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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Fistfights Into Felonies |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jesse Jackson
(No verified email address) |
29 Nov 2001
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Two racially profiled students have proven their detractors wrong. |
Remember Decatur, Illinois? Two years ago, six African-American boys were expelled from school for two years because of a 17-second brawl in the stands of a football game. No weapons. No serious injuries. But the school board invoked its zero tolerance policy and threw them out of school. No separate hearings, no mercy, no alternative schooling. Branded, and discarded into the street, those boys had a ticket to trouble.
Now, two years later, two of the young men are in college; two more are slated to begin this January. All paid a high price. Two lost potential athletic scholarships. But with the support of their mothers, they have shown the character to keep their lives from being discarded as the school board had dictated.
Two years ago, when their mothers called on me, I went to Decatur and challenged the school board. I urged that the penalty be reduced, that two years with no alternative education was too harsh for a fistfight. The board was unrelenting. So we marched. The Republican Governor, George Ryan, intervened. He arranged for alternative schooling. The school board told him to go away. So we marched. The state superintendent intervened, and finally managed to get the board to reduce the sentences to one year and accept alternative school credits, so the two seniors might graduate with their class.
We challenged the board to define its "no tolerance" policy. It said there was no definition. But clearly African-American students were being expelled while white students were given a second chance for much more serious offenses.
The issue became a national controversy. The TV hit men went into one of their wildings. I was excoriated for interfering. The school board gave a tape of the fight to television. It was played over and over again, morphing a fistfight into a gang war. The young boys were turned into hardened threats to society.
But this was never about discipline. I'm in favor of strong discipline. This was about the growing tendency to treat African-American and Latino children as suspects and to railroad them toward jail. Racial profiling, zero tolerance, mandatory sentences, three strikes and your out -- the U.S. was building a jail industrial complex, warehousing two million men and women, the vast majority of whom had never committed a violent crime. Zero tolerance, a Harvard study showed, was disproportionately applied to young African-American boys.
A few miles from Decatur, Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight, a grown man, was throwing chairs, strangling his own athletes, abusing fans. But he was given chance after chance after chance. Zero tolerance wasn't about justice; it was about fear of poor, minority children.
In Decatur, the school board didn't see a fight with a bunch of kids that needed to be disciplined for bad behavior. They saw gangs and violence. Instead of suspension of privileges, and requirement of community service, the kids had the book thrown at them. They were kicked into the streets. Their lives would be someone else's problem. The boys understood: "A lot of people couldn't wait for us to mess up, - said Coryell Spates. - They wanted us to mess up so they could say, ‘Why did Jesse come down here? They're nothing but thugs.’
But the boys -- and their families and their community -- were strong enough to overcome. They went to alternative schools. Two graduated with their class and are in college. Two more are headed there next semester. The school board wouldn't give them individual hearings, couldn't make distinctions between them -- but they are making distinctions for themselves.
Now, two years later, the tide has begun to turn against racial profiling, zero tolerance, stiff mandatory sentences. Even conservatives say that too many are in jail for no good reason. Even Republican governors are calling for a review of zero tolerance policies. Even in Illinois, there is an effort to provide alternative schooling for children who get in trouble -- although there still is no budget for it.
TV's hit men, of course, have gone onto other targets. None are big enough to mark the success of these young men, to admit that their hysteria was unfounded and unjust. Nor has the school board been willing publicly to admit that it is folly to turn a fistfight into a felony.
In Decatur, the expulsions sparked an activism among African-Americans. A study commissioned by the city itself revealed discrimination in bank lending and real estate sales. Residents have begun to protest unrepresentative faculty, police and firefighting forces. Decatur has had to learn greater respect for its minority population.
Let us hope that the nation learns from Decatur. We must challenge our children, not condemn them. We must invest in them, not discard them when they make mistakes. Mercy and discipline are not opposition; they are part of one another. Zero tolerance makes zero sense when we are dealing with the young.
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See also:
http://www.workingforchange.com
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