Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 27 July 1996 — Page 2
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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER
SATURDAY, JULY 37, Ifgj
EDITORIALS
All murders are tragic A terrible triple murder occurred in Indianapolis, only a week after Tommie Smith was executed for murder. We can all but forget the idea that the death sentence prevents murder. Unfortunately, there is no relationship between the death penalty and murder rates. One killing has not prevented the next. In fact, there have been other killings as well since the last two executions. Americans probably fear crime more that just about anything, but Americans seem to have an insatiable appetite for watching crime shows on television and we seem to love movies about crime. Therein lies a classic love-hate relationship if ever there was one. The more significant and harmful aspects of this fascination are played out in the news media. Crime and its somewhat obvious relationship with ratings, listeners, readers and the sales of media products have somewhat distorted the average person’s view of crime in America. It has also blurred the line between the real and the imagined. It is hard to tell whether movies are inspiring criminals to commit more and more audacious crimes or whether the movies are copying the criminals. At any rate, we are bombarded with crime on the news, in the movies and on TV. We are sick of crimes both real and imagined. A more alarming fact is that the mass media and many leaders try to portray crime as a minority problem. Because of this, hardly anyone knows that the majority of violent crimes in America are committed by whites; in fact, the majority of crime in America is committed by whites. This is not the impression you get from watching television or from reading various news publications. Instead, people in the news business rather subtly focus on percentages and talk almost exclusively about proportionality as it relates to crime. Now why is that? One of the most telling statistics in the criminal justice arena reveals that while whites commit the majority of both all crimes reported and of violent crimes, African Americans get sent to jail more often. No media analysts ever talk about this strange proportion. If you commit the most crimes, then you should be the ones most often jailed. Unless of course you factor in poverty and how the law treats the poor of any color. Americans are concerned about crime, but of more concern should be the system of unequal justice that haunts the halls of justice. Americans should also be aware that our love affair with crime shows and crime reports has distorted both the popular perception of who commits crime and the actual incidence of crime. But perhaps the most serious lie is the illusion that nothing can be done about crime other than to lock people up. The proportion of Americans in jail defies logic,science and common sense. We are not helping solve the crime problem by locking up more people than any other nation of comparable means. There are ways to discourage crime and very few of them have anything to do with incarceration. We should see to it that young people like Hannah Clay, Celeste Jones and Lawrence Cowherd have a real chance live their dreams. If they had survived, they would have faced a mountain of indifference as they grew up. There are young people all around us who need our help and love. If we care about the deaths of these children, then we should reach out to young people in their names and do something real. It is cruel and ironic that a system, that now mourns the death of a seven year old African-American male and his female relatives, would have seen to it that he had a one in three chance of being involved with the criminal justice system if he had lived. He lived in a modest neighborhood and was living in a family with modest means. As he grew he would have been seen more and more as a menace, by those who choose to stereotype such young men. We have all but turned our backs on young men such as he might have become. We mourn his loss and the loss of his “sisters” and we mourn the loss of too many young, poor African-American males. He and his fellow victims were all but invisible to most of Indianapolis. If it were not for this tragedy, their struggle to live and prosper would have been ignored by the media and everyone else. If this young man had been 18-years-old, his death would have joined the scores of other unsolved murders of African-American males with hardly a mention.
A college education is important ii. i i_i.—i— i > 11. .i in—i i ... i .I■ i •• -.
A report issued last month by the Office of Minorities in Higher Education of the American Council on Education showed significant gains in the enrollment of African Americans and other students of color in college and in the number of doctoral degrees earned by Blacks. This underscores again how central a college education has become in American society. The ACE found that, in contrast to an overall decline in total higher education enrollment, the enrollment of students of color rose by 4.9 percent, about 159,000 students. That of African-American students increased by 2.5 percent, pushing their total numbers to about 1.3 million. These individuals are taking advantage of the power of education. By this, I’m not referring to education’s power to make one more knowledgeable and thoughtful, and thereby a better, civically-minded citizen, as important as that benefit is. No, I mean the power of the post-secondary school degree to help its bearer become a productive member of a society — one who has a job that provides a decent wage. Those who lack the “credential” of at least an associate degree from a two-year institution, or, even better, a bachelor’s degree from a fouryear college are in great danger: They lack the requisite “ticket” to enter the arena of the job market, and face the likelihood of being pushed to the margins of the society. The fact that some form of post-secondary degree is the critical requirement for a greater array of jobs has become glaringly obvious during the past two decades. You can be sure that requirement will become even more rigid as we enter the 21st century and see the American economy and occupational structure more and more reshaped to conform to the harsh rules of global competition. That is one reason it’s so important that we all work as hard as we can to make sure that as many African-American youth as possible, and all yputh have the opportunity to choose what kind of post-secondary education they want to seek. As
I’ve said before, given the fact that by the middle of the 21st Century, people of color will account for the majority of America’s work force, it’s eminently necessary that we “cultivate” all of our available human potential. But there’s another reason, too, for us to focus more of our attention on past-secondary education, and specifically, fouryear institutions. That reason is that colleges and universities are crucial to furthering the effort of making America a more inclusive society. Given the class and racial segregation that is unfortunately widespread in elementary and secondary schools, the college campus is often the first place the different members of the
American population see each other, compete academically and socially with one another, and make friends with one another on an equal footing. No wonder that learning to deal with diversity to accept difference without de-valuing the people who are different has proven so troublesome and fraught with tension at some colleges. One might say that, given the decidedly checkered track record of the larger society, we are not entitled to tell college administrators and students that they’ve got to do a better job of learning how to get along. But we must challenge them to do better, and support them when they do. For with their constituency of young people and adults.
intellectuals and working people, colleges and universities really are the perfect settings for practicing how we can get along in a vibrant, multiethnic society: How we can have a civil discourse about issues that provoke sharp disagreement; how we can uphold the right of freedom of expression and the sense of dvic responsibility, both of which are crucial to the well-being of the entire society. That is one crucial way that institutions of higher learning can advance their historical role as laboratories for American democracy. They can move us further down the road toward a society that is not only competitive, but inclusive and compassionate, too.
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Where is the justicefor African Americans?
As our nation seems to be rushing backwards to the future, it is noted with a great deal of irony that those who have victimized now claim to be victims. Thus, those who kept AfricanAmerican students out of Texas universities until 20 years ago have now persuaded the nation’s highest court that 100 years of oppression have been remedied in one-fifth the time and that they are now the victims of w reverse discrimination. Thus, Kathie Lee Gifford, whose clothes line has reaped millions of dollars of profits for her and for Wal-Mart, has cried that she is the victim of the media when the real victims are the thousands of children who work in U.S. sweatshops in Honduras and El Salvador and other poor countries around the world. The real victims are children like Wendy Diaz. Wendy, a 15 year-old Honduran orphan, was recently brought to the U.S. to testify in Washington to meet with Kathie Lee Gifford, whose clothes line Wendy had worked on for 31 cents per hour. Wendy told a story of the horrors of working 13 hours per
day, of being subjected to threats; of physical, verbal and sexual abuse and harassment and of often being forced to work all night. For $21.86 per week, Wendy received no health care, no sick pay or vacation time. She told of how pregnant women were assigned to work in the pressing department, where they worked 12 or 13 hours a day on their feet in tremendous heat to force them to quit so the company would not have to pay maternity benefits. Despite claims by Kathie Lee Gifford and Wal-Mart that they have resolved the problem, the fact is that U.S. companies are still using “maquiladora” sweatshop labor and still oppressing the world’s poorest children. The fact is that just because
Kathie Lee Giffoid and WalMart moved their business to another factory does not mean that they have resolved Wendy Diaz's problem and those of the hundreds of other workers who are still working at the Global Fashion factory, which also produces J. Crew and Eddie Bauer clothes. This is not the first time that Americans, including celebrities who endorse or design clothing and the companies who sell them, have learned of sweatshop conditions of the women and children who produce the clothes which earn them millions. So the claim of ignorance can no longer absolve them and it can no longer absolve us. Using child labor is exploitation and we, the consumers, must show that it is neither morally right or fiscally sound. We must let Kathie Lee Gifford and Wal-Mart and Eddie Bauer and J. Crew know that we do not condone the use of sweatshop labor. We must let them know that it is not enough to move from one factory to another when the bad press hits the headlines. We must let them know that they must return to those factories
and make certain they pay a living wage in decent work conditions, monitored by an independent human rights monitoring group. We must write them letters and we must write to our congresspeople urging them to support the efforts of Congressman George Miller of California to hold retailers, manufacturers and celebrities more accountable for labor practices behind the clothing that they produce and market. And if all else fails, we must refuse to buy the clothing produced by poor women and children in inhuman conditions for pennies a day. We do live in a global village. Exploiting these woriters allows corporations to leave out nation and put U.S. woriters out of work. It’s an economic issue. It’s a justice issue. Write to Kathie Lee Gifford at ABC, 7 Lincoln Square, New York, NY. 10023. And if you’d like to contribute to the scholarship fund for Wendy Diaz, send your check to Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 83 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY. 11217.