Discussions on Race Going Forward Need to Focus on the Justice System

arrest-handcuffedAs stated on Sunday, the President’s comments on race in part helped to push us away from one discussion on the Trayvon Martin killing and toward another.  The President said, “When Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

This is the reality that all African-Americans have to deal with in our society – the prospect of being treated not because of their actions, but being regarded with suspicion because of the color of their skin and the location of their whereabouts.

We have the President of the United States articulating what it is like to be racially profiled.  He said, “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.”

He continued: “There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.”

Some believe that this is indeed justified, based on crime statistics and a perceived propensity for African-Americans to be more likely to commit crimes than whites.

But I think the most important thing the President said was this: “The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.  And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.”

He adds: “This isn’t to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.”

At the same time, he can articulate the concern of those in the black community when he states, “It’s not to make excuses for that fact — although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.”

“I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.  So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys,” he said.  “But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”

I apologize to my readers for the long introduction but this is the key point I think that divides black from white and liberal from conservative on the issue of race.

The view of whites and conservatives seem to be that, while the system may be unfair, the key to progress for African-Americans is individual responsibility.  If the system is unfair – and many increasingly acknowledge that it is – the answer is to avoid the system.

My problem goes back to the arguments of Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and I believe that these individuals – while well-intentioned, at least at times – miss the critical link between drug policies, unequal enforcement and the poverty-crime cycle.

To put it plainly – once blacks get into the system, the system creates hurdles making it nearly impossible to get out.  The unequal enforcement and damage of a single early conviction has a huge ripple effect down the line.

The argument of Michelle Alexander is this: “In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.”

Once an individual enters the criminal justice, she argues, “the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service – are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.”

I do not go quite as far as Michelle Alexander – at least not yet.  I think these are more byproducts of a broken system than an effort to systematically hold down the African-American population.

However, as Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy told the New York Times last year in an article on Ms. Alexander, “I don’t believe in the government conspiracy, but what you have to accept is that that narrative exists in the community and has to be addressed.”

“Everyone in the African-American community had been seeing exactly what she is talking about but couldn’t put it into words,” said Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an educational advocacy group in Chicago.

“The book is helping white folks who otherwise would have simply dismissed that idea understand why so many people believe it,” said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It is making them take that seriously.”

Rick Olson, a state representative in Michigan, was one of the few whites and few Republicans in the room when Professor Alexander gave a talk sponsored by the state’s black caucus in January.

“I had never before connected the dots between the drug war, unequal enforcement, and how that reinforces poverty,” Representative Olson said. “I thought, ‘Gee whiz, let me get this book.’ “

Those who want to put the blame for persistentant black poverty on criminality need to read this part closely.  The central thesis here is that the rate of drug use by blacks and whites is fairly even.  And yet, for many reasons, blacks are far more likely to be arrested than white for the same crime.

“African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses,” according to the Human Rights Watch. “From 1980 to 2007 about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American.”

The biggest reason for that arrest rate differential is probably based on circumstance.  While more affluent people can use drugs in the general security of their homes, the more impoverished and youthful users end up closer to the streets – where it is more likely they encounter law enforcement.

This one fact has a cascading effect.

This is where the system takes over.  Blacks get harsher punishments than whites, even controlling for repeat offenses and nature of crimes.

“The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.”

Once in the system, getting out is tough.  Convicted felons cannot vote, are ineligible for public housing and an array of public assistance benefits, and, of course, having to check the “felon box” is a huge barrier to attaining jobs.

Studies have shown: “Evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women. The results show no evidence of racial divergence in wages prior to incarceration; however, following release from prison, wages grow at a 21 percent slower rate for black former inmates compared to white ex-convicts. A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care-areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.”

So what happens as the result of this?  I was sitting in a courtroom once, as an individual pled to selling drugs – why was he selling drugs? He needed to pay for his court fees. While Judge Rosenberg told him that he needed to find a more appropriate means to earn a living, it does raise a real question about the burdens put on convicted people.

So does the discrepancy in drug laws account for differences in violent crime rates?  That is a factor that needs to be studied more.  Getting people into the system at a younger age is more likely to lead to recidivism, especially when job prospects and future earnings are curtailed.  Play the scenario out several generations, rather than a single lifetime, and I think we have a problem.

One of the more commonly noted sentencing differentials is the difference between the penalties for rock cocaine versus powder cocaine.  There is an incongruence, just given the difference in the street price for rock which is relatively cheap, versus the much more expensive powder cocaine.

But observe this: Possession of 28 grams of crack cocaine yields a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first offense; it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence.

Drug use has also shifted from cocaine to the more accessible and much more devastating meth.  But the bottom line is that the realities of incarceration perpetuate the problem.

In my view, we need to understand the issue of race now in terms of the criminal justice system.  There is a clear link between drug policies, unequal enforcement and the poverty-crime cycle. Basically, once you get into the system, you can’t get out of it.

I agree with many conservatives that part of the strategy is intervention – prevent youths from getting into the system to begin with.  I suspect we disagree on how that can and should be accomplished.

But simply preventing the problem is not going to suffice.  We need, in essence, another firewall here, and that is to change the system so that it does not cripple someone for life when they take an early felony conviction for small personal use of drugs.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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  • David Greenwald

    Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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77 comments

  1. Here’s someone who has a grip on the race problem:

    [url]http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2013/07/23/bill-oreilly-president-obama-and-race-problem[/url]

  2. Agree GI.

    Here is someone else that has a grip on the race problem.

    [url]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578618681599902640.html[/url]

    And another…

    [url]http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/04/24/who_is_racist/page/full[/url]

  3. [i]I agree with many conservatives that part of the strategy is intervention – prevent youths from getting into the system to begin with. I suspect we disagree on how that can and should be accomplished.[/i]

    You basically have until the child hits puberty to steer him correctly. After that the laws of diminishing returns take over.

    I could make a definitive list of actions required to ACTUALLY solve the black community’s problematic over-representation and under-representation. I think there are many people that could do the same… and most of these people would probably agree. But while the media, white elite liberals and race-baiting political and social leaders continue to block any meaningful conversation about race that moves away from blaming history and whites, it is useless to try.

    We need to be honest about racial differences and their impact to race-based behavior and outcomes. Until we do that, there is not much return on investment for putting effort into attempts at solutions.

    One difference that I think needs to be discussed is the potential correlation with violence, risk taking and testosterone levels. There have been numerous studies that testosterone levels of black males are higher than any other race. There is correlated evidence that this explains the higher rate of prostate cancer in black males. But does it also help explain at least some of the over-representation in crime?

    As our education system continues to “chick-a-fy” – as one popular radio talk show host describes – education outcomes for boys, and especially black boys, continues to fall.

    From my perspective, there is a bias against testosterone and standard boy behavior that starts in the earliest grades. This is brought to us directly from the women’s movement and the very white liberal establishment that decries black over-representation in crime and punishment.

    Maybe one place to start to solve the problems in the black community is to honestly evaluate how changes in our education system over the years have and are contributing to the increasing incarceration rate of black males. There are certainly other causes, but education should be an immediate topic and source of some problem solving. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for blocking needed reforms of crappy inner-city schools only to protect their adult jobs programs and union campaign benefactors.

  4. David wrote:

    > To put it plainly – once blacks get into the
    > system, the system creates hurdles making it
    > nearly impossible to get out.

    Most (but not all) people “in the system” are bad people that have been committing crimes for years before they ever get “in the system”. The reason that most “blacks” find it “nearly impossible to get out” is that they keep committing crimes while on parole (just like most whites, Hispanics and Asians on parole that end up back in jail before they get off parole). I actually read something a while back that said white criminals are MORE likely than blacks to end up back in the “big house” while on parole…

    > But observe this: Possession of 28 grams of crack
    > cocaine yields a five-year mandatory minimum sentence
    > for a first offense; it takes 500 grams of powder
    > cocaine to prompt the same sentence.

    As someone who did “ride alongs” in the “black community” in the 80’s I can tell you that crack does a lot more damage to a community than powdered cocaine (I lived in a “white community” at the same time).

    Should a “first offender” who throws a rock at a window found with 500 more rocks in his car get the same sentence as a guy who blows up a building with a shoulder fired rocket launcher and has 28 more rocket launchers in his truck?

  5. Growth and Frankly: I spent a long time putting this piece together, most of my day yesterday in fact, I’d appreciate the first responses not being links to other people’s opinions – just out of courtesy.

  6. South:

    “Most (but not all) people “in the system” are bad people that have been committing crimes for years before they ever get “in the system”.”

    I disagree. The first foray into the system very well may be felony probation, but that’s still in the system and liberties start getting taken away.

    ” The reason that most “blacks” find it “nearly impossible to get out” is that they keep committing crimes while on parole”

    What I’m suggesting to you is that the rules that are put in place almost insure this and they insure for both whites and blacks, the problem comes when you have a much larger number of blacks than whites in the system initially.

  7. “As someone who did “ride alongs” in the “black community” in the 80’s I can tell you that crack does a lot more damage to a community than powdered cocaine (I lived in a “white community” at the same time).”

    Maybe the problem is that the people using the powder have more financial security and a bigger safety net.

  8. [quote]Growth and Frankly: I spent a long time putting this piece together, most of my day yesterday in fact, I’d appreciate the first responses not being links to other people’s opinions – just out of courtesy. I don’t mind vigorous debate and no, Growth izzue, it’s not a rule, your post won’t be taken down, I’m just asking that as a courtesy to me. [/quote]

    Seriously David, you’ve got to be kidding.

  9. Frankly:

    “You basically have until the child hits puberty to steer him correctly. After that the laws of diminishing returns take over. “

    Agreed, but many of these kids start out behind the eight-ball.

    So I’d like you to evaluate the impact of the system on the possibility of kids getting chances, you basically completely ignored what I wrote.

  10. Okay David, but you have never asked for that before (as far as I’ve seen) and we both know that if you had a supporting link posted it would’ve never been brought up.

  11. [quote]…change the system so that it does not cripple someone for life when they take an early felony conviction for small personal use of drugs.[/quote]
    Aside from the option of decriminalizing drug possession, it seems that an option that would clear the conviction (i.e., eliminate the record) under certain circumstances would enable people convicted of minor drug crimes to apply for work without having a criminal record.

  12. Astounding. Confronted with David’s excellent synopsis of a profoundly significant analysis of the institutional racism embodied in the criminal justice system, certain commenters ignore the article and, instead, hide under their security blankets in the form of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. (Describing Bill O’Reilly as “someone who has a grip on the race problem” is worthy of The Onion. Doing ride-alongs in the 80s does not make one an expert on anything except, perhaps, the comfort level of the back seats of 1980s vintage police cars.)

    Please consider reading Michelle Alexander’s book before accepting simplistic conclusions, such as “the reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family.” Alexander’s book may actually provide some insights into what’s responsible for the state of the African American family.

  13. I also think that the entire Controlled Substances Act schedule classification system is in dire need of review and revision. Probably an independent commission would have to do it.

  14. While this opinion piece has some reasonable points it doesn’t address the the black youth culture and it’s permissiveness towards certain activities. The problem begins with birth rates to single mothers the moves to the drop out rate, the music, the teen pregnancy rate, and the lack of jobs for black youths, especially in inner cities.

    Finding a balanced approach would be better than focusing on a singular issue. This article is about statistics, incarceration rates, prison terms, and unequal enforcement.

    Prison terms are generally decided by judges. That should be very easy to address because you only have to address the issue with just a few people compared to the total number of people in the justice system.

    I know it’s kind of a chicken or egg question but at some point the cycle has to stop. Since the only people who get it are blacks, whites can’t understand, it will have to start internally.

    As for unequal enforcement look at the crime numbers. Think about fishing. If you know a bunch of fish are in one part of a lake wouldn’t you fish in that part of the lake. We know from statistics that inner city black neighborhoods tend to have high crime rates. If Davis had huge number of robberies and murders in downtown would it be a good idea to have equal police patrol time in El Macero as downtown? Take race out of it and just look at the crime numbers.

  15. [i]The view of whites and conservatives seem to be that, while the system may be unfair, the key to progress for African-Americans is individual responsibility. If the system is unfair – and many increasingly acknowledge that it is – the answer is to avoid the system.[/I]

    I don’t see the system as being “unfair”. I see the system as simply being the system. And the “individual responsibility” I expect from a black person is no different than I expect from any other person.

    [I]To put it plainly – once blacks get into the system, the system creates hurdles making it nearly impossible to get out. The unequal enforcement and damage of a single early conviction has a huge ripple effect down the line.[/i]

    Again, this is the same for any person. A white person cannot easily recover from big mistakes made early in life that leave him with a criminal record. If his family has money, they might be able to help him open a business, or get him a job. But then the same should be true with a black person in a family with money.

    Neither of these are justified racial considerations, so why then use the work “black” in describing them.

    I think were you are going with this is to have race-based crime and punishment statutes… I guess a sort of affirmative action system for blacks to be given a second… and maybe a third and forth chance. I could not disagree with this idea any more if accepting it meant that I would also get beat with a hammer.

    However, I would welcome discussion about changes in our drug laws to reduce punishment for simple non-violent possession. And take the savings we would get from the reductions in law enforcement and judicial resources required and invest it instead in treatment programs.

    I have become much more sympathetic to addiction problems having experienced so many friends, family and coworkers… good people of normal intelligence… have their lives go off the rails because they cannot stop ingesting crap that makes them feel good for a short time while it destroys them and everything around them. I have complete self-control of these things, and so I have always considered addition a choice and a sign of laziness and weakness. But know I see that there is some physiological difference in some people that makes them have stronger cravings and obsessions… and when they are introduced with to a feel good substance with addictive properties, they are toast.

    I watched a program on this. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine[/url] Apparently DMT is a new drug gaining popularity that causes black-out dream hallucinations that last about 15 minutes and there are no addictive properties. Maybe this and pot being legalized will provide enough “high” that it will cause more people to stop using meth and heroine.

  16. Mr. Obvious:

    “the the black youth culture and it’s permissiveness towards certain activities”

    I think this also is the chicken and the egg, because part of the permissiveness is a reflection of absenteeism which is a reflection of the nature of the criminal justice system.

    So the question becomes – can we find a way for convictions for small time crimes, I’m not talking violent crimes, but small-time crimes, do not end up crippling for life?

    “Finding a balanced approach would be better than focusing on a singular issue. This article is about statistics, incarceration rates, prison terms, and unequal enforcement. “

    While I agree on a balanced approach, the article also intends to demonstrate how those statistics and unequal enforcement acts to perpetuate the system.

    “Prison terms are generally decided by judges. That should be very easy to address because you only have to address the issue with just a few people compared to the total number of people in the justice system. “

    Not so much anymore. The sentencing scheme in California sets a three-tiered system, but even if you end up with felony probation, you end up being ineligible for most work and benefits.

  17. The point many seem to be missing is that young people use drugs – I know it, you know, the American people know it. Turns out blacks and whites share this in common and drug use is about equivalent across races. But for blacks, they are many times more likely to get arrested for simply using drugs and that is the trigger point here because once you have a felony, you become part of the system even if it doesn’t result in prison time.

  18. [quote]So the question becomes – can we find a way for convictions for small time crimes, I’m not talking violent crimes, but small-time crimes, do not end up crippling for life? [/quote]
    The small time crimes you are talking about are still felonies. These “minor” crimes are generally theft of some sort or something to do with drugs. People who engage in these activities are generally have little or no education. They are crippled for life before the conviction.

    [quote]Not so much anymore. The sentencing scheme in California sets a three-tiered system, but even if you end up with felony probation, you end up being ineligible for most work and benefits.
    [/quote]
    For repeat offenders this may be true but not for first time offenders. It is extremely rare that first time drug offenders or thieves go to prison. What benefits are you talking about?

  19. Frankly: [i]As our education system continues to “chick-a-fy” – as one popular radio talk show host describes – education outcomes for boys, and especially black boys, continues to fall.

    From my perspective, there is a bias against testosterone and standard boy behavior that starts in the earliest grades. This is brought to us directly from the women’s movement and the very white liberal establishment that decries black over-representation in crime and punishment. [/i]

    White liberals? It figures you’d say that…

    I attribute it over-focus on cognitive outcomes (standardized test scores in math and English) to the point of devaluing and cutting sports, arts, and anything socially or vocationally worthwhile about school because test scores aren’t where they should be.

  20. I wrote:

    > Most (but not all) people “in the system” are
    > bad people that have been committing crimes for
    > years before they ever get “in the system”

    Then David wrote:

    > I disagree.

    I estimate that well under 1% of people (of all races) arested and convicted of a crime are caught on their first time breaking the law. Since Davis disagrees I’m wondering what percentage of people he thinks are “in the system” after their “first crime”?

    I then wrote:

    > The reason that most “blacks” (and other races)find it
    > “nearly impossible to get out” is that they keep
    > committing crimes while on parole”

    Then David wrote:

    > What I’m suggesting to you is that the rules that
    > are put in place almost insure this and they insure
    > for both whites and blacks, the problem comes when
    > you have a much larger number of blacks than whites
    > in the system initially.

    There has always been a much larger “number” of whites “in the system” than blacks (there is a higher “percentage” of blacks in the US criminal justice system).

    I’m not a Fox News watching Republican and I’m not CNBC watching Democrat. I’m a guy that has personally donated tens of thousands of dollars and spent probably close to a thousand hours working with underpriviliged (about half black) kids over the past 20 years.

    Is there some racism in America, sure, does our criminal justice syster have problems, yes lots of them. Do both racism and the criminal justice system have a lot to do with the high percentage of blacks in prison, not even close.

    To quote Chris Rock’s #1 reason(see below to see him say it) on how to stay “out of the system” 1. “Obey the Law”…
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65zXlytv01c

    Until we get past the Republican “blacks deserve what they get”/Democrat “white racism is the reason for all problems in the black community” we will never get anywhere…

    Ignoring that fact that in many urban areas 70%+ of black boys don’t have a Dad, graduate from High School, or make any effort to learn a skill to earn an honest living while “focusing” on “justice system” is like trying to help a starving family and ignoring the fact that they have no food and focusing on the lack of newspaper ads for organic produce…

  21. David wrote:

    > Maybe the problem is that the people using
    > the powder have more financial security and
    > a bigger safety net.

    I think we should make all drugs other than crack (used mostly by blacks) and crystal meth (used mostly by whites) legal.

    The problem is that crack and crystal meth are evil and literaly destroy people and communities.

  22. [i]I attribute it over-focus on cognitive outcomes (standardized test scores in math and English) to the point of devaluing and cutting sports, arts, and anything socially or vocationally worthwhile about school because test scores aren’t where they should be.[/i]

    I agree, but those are symptom problems of another root problems. Until we attack and solve the root problems, we can only talk about the symptom problems… we will do nothing to solve them.

    Again, you and I agree on quite a bit related to education. Our differences appear to be primarily focused on the root causes and hence the root solutions.

    But while we argue about these things, more and more kids have their lives destroyed by the crappy education system. I need to clarify this related point… Some kids are directly destroyed by the damage caused by their crappy education experience. But others are destroyed from our failure to exploit the opportunity that exists for a reformed and remodeled education system to compensate for the other social deficits plaguing these kids.

  23. [quote]As our education system continues to “chick-a-fy” – as one popular radio talk show host describes – education outcomes for boys, and especially black boys, continues to fall. [/quote]

    The same point could be made with the derogatory and condescending term “chick-a-fy”. Why use it?

  24. Come on B. Nice. I have not read where that is a derogatory and condescending term. Maybe you are just getting confused with being irritated in disagreement on my point. That point is valid, education has taken a giant turn to be more oriented toward girl student’s learning style and away from boy’s learning style. Title-IX, while arguably helpful to girls, has done so at the expense of many boys.

    By the way, I dude-a-fied my garage a few months ago, after my wife chick-a-fied my son’s bedroom after he moved out.

    See how that works?

  25. Maybe your popular radio host should check the urban dictionary.

    [quote] there is a bias against testosterone and standard boy behavior that starts in the earliest grades.[/quote]
    Actually, it has been shown that teachers favor boys, particularly outgoing boys, in the classroom, and that boys get a disproportionate amount of resources. Certainly that was the experience in our family.

    [quote]Women’smovementwhiteliberalsDemocratsunions[/quote]
    Yeah. Right.

    [quote] honestly evaluate how changes in our education system over the years have and are contributing to the increasing incarceration rate of black males.[/quote]
    If we do such an evaluation, it should be based on actual evidence, not ideology.

    David’s essay focuses on the disparities in the criminal justice system. It seems that there could actually be workable reforms in how drug crimes are handled. Obviously it’s always good to try to improve educational outcomes as well. It’s probably also good to try to reduce urban poverty and the myriad social ills that exist in urban centers. My guess is solutions to those problems would divide along partisan lines. But public attitudes on drugs have changed. A more libertarian ethos seems to be developing. Maybe there’s hope for legislative initiatives in that regard.

  26. Frankly:
    [quote]By the way, I dude-a-fied my garage a few months ago, after my wife chick-a-fied my son’s bedroom after he moved out.
    [/quote]

    Frankly, I’m offended by “dude-a-fied”. I think it would be much more PC to say non-gender-a-fied.

  27. [quote]Ignoring that fact that in many urban areas 70%+ of black boys don’t have a Dad, graduate from High School, or make any effort to learn a skill to earn an honest living while “focusing” on “justice system” is like trying to help a starving family and ignoring the fact that they have no food and focusing on the lack of newspaper ads for organic produce…[/quote]

    Yup.

    Interestingly, I’ve also spent a lot of time working/volunteering with inner city populations, a large chunk of it being at-crisis (often violent) teens. One common thread I found, time after time after time, is these kids weren’t ever taught that they could amount to anything. By parents or teachers or any adult in their life EVER. In fact, quite the opposite. They were told that the system was stacked against them, so no reason to bother trying.

    I’ll never forget the look of astonishment-and then the tears- after I spent an hour or so working with a teenage boy who’d been involved in some pretty scary stuff. I told him (truthfully) that he was incredibly smart and that he was letting his future self down by being involved with gangs. Not only was I the first person in his ENTIRE life that told him he was smart, (“Really? [i]Me[/i]? You think [b]I’m[/b] smart. Nobody has ever told me that before.” “Nobody?” “No. Never.”) he also had NO idea that he could go to college. He thought it an impossibility, being a kid from the projects.

    I explained to him about grants and other financial aid that was there just for kids in his situation…he literally thought that because his mom couldn’t write a big check, he’d never be able to go. Plus he thought being black was a strike against him regarding admissions. It’s what he’d always been taught.

    All he’d heard was that the system was against him, and that he was destined to live his life in the projects just like everyone else he knew. So why finish high school? Why not instead attempt to rise in the ranks of the powerful in his “world”…thus, the gangs.

    One more example- once while volunteering at a clinic, I had to break the unfortunate news to a 14 year-old girl that she was pregnant. She? Was scared and upset. Her mom? Whooped happily because, as she told me, that was going to be more money coming in each month from Welfare.

    These aren’t isolated incidents. The despair in some of these communities is unfathomable to those of us who live in Davis and argue about plastic bag bans. The degree to which they are CONVINCED that they don’t have any options, and then proceed to make decisions based upon that is heartbreaking.

  28. “The rates for drug use are not equivalent across race: “

    They are not equivalent, but the variance does not account for the differential in arrest rates.

  29. [quote]Actually, it has been shown that teachers favor boys, particularly outgoing boys, in the classroom, and that boys get a disproportionate amount of resources. Certainly that was the experience in our family. [/quote]

    Boys are diagnosed with learning disorders far more often than girls. They are prescribed Ritalin more than girls. They are expelled and held back more often. Girls outnumber boys on honor rolls and in AP classes. Girls matriculate into college in greater numbers than boys. (Sorry, I’m too lazy to look up actual stats. Heh.)

    Just the fact that, as you say, boys get a disproportionate amount of resources points alludes to this.