Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 26 March 1994 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1994

Tm Indianapolis

EDITORIALS

If education is the key to a better life.

African-American community’s response to the Klan

The Coalition of African-American Organizations has announced plans to present a group of community rallies named “Blood is Thicker than Water, Black on Black Love,” beginning next week to be held at various locations throughout the city of Indianapolis. “Blood is Thicker Than Water, Black on Black Love” was created to facilitate operational unity within the AfricanAmerican community of Indianapolis. According to Sam Jones, president of the Indianapolis Urban League, “With all the problems plaguing the African-American community, it’s time to put away the differences and come together as a people and share a common bond.” This coalition is comprised of community organizations and leaders such as Dr. Shirl Gilbert II and Julia Carson. And also representatives from; Indiana Black Expo, The Indianapolis Urban League, WTLC, The Concerned Clergy, Inc., the Indiana Black Panther Militia, The Indianapolis Recorder, the Ministerial Alliance and the Indianapolis Housing Authority. A community mass rally will be held while the Klu Klux Klan convenes downtown, April 12, 3 p.m. This is a first step of many —for the coalition.

Editors note: We will reprint a number of editorials from the past as we begin the countdown to our one hundred year birthday celebration, which will occur in 1995. Unstable homes and economic insecurity Feb. 27,1960 No single institution in America is blamed for fostering so many evils than the home. Lack of parental guidance, unstable family life, and broken homes are blamed for nearly every major problem, particularly the increase in juvenile crime. Few sociologists would deny that much of our anti-social behavior can be traced to disorganized family life and the resulting emotional insecurity. A point which often escapes us, however, is the close tie between family instability and economic insecurity. Many Americans, including a disproportionately large number of Negro Americans, are so overwhelmed by the problems attached to making a living that they have little time left to develop the art of living. Despite some progress in recent years, the Negro is still last hired and the first fi»ed. A man who must constantly worry about losing even his poor-paying job is not apt to be a model father. A mother who must work in a factory or as a domestic to help feed her children is likely to have little time or energy left to guide them. Negroes, a major portion of whom are engaged in unskilled labor, are, of course, hard hit by any technological advance which decreases the number of common laborers needed to produce their employers’ products. Their white counterparts are often given the benefit of inplant training to enable them to prepare themselves for continued usefulness. The Negro and his sons, generally, are denied the opportunity to learn while they earn through apprenticeship programs. Perhaps some day, industry will come to realize that it is really doing no one a favor with this sort of “favoritism” to white workers. For if Negro workmen talents are allowed to go undeveloped, not only does the Negro suffer, but industry stands to lose a great deal in the way of wasted productivity. And the resulting economic insecurity of the Negro, together with its inevitable by-products, including welfare burdens and crime, creates an enormous problem for the entire country. Not only is such a waste of manpower hurtful in our race for world leadership; it could well lead to our destruction as a nation.

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If education is the key to a better life for America’s minorities and poor, then a couple of recent headlines explain why those groups remain locked in second-class

citizenship.

One said: “Segregation in Nation’s Schools Increases.” The other read: “Minority Scholarships Equal Just 4 Percent of

Money.”

highest in big cities, although two- the highest concentration of minority thirds of Hispanics and three-fifths students. They have less money to of blacks who live in suburbs also spend on each student than do the

attended predominantly minority suburban schools,

schools. for those blacks and Hispanics Several reasons were cited by the who manage to overcome the authors of the report for the crippling effects of segregated turnaround in school desegregation: classrooms, another obstacle blocks higher birth rates among minority their path to college, as suggested by groups, immigration, poverty, school the second headline. A study by the

the 1960s is dead in the water and the and housing segregation and the Government Accounting Office

The first story reported a Harvard ship is floating backward toward the abandonment of mandatory school found that although almost twoUniversity study which found that a shoals of racial segregation,” said desegregation orders in many thirds of American colleges offer quartercenturyofprogress in school Gary Orfield,directorofthe Harvard districts. White flight to the suburbs scholarships targeted to minorities, integration has been reversed in the Project on School Desegregation, was not found to be a major factor, only about 4 percent of total last few years. which conducted the study. “For the Some educators, while decrying scholarship money awarded by According to the study, 66 percent first time since the (Supreme Court’s the trend, contend that the most colleges goes to minorities, of black students (4.6 million) and 1954) Brown vs. Board decision we important issue in our schools is not What the two headlines, and the 73percentofHispanics(3.7million) are going backward.” racial mix, but quality of education, situations they describe relating to attend schools with total or The study also found “economic That sounds suspiciously like the integration and scholarships, tell us predominantly minority enrollment, segregation” in schools, with discredited old “separate but equal” is that some progress has been made The greatest segregation of both minority students from low-income hogwash. But even if it were valid, in equalizing educational blacks and Hispanics was found in families tending to be lumped the bottom line would be the same, opportunities in America. But not

Northeastern states. together. We know that educational quality is much. “The civil rights impulse from And it found that clustering was not equal in inner-city schools with Speaking out against the death penalty Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun uphold the death penalty even rv.,,

created quite a stir last month when he wrote an in cases where evidence or extraordinary dissent in a death penalty case. arbitrariness is clear. “From this day forward,” the Justice said, “I And the crime bill now know longer shall tinker with the machinery of before the Congress would death.‘The death penalty experiment has failed,” greatly expand the death and is unconstitutional he said. penalty for federal crimes He dropped this bombshell into the midst of a although most experts agree public debate on crime that seems limited to calls that the penalty for federal for longer and mandatory sentences and broader crimes has no impact on public application of the death penalty. safety and does not deter

So he has injected some common sense and criminals from committing those crimes. civilized state. When the government kills in caution into a debate moving toward the irrational Further, nomatter how faira trial is, mistakes revenge it lowers itselfto the status of the criminal and reckless. can happen. Over the past two decades, 48 people and undermines Ik moral au»hr>ri*.t> The Justice pointed to the fundamental have been freed from Death Row because evidence Justice Blackmun has moved from supporting contradiction behind the Court’s maintenance of of their innocence was discovered. the death penalty toopposingit. His colleagues on the death penalty. Proponents of the death penalty claim that the the Court should now join him.

The Court has ruled that the death penalty is not an unconstitutional “cruel and unusual

Constitution does not bar it and even refers to “capital” crimes. But the constitution is a living document, and what passed for normal state behavior in the 1970s can no longer be deemed normal in

the 1990s.

The death penalty is a throwback to the law of the jungle, and it demeans a

punishment.” But only if the death penalty is imposed fairly and with reasonable consistency. At the same time, since the death penalty is so severe and irrevocable, the Court ruled that juries can consider evidence that would influence their

choice of a penalty.

The conflict between the fairness and consistency doctrine and jury discretion is imposing the death sentence was exposed in Justice Blackmun’s dissent. He correctly stressed that statutes or procedures intended to eliminate arbitrariness from the imposition of the death penalty would also limit a jury’s ability to tailor a sentence to the circumstances of the offense and the offender. And statutes and procedures designed to give juries and judges greater discretion in imposing the death penalty would “throw open the back door to arbitrary and irrational sentencing.” That has allowed a clear pattern of racial discrimination in the way the death penalty is administered. Most murder victims in the U.S. are African-Americans, but the death sentence is more likely in cases where the victim is white. The govemment’sGeneral Accounting Office said that Blacks who kill get the death sentence at “nearly 22 times the rate of Blacks who kill Blacks and more than seven times the rate of whites who kill Blacks.” This most serious of penalties remains trapped in a web of racial prejudice and irrational arbitrariness, and current trends can only make

the problem far worse.

The Supreme Court majority seems determined to restrict the rights of appeal and continues to

IMDI4NAPOUS ^<4

What will it take to make us stop the violence?

Last week I went with a friend to help select a casket for her husband. We were in Washington, D.C., at an old and established African-American funeral home. As we looked at the various coffins, I stopped in front of a Black one which had a Kente cloth trimmed liner and pillow. I knew this coffin had not been there four years ago, when I was last there. Then I realized that this coffin had been designed for their fastest growing market — young AfricanAmerican men. It must be difficult to be an undertaker in Black America these days. It must be difficult to see week after week young men mourned by their mothers, sisters and brothers, loudly mourned by their friends, who themselves soon may become one of the mourned. It must be difficult to embalm young children who are innocent victims of drive-by shootings or who are killed with guns accidentally, often by other children who are either their relatives or playmates. It must be difficult to be a pastor in Black America these days. It must be difficult to find ways to console inconsolable mothers who have lost their sons because of jackets or shoes or jewelry. It must be difficult to

support the other children, locked in a world of retribution and violence and knowing no way to end this spiral which can only end in the self-annihilation of a generation. It must be difficult to be a police officer in Black America these days. It must be difficult to know that young people have access to weapons more powerful than the ones you carry and that for many of them human life has no value and little reality. It must be especially difficult if you are an African-American officer, constantly faced with the fact that these are your children and the children of your sisters and brothers and neighbors. It must be difficult to work in a hospital emergency room in Black America these days. It must be difficult to see young people 13-, 14-, 16-years-old wheeled in with gunshot wounds night after night.

Some of them have been shot two or three times before. Some are able to walk out, some face a lifetime in a wheelchair, others are taken out in a hearse. It must be difficult to hear their cries in the emergency room late at night, after all, they are only children. It must be difficult to be a teacher in Black America these days. It must be difficult to help young people deal with the loss of their classmates who have been killed. It must be difficult to find ways out of the violence for those who are trying desperately to stay out of the violence. It must be difficult to get students to concentrate on geography or chemistry or algebra when the violence whirls around them, like a great whirlwind threatening to pull in all those nearby. It must be difficult to be a parent in Black America these days. I must be horrible to worry about my children, about whether they will come home from school alive everyday. It must be horrible to worry about whether you will be called to that emergency room, or worse, that you will be visited by that police officer or pastor or teacher with the word that your child is no

more. It must be horrible to live with a knot of anxiety in your stomach day in and day out. It must be difficult to be a young African-American these days. It must be difficult to awaken every morning wondering if this will be your last. It must be difficult trying to stay out of the violence when your peers ridicule you for making good grades in school or for going to school at all. It must be difficult if you are a gang member, always looking over your shoulder, always having to prove how tough you are, even when deep down you’re just a frightened 16-year-old who doesn’t know a way out. It must be difficult to worry about your younger sisters and brothers, about whether they too, will get home from school alive. Everyday four AfricanAmerican male children under age 19 are killed by guns. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, homicide is the third leading cause of death for children ages 5-14. What will it take to make us — each of us — take one step to stop the violence? There are 30 million African-Americans. That would be 30 million steps. Can we even imagine how far 30 million steps would take us? Let’s get started.