The Associated Press wrote a story and many papers picked it up as news: The Youth Law Center released a report that the National Council on Crime and Delinquency did; Gibbs had reported this information some months ago--see Bias Colorblind Justice.

This report showed the disparity of justice between Black and white youths on all levels of the juvenile justice system: a Black youth is six times more likely to be locked up than a white youth for the same offense, etc. Vincent Schiraldi's article stated that long ago. This report breaks no new ground. Black people and aware minority leaders have been citing these disparities for years.

Could this have been news because whites are now able to say it to themselves? That is news. The facts are not new, however, only this fact that whites are finally able to say to themselves we are unfair in another aspect of our social justice system. That should really be the story, and it will be elsewhere and at another time.

But over seven years ago, Dr. Harry Edwards, of UC Berkeley, said that if a Black person is stopped by the police, he is more likely than a white to have been stopped, and the chain of events starts there: he is more likely to be arrested and not diverted; he is more likely to be tried, and if tried, he is more likely to be found guilty; if found guilty, he is more likely to be sentenced, and if sentenced, he is more likely to receive the harshest of sentences; if for a capital offense, he is more likely to get the death sentence, and if the death sentence is given, he is more likely to die than his white counterpart, having all things equal, but that he is Black.

It was around the same time Dr. Edwards was uttering the above statement, Judge Sweeney, an aware Black Juvenile Court judge in Alameda County's Superior Court system, was recognizing the unusually large number of Black youths coming through the system and the racially discriminatory effects that were bringing them there. He challenged the system by questioning this treatment. He conducted his own countywide study to see whether the discriminatory effects were intended or unintended. What he found was a combination of practices and volitional acts that worked a discriminatory consequence on young African American males.

In cities such as Piedmont, Berkeley, etc., there were certain diversion programs used by the police departments to prevent a detained youth from going to juvenile jail and on to the DA. These youths did not go to the detention center (jail for juveniles) and they would not have a record. However, other youths of the same offense, but without the benefit of similar diversionary programs would go to juvenile jail and on to the DA, hence, having a record.

This was not intentional discriminatory treatment, although it was discriminatory in its results. The effect of this would usually be that the cities where the diversionary programs were most frequently used were mostly well-to-do and white, and the places where diversionary programs were not used, either because they did not exist or were simply not used, were cities that had heavy populations of poor and Black youths.

In another case he found unintended discriminatory effects were in the policies of the police departments. In some cities and police departments in Alameda County (approximately 19 such departments) there were policies for handling certain cases. An example of this was a city like Union City. Because a youth can not be housed in the City's jail for adults, only a juvenile facility, and because the nearest detention center for juveniles was in San Leandro, some 25 miles away, to get a youth there would detain the officer for approximately three hours; having few police in that department, they decided to not transport their youths to the juvenile detention center unless the matter was grave. Instead, they would cite the youth for the same offense or divert his for the same offense that an Oakland youth, who was more likely to be Black and closer to the detention center (10 miles away), would be processed into juvenile detention center . This was unintentional, but racially discriminatory still.

He also found clear, intentional racial discriminatory treatments. At that time, as is still the case, most of the police officers were white, and there were/are the Mark Fuhrman types of white officers in every police department it seems. The equation is usually this: the more white police officers, the larger the force, the more Mark Fuhrman types are among them, or the more remote the police department, usually the more Mark Fuhrman types there are among them.

Some officers in small and in large police departments profiled Black youths as suspects that should be stopped. Some of their stops were pure harassment, some were racial profiling, and some were because the Black person stopped seemingly looked like a suspect for which they had a warrant on--this category of racial discrimination would never be admitted to, however, but he threw out as many cases that came before him, as quickly as he saw them having suspicious circumstances of unlawful search and seizure violations.

He realized that, but for the badge, many cops would be crooks, and some, even with the badge, are both cops and crooks--Mark Fuhrman types: "We are god on the streets. If we wanna get you, we'll get you...." So the new report of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency is not new to the honest and critical observer--these things and many other forms of racial discriminatory have been and continue to plague Blacks on every level of the American society. In America, Black males, and Black people generally, have been disadvantaged on all levels.

It has been a type of handicapping [much like the burdening of a strong horse with exact weights against a weaker opponent] of Blacks, and still [we] rise! What would happen if we were not handicapped on every level--education, housing, economics, justice, employment, social justice, and in all of the fields of human endeavor? Oh, how America would grow!

Certain questions need to be confronted by America in the face of this continual handicapping (discrimination/whites privilege/racism, call it what you will): What is America's need to continue racism ? Why do Whites need such a prolonged advantage? Why is there such a fear of fields that are level and fair?

This fear is addressed in part in an article in SF Gate as it relates to sports, but nothing else. Yet it is a real, unspoken fear of fairness that is unspoken by Whites and it is harming Blacks and harming Whites as well. Blacks have had to compete on uneven and unfair playing fields for years, certainly, by now, Whites should be able to compete on even playing fields. Can it be that the fear of the strength of negritude is so great that white favoritism must be nurtured forever?

Frank A. Jones
Republish 12/19/05

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