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5A OPINIONS/ (E||t Ctarldtte Thursday January 22, 2004 Legal tangles snare black victims Marian Wright Edelman Each day in America 1,139 black children and youths are arrested. A recent study of incarcera tion rates showed that if cur rent trends continue, one in 18 Black women and one in three Black men will be incarcerated during their lifetime. These statistics are devastating, not only for the tragedy in individual lives but for our nation and its jus tice system which fails to be just. For many Black youths, the spirit of the law is apphed in a very dubious and harmful manner. We all hear these stories far too often. A case being fought in Georgia right now is receiving national atten tion. I hope it continues until justice is done. Marcus Dixon is a talented black 19-year-old who should be in the middle of his freshman year at Vkoderbilt University. Instead, he is locked up in a Georgia prison. A scholar with a 3.9 grade point average and a star football player, Marcus won a full scholarship to Vanderbilt during his senior year of high school in Rome, Ga., last spring. Shortly after being accepted to Vanderbilt, he was accused of having forcible sex with a white girl three months shy of her 16th birthday. Marcus and others maintained that the sexual tiyst in a class room on school groimds was planned ahead of time. Several of the girl’s class mates also testified that she later had told them it was consensual. Afterwards, the white teen told Marcus that her father could never find out that she had been with a black person or he “would kill us both.” Soon after, she filed the charges accusing him of rape. It took the jury only 20 minutes to acquit Marcus of charges of rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and sexual battery at his trial. But because 18-year- old Marcus was legally an adrdt at the time, they voted to convict him of misde meanor statutory rape and aggravated child molesta tion. The latter, however, carries a mandatory 10-year sentence with no hope of parole. The jurors hadn’t been told about the sentencing guide lines during their delibera tions, and several later said they believed they were agreeing to a very light charge that would allow Marcus to return home that afternoon. They were shocked when they heard the judge read the sentence. Marcus is currently appealing his wrongful con viction on two primary grounds: (1) the sentence represents cruel and unusu al punishment under the Constitution; and (2) the sentence is inconsistent with the intent of the child molestation law. The author of that child molestation law, black Georgia State Representative Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta), agrees this was a blatant and overzealous misapplication of the law intended to protect children from adult child molesters-not to punish teens engaged in consensual sex. A significant majority of states have passed so-called “Romeo and Juliet” laws that de-criminalize consen sual sex between teens in just this kind of situation. Many of the jurors say they share his views but beUeved they had no choice but to convict. They don’t believe Marcus deserved the pun ishment he received. I don’t either. The Children’s Defense Fund has filed an amicus brief in support of Marcus Dixon’s appeal to overturn his conviction with the Georgia Supreme Court. We have been joined by a range of child welfare and juvenile justice organizations and religious denominations. The appeal is being argued on January 21. This case is about saving Marcus Dixon’s life and future. But it is also about taking a stand to stop the unjust incarceration of young black males. If we don’t stop this dangerous trend of black males being fodder for a grovnng prison industry, the black family and black pohtical and eco nomic strength will be destroyed. It’s time to fight for our children. Bennettsville, S.C., native MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN is president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. Missing academic value of community center Sherman — Miller It doesn’t take a rocket sci entist to figure out that pub-' he school problems today are local problems; therefore, there may be no one recipe that solves all of the prob lems. Each locality must solve its own problems, but there are facets of the solu tions that transcend locah- ties. Kathleen Cotton and Karen Reed Wikelund offer the impact of parental involvement in their article entitled, “Parent Involvement in Education,” written ■ for the Northwest Regional . Educational Laboratory. They write, “ ... It is important for school people and parents to be aware that parent involve ment supports students’ learning, behavior, and atti tudes regardless of factors such as parents’income, edu cational level, and whether or not parents are employed. That is; the involvement of parents who are well-educat ed, weU-to do, or have larger amounts of time to be involved has not been shown to be more beneficial than the involvement of less- advantaged parents. All parent involvement works and works well....” Although Cotton and Wikelund’s report offers hope when parent involve ment is a reality in a child’s life, it does run counter poised to what one might imagine. This counter-intu itive feeling is corroborated in a December 23,2003, arti cle entitled, “D.C.s’ public schools foundering,” pub lished on CNN.com. This article states, “...Many stu dents can’t get the help they need at home because of this stark statistic; 37 percent of the city’s adrdts read below a ninth-grade level....” If we take a holistic look at the assets in our local neigh borhoods, we may find that there are vehicles present that can help us circumvent this parent involvement nightmare. Many neighbor hoods have very good com munity centers that many people may merely view as places of recreation. Yet the ■ community center offers the potential of reshaping the mindset on education in the inner-city community because it is a neutral ground between the public school system and the neigh borhood. If community centers would become regular meet ing places between parents and school officials (teachers and administrators), this would offer an opportunity for many iimer-city parents needing background enhancement to interact with the school system. Parents with very poor edu cational backgrounds should feel comfortable talking to educators especially if edu cated community personnel or volunteers are on hand to interpret complex issues for neighborhood people. Hence, I will offer a sugges tion for improved parental involvement centered on my hometown of the city of Wilmington, Del.. Since Wilmington is served by four metropolitan school districts resulting from a court-ordered desegregation plan, its inner-city communi ty centers might become hosting locations for inner- city parent and teacher meetings. Wilramgton com munity centers have faced budget cuts in the present down economy, so they , may need a pledge of financial support for a minimum of five years to maintain their ability to be able to handle long-term parent-teacher meeting efforts. Community centers may use their own transportation vehicles or they may offer parents bus tokens or even cab fare depending on the special cir cumstance. Philanthropic individuals and foundations could be broached on underwriting pilot programs. The schools should be encouraged to offer some financial support. The mayor’s office could encourage the Delaware General Assembly to under write the bulk of the funds to help the educational improvement of the Wilmington labor force to attract new businesses to move to Delaware. Since community centers may service different racial and ethnic groups, each com munity center should devise its own parent-teacher effort with the ideas in mind from “12 Things Parents Should Know” by Parent Leadership Associates. Some of the twelve items parents should know are: ‘Your involvement matters - a lot;” ‘You can be involved in many ways;” “Children need you;” “Schools need you;” ‘You should be told clearly how your child’s school is doing.” In the first two years, the pilot program might be limit ed to two Wilmington com munity centers. Each center may be allocated perhaps $15,000 per year to under write transportation, small gifts, food, meeting rooms, and clean-up cost for the first two years to assess the cost of the effort. Poor parents or guardians of aU students hv- ing in the neighborhoods ser viced by the community cen ter would have access to financial help to participate in the parent-teacher efforts. Two major efforts that attract a number of parents may be undertaken during the academic year. Community centers can tUm out parents in their neigh borhoods for the major func tions. The community cen ters also would provide meeting locations for indi vidual parent-teacher con ferences throughout the aca demic year, and childcare during their educational activities. In year three, Wilmington might expand the pilot pro gram to include two addi tional community centers replete with elementary, middle, and high school pro grams covering their con stituencies. Also, they should seek long-term funding through state and local gov ernment appropriations. In 1999, Debra Moffitt, writing in the Wilmington News Journal, offered a dis quieting assessment of the academic performance of students hving in the city of Wilmington. She reported, “... academic incentive The average [Wilmington] city high school student had a “D” average last year and fewer than one in five seniors had plans for col lege.” Doesn’t Moffitt com ment suggest that some thing needs to be done immediately to improve the performance of Wihnmgton students? Syndicated columnist SHER MAN MILLER writes from Wilmington, Del. Send pels’ sons to the front lines By Stanley Kober. SPECIAL TO THE POST In recent speeches. President George Bush has proclaimed his desire to spread the blessings of free dom throughout the world, emphasizing that Americans pursued this objective throughout the 20th century. As he told the National Endowment for Democracy in November: “In the trench es of World War I, through a two-front war in the 1940s, the difficult battles of Korea and Vietnam, and in mis sions of rescue and liberation on nearly every continent, Americans have amply dis played our willingness to sacrifice for liberty.” Yes, we have, but we have not always been successful- and our leaders have not always displayed their will ingness to sacrifice them selves for liberty. It is noteworthy that the president included Vietnam in his list. A generation of American leaders, haunted by the Anglo-French betray al of Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938, decided the United States had to honor its security guarantee to South Vietnam to prevent a repeat of history. They thought they were defending freedom. But the Vietnam War traumatized the American people, who ulti mately decided They could not bear the sacrifice the war demanded. A generation has passed, and approximately the same amount of time separates Iraq from Vietnam as sepa rated Vietnam from Munich. Those two precedents define the paradox of intervention. Munich will forever exempli fy the consequences of appeasement, but Vietnarr serves as a reminder of the dangers of over-commit ment. Curiously, however, now that it has ascended to power, the generation that hved through Vietnam no longer seems to be influ enced by it. President Bill Clinton was initially cau tious about using mihtaiy force. But by the end of his presidency he had initiated war in the Balkans. President Bush has been even more emphatic about the nped to use military force. “In the new world we have entered,” he argued in the September 2002 National Security Strategy, “the only path to peace and security is the path of action.” Yet for all his talk about sacrifice. Bush never served in Vietnam. He spent the war flying National Guard aircraft over Texas. “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ...managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units,” Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs. “Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class dis crimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that aU Americans are created equal and owe equal aUegiance to their cormtry” Powell’s point is well taken. The draft was sup posed to impose equality in military service, but it didn’t. The volunteer service has worked well, but it is also much smaller than the armed forces of the Cold War years. Even so, by the late 1990s, recruitment was run ning into difficulty. STANLEY KOBER is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, www.cato.org.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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