In Memory of Chiquita Ford

Laci Peterson was eight months pregnant when she was reported missing in December 2002. We got news updates daily. National coverage in the newspapers and on television. I don't even watch much TV, and I can still picture her face. People went crazy with the story. Everyone knows the story. Her husband, who we all agreed was the jackass to end all jackasses, was eventually convicted of killing her. Now he is on death row in San Quentin.

Chiquita Ford was five months pregnant when she was reported missing in October 2007. That was after I got rid of the cable, so I cannot for a certainty say there was never a news report about her disappearance. I do read the newspaper, however, and I can say that there was not daily coverage, not even locally. No big People spreads with pictures of Ms. Ford and her family in happier times, no People interviews with friends and family members.

Here is Chiquita Ford. The remains of her body were found near Lexington Reservoir on March 7.
Chiquita Ford deserves to be remembered just as much as Laci Peterson. Toward that end: Ms. Ford was 33 years old. She lived in Oakland. She was the mother of two teen-age boys. She liked to watch comedy; she like to do hair; and she liked to dance. She had a family, she had friends, and there are people who loved her who miss her. There is a lot more to her story, just as much to her story as there was to Laci's, but we'll probably never know it.

Stop and Frisk

With "some fact-based suspicion," the police can stop anybody, interrogate him, and search him. (Or her.)

But the police seem to have trouble distinguishing between suspicious appearance and conduct. The appearance route seems to result in mostly Black and Brown people getting stopped and frisked, because just having dark skin makes a person suspicious.

If you protest, you might get arrested. That's what happened to Leonardo Blair, a reporter who was stopped and frisked and then arrested and charged with "making unreasonable noise" and "disobeying a lawful order." The charges have since been dismissed.

The Headline that Wasn't

Mississippi's plan to divert $600 million in hurricane housing relief funds to a port expansion project won federal approval Friday, despite opposition from those who say the housing needs of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina have not been met.
. . .The port expansion plan--which will use the last of the housing recovery money allocated by Congress--has been a subject of contention on the Mississippi coast, where more than 30,000 residents still live in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers and mobile homes.

Here's a little background information on the money:

The money in question is part of $5.5 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that Congress authorized for Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Administered by the Mississippi Development Authority, about $3.4 billion was allocated to replace and repair some of the nearly 170,000 owner-occupied homes destroyed or damaged by the storm. Another $600 million was set aside for programs to replace public housing, help small landlords fix their units and foster construction of new low- and moderate-income housing.

Mississippi is not a state of great wealth. Poverty rates in Mississippi have increased since 2000, and the poorest people are Black:

When compared to other States across the United States, the State of Mississippi can be considered to have a very high poverty rate amongst the population, with a poverty rate of 19.9 percent with a family income under the 1999 poverty level. The Black or African American race/ethnicity population category, holds the highest rate of poverty with 34.9 percent of the population in 2000 living in poverty. Individuals aged Under 5 years are experiencing most percent people in poverty in Mississippi, reporting 28.7 percent of this age cohort living in poverty.

So the poorest people, the ones who lost the most in Hurricane Katrina and the ones with the fewest resources to get themselves back under a roof are the ones whose pockets are being picked. Yet again.

If You're Going to San Francisco

Just say no. In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan (who has always looked to me like someone whose chihuahua-like high-strungness was fueled by diet pills).

This, seen at Negrophile, is news that should be on the front page every day until the injustices are addressed. This is the news about America's War on Black People:

San Francisco imprisons African Americans for drug offenses at a much higher rate than whites, according to a report to be released today by a nonprofit research institute.

In a study of nearly 200 counties nationwide, the Justice Policy Institute found that 97 percent of large-population counties have racial disparities between the number of black people and white people sent to prison on drug convictions.

And here is where all those morons say, "Those Black people. If only they'd get off the crackwagon." Well, no, not really:

The institute, which is based in Washington, D.C., and researches public policy and promotes alternatives to incarceration, says whites and African Americans use illicit drugs at similar rates. But black people account for more than 50 percent of sentenced drug offenders, though they make up only 13 percent of the nation's population.

(I've seen conflicting reports on this. Some sources report that whites are three to five times more likely to use drugs than Blacks.)

So Blacks and whites account for about equal numbers of drug users. But Blacks get sentenced disproportionately. Well, that's not really news. Disproportionate sentencing, blah blah blah. Ah, but how disproportionate, you ask?

San Francisco locks up a higher percentage of members of the African American community in drug cases than any other county in the study. In the county, 123 people out of every 100,000 are sent to state prison each year for drug offenses. Of those, whites are incarcerated at a rate of 35 per 100,000 white people, while blacks are incarcerated at a rate of 1,013 per 100,000 black people.

What is the lesson here? There are many, the most obvious being that it's OK to use drugs in SF if you are white, but stay straight if you are Black:

"It is not that San Francisco is sending a lot of people to prison for drug offenses, it is that the people they are sending are black," said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the institute. "An average citizen who uses drugs in San Francisco has a pretty low chance of going to prison, but if you are African American, the chances are fairly high."

(By the way, this also an issue across the Big Water:

Figures showed that of those arrested [for possession of cannabis], 40% were African and Caribbean, 28% were white Europeans and 13% Indian and Pakistani. Of those who were later charged, 18.5% were African or Caribbean and 14% were White Europeans. Nineteen per cent of white Europeans were given a caution, rather than being taken to court, compared with 14% of people from African or Caribbean communities.)

P.S. Whites are more than twice as likely to receive treatment for drug use than Blacks (59.3% versus 22.1%).

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.

Grossly Disproportionate

Yobachi at BlackPerspective.net noted that Genarlow Wilson is to be released, as the Georgia Supreme Court has deemed his prison sentence (for engaging in consensual oral sex) "cruel and unusual punishment":

The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County teenager who has been serving a controversial 10-year sentence for consensual oral sex.

The court's 4-3 decision upholds a Monroe County judge's ruling that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under both the Georgia and U.S. constitutions.

The majority opinion said the sentence appeared to be "grossly disproportionate" to the teenager's crime and noted that it was out of step with current law.

Look Inward

Congress is looking at the Jena 6 matter:

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Jena Six case Tuesday morning, less than a week after a youth at the center of the controversy was locked up again.

Which is all to the good. Not only to prevent these young men from becoming just another set of stats, but--is this too much to hope--to keep the struggle for justice in the forefront of our minds.

Even as I write this, I feel a little disheartened, not the least because in my heart I do accuse the liberals (or progressives, if that is the term you prefer) of shying away from social justice issues having to do with race. Or not shying away, exactly, but refusing to buckle in for the long ride. Oh, they will hitchhike here and there on a cause, especially if it allows them to castigate the conservatives (not that there's anything wrong with that, and I like to have me my fun, too) or if it allows them to congratulate themselves for their open-mindedness, as if they are somehow virtuous for not being as racist as the conservatives are.

dnA at Too Sense puts it bluntly:

Most white people don't care about what they see as "black" problems. Not even liberal white people.

Which was followed up by commenter Francis L. Holland:

For some reason, white are willing to believe that they are partly at fault for the systematic war on Iraq, but they are not willing to believe that they are partly at fault for the systematic war on Black people here at home. We pose the triple threat threat that they, once having embraced fairness here in the United States - they may have to integrate with us; they may have to share power with us; and they may have to share economic resources with us.

All whites benefit from the systematically racist workings of the way we live in America. I just saw A Lesson Before Dying. A little boy is looking at a globe and asks his teacher if there are white people in Yugoslavia. The teacher says no. The boy asks, "Who does all the work?" Where does the wealth of this country come from? Who benefits. Race is all about economics.

When he was young, W.E.B. Du Bois (so generously and charitably) believed that racism came from ignorance, but later in life believed that "material relationships masked themselves to the guise of race relationships."

We are responsible for what we know. Good intentions are not enough. Refraining from behaving in an overtly racist and discriminatory manner does not absolve one from responsibility. Good God, there is a war on Black people in this country. But it is a home war, it's been going on for so long, it's soooooooooooooo boring. Can we talk about Iraq instead? But oh God, the Black people. . .why should I feel guilty?

Guilt serves a beautiful purpose, you know. It is an indication that all is not well in the soul. You should feel guilty because you benefit from the sufferings of others. You will stop feeling guilty when you take some kind of action--when you refuse to countenance racist jokes, when you educate yourself about what this country has done and is still doing to Black people, when you examine every corner of your soul and scrub it clean, when you stop saying--when you stop thinking--things like, "What do they want, anyway?" or "So I got on this bus, and it was full of Black guys" or "I just never know what to say to them."

What used to be called "the Negro problem" is never going to go away. Pick a side. (If you say nothing, if you do nothing, you have picked your side.) (Although the problem, as how I look at it, is a white problem. It is a white problem with looking inward, with having integrity, with facing the truth, with accepting guilt and responsibility and making reparation and changing how we live and think and behave in this country. What is happening is evil, and those who stand by and let it happen are as bad as the perpetrators.)

UPDATE: I keep thinking about this. I don't think I said what I really wanted to say, which is that American whites who do not wish to support the current oppressive racist structure of how we live must first figure out how to recognize that they are part of the oppression, then identify what their role is, and then somehow extricate themselves as much as possible, at least untangle their thoughts from the dominating racism, and only then is it possible to begin any kind of positive action. Applying rigorous honesty the whole time, and being willing to come face to face with some ugly and then keep going.

Educate, Don't Incarcerate

. . . as one of the Jena signs so eloquently put it.

More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released Thursday. . .

Black students are more likely to attend segregated schools with high concentrations of poverty, less qualified teachers, lower expectations and a less demanding curriculum [says Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University's Teachers College]. "And they are perceived by society as terrible schools, so it is hard to get accepted into college," Wells said. "Even if you are a high-achieving kid who beats the odds, you are less likely to have access to the kinds of courses that colleges are looking for." Students who don't graduate high school are much more likely to go to prison, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. Nearly 40 percent of inmates lack a high school diploma or the equivalent, according to the census data. "The criminal economy is one of the only alternatives in some of these places," Orfield said. "You basically have the criminalization of a whole community, particularly in some inner cities." Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.

P.S. Some good writing on Jena at The Education of a Bookshop Clerk.

Call It What It Is

K. sent me this, from Mithras at Fables of the Reconstruction:

Picture the scene: 16-year-old girl attending her friend's birthday party in the school cafeteria. Someone bumps her and she drops her cake. Security guard orders her to clean it up, but when she does, he is not satisfied. When she refuses to do any more, he twists her arm behind her back, breaking her wrist, and slams her head onto a table while saying, "Hold still nappy head."

You know without my telling you the race of the victim and the race of the security guard. Will that white security guard be charged with attempted murder, I wonder?

NT Because Now Is the Time to Get It Done

. . . in the immortal words of Mos Def.

One would assume that a kindergarten teacher is equipped to manage the tantrum of a 6-year-old. But let's say that the teacher is woefully inexperienced, and may have to call for back-up. The back-up I am thinking of would be a stern-faced principal, not Johnny Law:

AVON PARK, Fla. -- Police arrested a 6-year-old Florida girl and even handcuffed her when she acted out in class. Police officers said Desre'e Watson, a kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School in Highlands County, had a violent run-in with a teacher on Thursday.*

And you see? Even the language in this lede is inflammatory and biased. Here, let me rewrite it from another angle:

When an upset child acted out, her teacher panicked. Instead of calming the child, the teacher provoked her until she was out of control, then called the police to arrest the child. Showing a lack of judgment to beat the band, an officer handcuffed the girl and booked her on felony charges.

A 6-year-old is not capable of having "a violent run-in" with an adult. It is not possible. A teacher who is incapable of handling the tantrum of a 6-year-old has no business in the classroom. As far as the principal and the police go--they should all be abjectly ashamed of themselves. For their stupidity, if nothing else.

Again, do I need to note the child's race? It is staggering that denial of racism in this country continues against the backdrop of injustices that range from housing and job discrimination ("The Discrimination Research Center (DRC) has found that temporary employment agencies in California show significant preference for white job applicants over African American applicants") to disproportionate sentencing and incarceration ("Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black"--and it is not, as that moron Heather MacDonald asserts, because Blacks are more violent--"Contrary to popular perception, violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States since 1980. In fact, violent crime rates have been relatively constant or declining over the past two decades."), to lower-quality healthcare (resulting in lower life expectancy: "Comprising 12 percent of the U.S. population as of 2000, African Americans' life expectancy is six years shorter than whites at birth, two years shorter at age 65").

This, the structure of racism that is invisible to so many (I was going to say people who are not affected by it, but we are all affected by it, and if you are not injured by the injustice, you should accept that you benefit from it) so built into the foundation of every aspect of American life, is the crisis we are facing today.

* Thanks to Yobachi at Blackperspective.net for writing about this.

Prosecutorial Indiscretion

Stopped by Friends of Justice today to see if there is any news, and there I find a response from the Southern Poverty Law Center to Reed Walters' NYT op-ed piece (which was mentioned here earlier):

Walters states that the United States attorney "found no federal law against what was done." In actuality, the federal prosecutor told CNN that "the FBI believed that [the case had] the elements of a hate crime." But because of the boys' ages and backgrounds, he declined to bring charges that could have put them away for 10 years. This is prosecutorial discretion in action.

Walters also had discretion to prosecute the noose-hangers in state court. He claims that the noose incident "broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none." But, it just ain't so.

Louisiana Revised Statute 14:107.2 creates a hate crime for any institutional vandalism or criminal trespass motivated by race. Walters was creative enough to turn a schoolyard assault into an attempted murder case; he surely could have figured out how to make nooses into hate crimes.

But — and this is a crucial point — Walters and the Justice Department were right not to prosecute the noose-hangers. Prison terms for them would not have served Jena as well as a thoughtful, measured response that addressed the deep community concerns triggered by the nooses.

Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead, Walters and the school system tried to stifle debate. Black parents were ignored at school board meetings. After black students staged a sit-in under the contested tree, Walters came to the school and, according to numerous witnesses, ominously told the student body that if they did not settle down, "I can end your life with the stroke of my pen."

Reed Walters knows prosecutorial discretion.

Things did settle down somewhat, until an arsonist burned down much of Jena High on November 30, 2006. What happened the next day perfectly illustrates the racial disparity in Walters' decision-making.

On December 1, a black student, Robert Bailey, was attacked by a group of whites, beaten to the ground, and apparently hit with a beer bottle. He suffered a gash to his head.

Walters could have prosecuted the group of whites with felony charges that might have put them away for years, just as he is now prosecuting the Jena Six. Instead, Walters charged one white with a misdemeanor; that person served no prison time. The others walked.

FOJ also discusses a column by journalist Ruben Navarette, in which Navarette calls the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson "perennial grievance merchants" (now, really, was that necessary? My response to that is well, perhaps if there were no grievances, they would occupy themselves with other diversions, maybe take up needlepoint or knitting or backgammon--not that I am the great defender of the Reverends, but who can say that their involvement has been an unmitigated evil) and echoes Reed Walters in claiming victim rights for Justin Barker while professing bewilderment that Mychal Bell could be considered a victim.

Hold up there. If Navarette can say that Mychal Bell has not been victimized in this matter, Navarette has never, to his great good fortune, been in jail. To be imprisoned at all is a terrible experience, more terrible really than you can imagine. There is no comfort. Everything that you hold onto for your identity (except what you carry in your mind) is taken away from you. Prisoners have no rights. None. They have no freedom and no privacy. If they are not actually under constant threat, they certainly feel as if they are. Mychal Bell is only 17, and yet was housed with adult offenders for 9 months. His attorneys worked for his release, and, failing that, for moving him to a juvenile facility, but neither happened. Juvenile facilities are no picnic, either, but at least he would have been with inmates his own age and would have continued attending school. Keeping Mychal Bell in jail with adult offenders was wrong--it was an injustice, and anyone who has ever been in jail (in whatever capacity--I used to spend a lot of time in jail as a part of my work) understands how Mychal Bell must have suffered from this experience.

P.S. Navarette also gets his pants all in a twist because he, like Richard Thompson Ford, is also handicapped with a literal mind and is therefore incapable of interpreting symbols (here, baby, have a metaphor):

Students at Morehouse and Spellman – traditionally black colleges in Atlanta – held a rally and declared an affinity with the defendants. Some held up signs saying: “I am the Jena 6.”

Well, not if you've never been part of a mob-style beating you're not. Those college students obviously made good decisions to get where they are. The Jena 6 made a bad decision, and that's why they are in trouble with the law.

His breathtaking capacity for misunderstanding the symbolic language of the protesters (maybe he would understand a literal sign that read "Black defendants are treating unjustly in the courts and because I am a young Black person, I, too, could be treated as unjustly as Mychal Bell and the others of the Jena 6 if I were arrested for a criminal offense, and certainly I would probably receive sentencing more harsh than would a young white person arrested for a similar offense" but come on, that's an awful lot to fit onto a poster board) notwithstanding, Navarette also fails to understand that context is crucial. Which is why the law provides for mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

But really, I'm making one of the same mistakes Navarette does, by sifting through this level of detail and by acceding to his assumption that the Jena 6 are all guilty, because this has not yet been proven in a court of law. (And also? Is everyone aware that Mychal Bell's court-appointed defense attorney, Blane Williams, did not call any witnesses nor present evidence to defend his client?) If it is, then the Jena 6 defendants should receive sentences proportionate to the crime of which they have been convicted, sentences that are the same as white defendants would receive in a similar case.

P.P.S. I'm with the commenter at Too Sense, who fails to understand "the bug up everyone's ass over Jackson." It just seems like spin to me. One side can be as flamboyant and self-indulgent in their hyperbole and rhetoric as they wanna be, yet then accuse the other. Pot, kettle, pot, kettle, pot, kettle. And glass houses. Sure, it would probably be better if we all spoke reasonably in measured tones and used only the most objective, decorous, inoffensive language. But emotions have a way of heating up the words. So what. Maybe Jackson does run the risk of crying wolf too often? But that doesn't mean that there are no wolves.

Black People to Be Free

. . . in the immortal words of Mos Def.

I like to stop by Che Sing the Cool for the sounds. Eyez posted a clip with Mos Def and Cornel West on that stupid show. I love Mos Def, you know, so I watched that. But keep scrolling down to the video about the Jena 6.

Probably everyone in the whole world knows this story by now. I'd read a bit here and there, and found all I'd read horrifying. It's worse than I knew.

If you are also, like me, someone who lives under a rock and knows nothing of current events but find yourself horrified and would like to help, you can sign an online petition. You can also donate to the defense fund. (Super easy, you can even use Paypal.) Some of the parents have mortgaged their houses to raise money for attorney fees.

More information here, there, and everywhere:
Blackperspective.net
elle, phd
Free the Jena 6
Jena 6 Petition. (In case you didn't do it yet.)
While Seated
Why we should donate. (In case you didn't do it yet.)

UPDATE: Several of you have sent me emails telling me you've taken action. Thank you. Fight the good fight.