 |
|
 |
|
Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial: 11/12/99
Decatur, Illinois was founded in the day when they named towns for heroes, not for
corporate focus-group-tested slogans. In this case, the hero was Commodore Stephen
Decatur, who gained fame by fighting and winning against the North African pirates who
were capturing American ships and enslaving their crews in 1815. A bitter footnote to
the Commodore's heroism is that, after facing down the Barbary pirates, he died stupidly,
in a duel, shot and mortally wounded in 1820 near Washington D.C.
One wonders if the Reverend Jesse Jackson had meditated on Decatur's folly before
he shot himself in the foot. Jackson and several hundred of his followers descended on
Decatur this week to take up the cause of six African-American students who had been
expelled from a Decatur high school for two years. It all started with a brawl during
a football game between two Decatur high schools in September.
Jackson took up the student's cause for one reason---they're black. He told
reporters that no one was shot, no one was stabbed, no one was killed, and that worse
fights than this take place all the time during NBA or NHL games. But then, as the
sports anchors say, let's go to the videotape.
Video shot during the game shows the six descending on a lower level of the stands
like a tidal wave. Spectators, including some elderly and some children, scattered
like dry leaves, fleeing the onslaught. This was not your average punch-out under the
stands during your formative years. My Webster's defines "mob" as "a large, unruly
crowd." A half-dozen kids bent on havoc is not large. It is unruly.
So with half a definition in hand, the school board decided all six would face
the Zero Tolerance policy for violence, and were kicked out of school for the next two
years. Jackson filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court, and claimed the young men
werethe victims. He claimed not to have seen the video. An enterprising Chicago TV
reporterhad Jackson look at a monitor and played the scene for him. He hemmed and hawed
and still managed to maintain that the punishment did not fit the crime.
Then more facts came out. Three of the students had been in the ninth grade for
three years. When the expulsion hearings were held at the school, half the parents
of the offenders didn't even bother to show up. Jackson stuck to his guns, with a little
help of the suspicious timing of the Macon County, Illinois prosecutors. The legal
eagles from the geographical center of the Land of Lincoln filed mob action charges
against all six. Prosecutors waited until two months after the incident, while
Jackson was in town, to toss gasoline onto the embers. The suspicion was that the
timing was simply an in-your-face to Jackson.
But the school board, cowering under the glare of publicity and from the hundreds
of marchers Jackson hauled with him from Chicago, backed off, and reduced the
expulsions to one year. The marchers include residents of Chicago's public housing
projects, and protestors marching under the banner of the Young Communist League.
The vast majority of the protestors are black. Almost none are from Decatur. Nearby,
white supremicists from out of town have also set up their own motley counter-picket.
All that's missing from this circus are the ringmaster and the trapeze artists.
Not unexpectedly, reaction among talk-radio loudmouths and the pundit class has
pretty much been split along racial lines. Many blacks who weighed in ignored the
evidence, and said the students were simply victims of racism and a school system
bent on persecuting young black men. Many whites ignored the Macon County sheriff, who
said the punishment the six received at the hand of the school board was far beyond
anything they would have faced in court.
Educators will tell you, privately, that they have misgivings about Zero
Tolerance policies, since it's been proven that students who are flat-out expelled
tend to run with their buddies, get no education at all, and get into a good deal of
trouble while they're out of school. The best alternative is either a transfer to
a school for hardcases, or an in-school suspension where at least the kids can be
supervised and, if luck holds, might learn something. That's especially true in
cases like this where the parents are MIA.
All of this could have been handled better by grown-ups. Should the kids have
been kicked out of their regular school? Yes. Should they have been sentenced to a
form of in-school detention? Yes. Should the irresponsible parents who can't be
bothered with their children face some sort of penalty? Yes. Should at least some of
the students face criminal charges? Probably, but only if those charges were filed
in a reasonable time frame, not two months later as a reaction to Jackson. And
should Jesse Jackson be ashamed of himself? Yes, squared.
This sort of stunt is better suited to a charlatan like Al Sharpton, not a man
like Jackson who stood at Martin Luther King's side and has managed to get American
POW's released from Serbia. Whites should stop to consider that maybe Zero Tolerance
doesn't keep kids from repeating their behavior, which is the point. Blacks should
stop whining about racism when these six recklessly endangered a lot of people.
But then, who listens these days? Especially with all the TV cameras rolling.
|
Visit the Editorial Archive.
 |
|
[ News Views ] [ Coming Up ] [ Public Speaking ] [ News Boom ] |