user freedoms in the name of national and economic security.[image error]
Remove the Knife and Heal the Wound: No More Crack/Powder Disparities
Remove the Knife and Heal the Wound: No More Crack/Powder Disparities by Carl L. Hart | HuffPost Politics
Over the past 14 years, I have given thousands of doses of crack cocaine to people. I do this as part of my research to understand how the drug affects the brain, behavior and physiology. My findings are published in some of the most prestigious scientific journals but rarely are they included in public policy discussions about whether we should eliminate the different penalties for powder and crack cocaine. Without these data we run the risk of making policy decisions based on anecdote and misinformation, which, in this case, led to egregious racial discrimination. The human cost of this mistake is incalculable, as hundreds of thousands of men and women, including my own family members, languish in prison as a result.
In the past, I avoided speaking about my research publicly because it is potentially controversial. Some may, for example, describe me as a "taxpayer-funded drug pusher, giving 'crackheads' what they want." Others may question the ethics of giving crack cocaine for research purposes. Over the course of my career, however, I have come to the conclusion that it would be unethical not to conduct this type of research because it provides a wealth of information about the real effects of crack cocaine and the findings have important implications for public policy and the treatment of cocaine addiction.
Two recent developments deemed as considerable progress toward enhancing racial justice force me now to speak out about my research on crack cocaine. The first development was the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which decreased, but did not eliminate, the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses. The second was the recent Supreme Court ruling that the Fair Sentencing Act will also apply to people whose offenses occurred before the law was passed but were sentenced after it passed.
Before explaining why I believe these developments are insufficient, I need to provide a brief history of how we got here. In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which stated that a person convicted of selling 5 grams of crack cocaine was required to serve a minimum sentence of 5 years in prison. To receive the same sentence for trafficking in powder cocaine, an individual needed to possess 500 grams of cocaine – 100 times the crack cocaine amount.
At the time, crack cocaine was believed to be so powerfully addictive that even first-time users would become addicted. It had also been linked to the deaths of two promising young athletes -- Len Bias and Don Rogers -- although later it became clear that the athletes had taken powder and not crack cocaine. Nonetheless, there remained a public perception that crack cocaine produced unpredictable and deadly effects. By 1988, concern about the drug had increased so much that penalties of the 1986 law were extended to persons convicted of simple possession, even first-time offenders. Simple possession of any other illicit drug, including powder cocaine or heroin, by a first-time offender carried a maximum penalty of one year in prison.
When the furor about crack cocaine had settled, some began raising concerns that crack/powder laws disproportionately targeted blacks. A whopping 85% of those sentenced for crack cocaine offenses are black, despite the fact that the majority of users of the drug are white. Even presidential candidate Barack Obama voiced strong concerns, "...let's not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference between the two is the skin color of the people using them...That will end when I am president." On August 3, 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law, reducing the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1. And on June 21, 2012, the highest court ruled that the new law can be applied retroactively, but only for those who were sentenced after the law was passed.
So why isn't this real progress? From a scientific perspective, any sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine makes no sense. Based on my studies with all forms of cocaine, there are no pharmacological differences between crack and powder cocaine to justify their differential treatment under the law. Both forms of cocaine produce identical effects; these effects are predictable. That is, as the dose is increased, so are the effects, whether they are blood pressure and heart rate OR subjective "high" and addictive potential. The way the drug is taken differs based on its form, however. Crack is smoked, whereas powder is swallowed, snorted, or injected. More intense effects are observed when the drug is smoked or injected, but the drug itself remains the same. To punish crack offenses more harshly than powder offenses is like punishing more harshly those who are caught smoking marijuana than those caught eating marijuana-laced brownies.
Not only have I learned valuable information about cocaine itself, but I have also learned that much of what we think we know about crack cocaine users is wrong. A common misconception is that virtually all users of the drug are addicted. This is simply inaccurate. The overwhelming majority of users use the drug without problems. This is not to condone cocaine use or encourage illegal activity. I am simply stating the facts. Another persistent stereotype is that most crack cocaine users are impulsive, focused only on getting another hit of the drug. Demanding schedules are imposed on research participants in my studies; they are required to do considerable planning, inhibit behaviors (e.g., drug use) that may be inconsistent with meeting study schedule requirements, and delay immediate gratification. Most meet these demands with no problems.
In 1964, when asked whether the U.S. had made sufficient progress towards racial equality, Malcolm X said "If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there is no progress... The progress is healing the wound." Accordingly, I think it's time for us to eliminate the sentencing differences and apply this change retroactively to all crack cocaine offenders. Such changes would be in line with the scientific evidence and the ethical thing to do. More importantly, it would be a significant and honest step toward healing the wounds of racial injustice.
***
Carl L. Hart is an associate professor of psychology in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at Columbia University and a former member of the United Nations reference group for intravenous drug use and HIV.[image error]
In the Army Still? White Supremacists and the American Military
In the Army Still? White Supremacists and the American Military by David J. Leonard & C. Richard King | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Increasingly since 9/11, American political discourse and popular culture has acknowledged, if not celebrated, the sacrifices of members of its armed forces. The often self serving praise of the service of others, which so few with privilege have ever seriously contemplated, has not resulted in heightened care for soldiers and veterans, nor deeper reflection among many on those who opt to serve, and what their service might mean for American democracy.
Unfortunately, Wade Michael Page likely will not foster the needed conversations about these issues, but instead prompt attention to the dispositions and drives that led to Page to commit what has repeatedly been described “as a senseless act.” Yet, as noted by Rinku Sen in Colorlines, these murders “are neither senseless nor random, and the vast majority of such incidents here involve white men. Racism holds a terrible logic, for a concept with no grounding whatsoever in science or morality, yet too many white people don’t see any pattern.” Equally powerful, Harsha Walia reminds readers to break down the walls between extreme and mainstream, between individual and societal, between civilian and military, to look at this violence not as yet another instance of a bad apple but yet another of the rotten tree(s):
The crimes of white supremacists are not exceptions and do not and cannot exist in isolation from more systemic forms of racism. People of colour face legislated racism from immigration laws to policies governing Indigenous reserves; are discriminated and excluded from equitable access to healthcare, housing, childcare, and education; are disproportionately victims of police killings and child apprehensions; fill the floors of sweatshops and factories; are over-represented in heads counts on poverty rates, incarceration rates, unemployment rates, and high school dropout rates. Colonialism has and continues to be shaped by the counters of white men’s civilizing missions.
To our minds, if this properly projects the arc of media coverage, until the next trauma or panic, we fear we will have lost real occasion to put into dialogue two key elements of Page’s biography: he was a veteran and he was a white supremacist. We do not know how these elements of his identity and experience interfaced with one another, though apparently his general discharge in 1998 was not related to bias. We do know, however, that thinking about the connections between white nationalist groups and the U.S. military, between the mainstream and the extreme, will help us better apprehend the shooting in Wisconsin, and more engage their implications more sensibly. “It would be a mistake to dismiss Page was an isolated actor from a lunatic fringe disconnected from the mainstream of U.S. society. In fact, the reality is that white supremacy is a persistent, tragic feature of the American cultural and political landscape,” writes Jessie Daniels. “The extreme expressions of white supremacy – like this shooting, or like some of the violent images and messages previously circulated in print and now online – are part of a larger problem. White supremacy is woven into the fabric of our society and it kills people.” We see this fact in the relationship between white supremacy and the U.S. military.
This is not a new issue, but it one that continues to resurface, often in association with tragic acts of violence. Nearly 25 years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) brought to the attention of the Reagan administration that “active-duty Marines at Camp Lejeune, NC, were participating in paramilitary Ku Klux Klan activities and even stealing military weaponry for Klan use.” Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger acted decisively, clarifying for members of the armed forces that involvement with “white supremacy, neo-Nazi and other such groups...[was] utterly incompatible with military service.”
A decade later, a group of Neo-Nazi skinheads, members of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, killed a black couple. The Department of Defense again issued a directive reminding enlisted personnel that extremism had no place in the US military.
In the official report about the killing, the DOD highlighted the broader systemic threat. “The threats posed by extremism to the military are simultaneously blatant and subtle,” the Defense Department study continued, “On the one hand, high-profile terrorist acts and hate crimes committed by active and former military personnel can have seriously detrimental effects on the civil-military relationship as well as on the morale and security of military personnel. On the other hand, even the non-violent activities of military personnel with extremist tendencies (e.g., possessing literature and/or artifacts from the extremist 'movement'; dabbling in extremism through computerized telecommunications activities; proselytizing extremist ideologies, etc.) can have deleterious consequences for the good order, discipline, readiness, and cohesion of military units.”
White supremacist organizations have been known to target Special Force soldiers as they have been trained in everything from combat demolitions to urban warfare. “Hate groups send their guys into the U.S. military because the U.S. military has the best weapons and training," said T.J. Leyden, who while a member of the Marines recruited his white brethren to join the Hammerskins, a renowned and violent skinhead gang that has been linked to Wade.
According to Leyden the military was not just a perfect place to recruit but a perfect space to train fighters for the race war: “Right now, any white supremacist in Iraq is getting live fire, guerilla warfare experience,” he concluded. “But any white supremacist in Iraq who's a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or Marine Recon, he's doing covert stuff that's far above and beyond convoy protection and roadblocks. And if he comes back and decides at some point down the road that it's race war time, all that training and combat experience he's received could easily turn around and bite this country in the ass.” Leyden was not alone. Steven Barry, a former Special Forces officer, encouraged members of the National Alliance to enterthe Army and request entry into light infantry units:
Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war. It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed. As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood.
Given the concerted effort to recruit white soldiers, given the decision of the military to ignore hate-related activities/signs, and given the ways that racism has operated within the history military, it should come as no surprise that people like Wade and McVeigh would be produced in this context.
Despite countless events and reports, the response has been minimal. In 2006, The New York Times reported how the acceptance of racism within the military ranks: “Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members.” On the one hand, we should ask ourselves how those individuals whose follow the ideology of white supremacist group, who profess allegiance to organizations committed to a racial war, who engage hate crimes and other forms of racial violence, are not seen as “gang members.” On the other hand, we have to wonder that had violence been perpetrated by “gang members,” and given the racial meaning conveyed within such a term, would the media and public be in such a rush to individualize this crime, to turn into a conversation about him rather than the broader social and political context. Would there be a push to look at links and connections, to rid the military of white supremacist.
The shooting in Wisconsin is tragic, even shocking, albeit not surprising given the history of white supremacy, given the look the other way approach from a military in search of bodies, given the violence that has been central to white supremacy throughout history. It marks another dark day for the country, reminding us once more how powerful intolerance and anger continue to be. It is perhaps predictable that a mass killing of South Asian immigrants would be at the hands of active advocate of white power.
While comforting to see his actions as that of an “extremist” the seeds of anger, the seeds of racism, and seeds of violence were sown within countless mainstream spaces. And, in light of this history, it perhaps less surprising that the shooter was a veteran. “Today's white supremacists in the military become tomorrow's domestic terrorists once they're out,” noted Scott Barfield, an investigator with the Department of Defense. “There needs to be a tighter focus on intercepting the next Timothy McVeigh before he becomes the next Timothy McVeigh.” Or the next Wade Michael Page. We fear that if the military fails after a quarter century of incidents and reports to root out neo-Nazis and white supremacists, this will not be the last such attack.***
David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.
C. Richard King is Professor of Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Postcolonial America.[image error]
August 6, 2012
Trailer: Ava Duvernay's 'Middle of Nowhere'
AFFRM
Winner of the Best Director Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE follows Ruby, a bright medical student who sets aside her dreams and suspends her career when her husband is incarcerated. As the committed couple stares into the hollow end of an eight-year prison sentence, Ruby must learn to live another life, one marked by shame and separation. But through a chance encounter and a stunning betrayal that shakes her to her core, this steadfast wife is soon propelled in new and often shocking directions of self-discovery - caught between two worlds and two men in the search for herself.
In theaters beginning October 12, 2012. [image error]
Does Race Still Matter to Teenagers? Ellis Cose at the Schomburg
The Schomburg Center
Teens were invited to join Ellis Cose, award-winning journalist and best-selling author, at the Schomburg Center this summer for an epic debate: DOES RACE STILL MATTER TO TEENAGERS TODAY? Ellis Cose's new book, The End of Anger: A New Generation's Take on Race and Rage, sets the stage for a dynamic series of conversations with young people about the rise and fall of racist attitudes in America over the years.[image error]
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