No Education for the Poor

The War on Poor People is also part of the American War on Black People. More than 40% of the nation's poor live in the South. The state with the greatest concentration of poor students is Louisiana, where 84% of public school students are poor; more than 60% of Florida's public schools are poor.

Where there are inequalities in education, of course inequalities in income and wealth follow. (The poor get poorer.)

How this country finances education is criminal. Criminal, I say. (There is a Judgment Day a-comin', and some people are going to get the shock of their lives is all Ima say about that.) Schools are financed by local and state taxes, which means that the accident of birth governs whether an American child receives an adequate education.

When there is concentrated poverty in the schools, it means that poor students have the least qualified, least experienced teachers, fewest counseling services (and certainly the greatest need for counseling services), least access to technology, and--this probably goes without saying--the highest drop-out rates.

Reform, reform, reform. There is a solid affirmative action program in place for rich white kids, with all the children of alumni admissions policies and so on. Let us now turn our attention to people in need.

[Stats from today's News & Notes on NPR]

UPDATE: More on this from Education Week:

More than half of public schoolchildren in the U.S. South now come from low-income families, according to a new report, which predicts that the nation as a whole could reach the same demographic milestone within a decade if current trends persist.

“What these figures are beginning to tell us is that we’re no longer talking about a small slice of the population when we talk about low-income students,” said Steve T. Suitts, the author of the report, which was released today by the Southern Education Foundation, an Atlanta-based group. “We’re talking in the South about a majority of students and that does have profound implications and challenges for schools.”

According to the report, the South, for the first time in at least 40 years, is the only region in the nation where low-income children constitute a majority of public school students. Overall, the study found that in the 2006-07 school year, 54 percent of students in 15 Southern states examined came from families poor enough to qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. Under the guidelines for that program, families cannot earn more than 185 percent of the federal poverty threshold—about $31,765 a year for a family of three—to participate.

Business as Usual

Mychal Bell has been sentenced and returned to custody on charges stemming from offenses that occurred prior to the Justin Barker matter:

NEW ORLEANS -- A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate drew thousands to Louisiana for a civil rights demonstration is back in jail, but a prosecutor said Friday the sentence has nothing to do with the racially charged case.

Mychal Bell, 17, was unexpectedly sent back to prison on Thursday after going to juvenile court in central Louisiana's LaSalle Parish for what he expected to be a routine hearing, Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys said.

Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. decided Bell had violated probation and sentenced him to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

Some of you know that I used to be a probation officer. Long ago. It was a period of short duration, but I was there long enough to understand and become sickened by the racist workings of the criminal injustice system--and that is in California, where whites settle themselves comfortably into a wide-eyed "Who, us? We're not racists!" attitude and even get a little huffy when you try to explain that even if a white person intends no racism, there may be a little stain lurking, and that the white person certainly is privileged in this land of ours. I served in both the adult and juvenile courts.

With that background knowledge, I can tell you a couple of things about what is happening with Mychal Bell, even not knowing him or the particulars of his case:

1. "simple battery" could be as insignificant as a shoving match
2. apply the same reasoning to "criminal destruction of property"
3. 18 months seems an excessive sentence
4. what is absolutely criminal is that no one seems to have explained what is going on to his parents:

“He’s locked up again,” Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. “No bail has been set or nothing. He’s a young man who’s been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it.”

There's no bail once a defendant has been sentenced; bail is only an alternative to remaining in custody before the trial and final disposition of a criminal offense.

It's not clear from this whether Bell is in jail or whether he is housed at a juvenile detention center. For his sake, I hope the latter.

I don't know the nature of the original offense that resulted in Mychal Bell receiving probation. I don't know the nature of the probation violations. There are some people who are simply always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he may be one of those. It's almost impossible to obtain the facts, as juvenile court records are not available to the public.

I do very much suspect that the D.A. and judge are highly motivated to place Mychal Bell in custody, and this may have been the perfect opportunity. The protesters have all gone home. Even bloggers who once called for justice for the Jena 6 are now re-thinking their earlier stance and repenting of their fervor. (Not me. I adhere to the "Enough is enough" doctrine. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER THESE YOUNG MEN WERE ANGELS OR NOT. WHAT MATTERS IS THE DISPROPORTIONATE SENTENCING BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK DEFENDANTS IN THIS COUNTRY.)

Not Way Down South, So Very Far Away

Yet another noose incident:

A hangman's noose was left dangling on the door of a black professor's office at Columbia University Teachers College on Tuesday, triggering a hate-crime investigation and drawing parallels to the "Jena Six" controversy.

[via Ask This Black Woman]