The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

what up.

we publicized the shaquanda case and actually got a few other hat tips from howard witt, the chicago tribune columnist, on other instances.

i also was the one who setup the ‘free shaquanda cotton’ site on blogspot.

i’ve got say though, dude, this is different.

1.) She was 14 years old, not 16 and 17. One is middle school, the other is high school.

2.) She pushed a hall monitor. No punching of a teacher.

3.) The hall monitor had no physical scars. This teacher is changing schools.

4.) She was actually attempting to go into the school for medication during off hours. This was a pre-meditated attack.

5.) She was alone.

6.) This was in Paris, Texas, a place known for racial discrimination.

While one doesn’t excuse the other, this particular act is clearly different in its pre-meditated style by a girl. Yes, being hit by a girl is different than being hit by a boy. If a boy hits me, he’s going night-night. If a girl hits me, I need to either restrain her or get out of the way.

Of even more importance is the video evidence. Evidence of a physical act is very powerful and cannot exonerate these boys no matter what the ‘motive’ was.

Sorry dude. No rallying from me this time go ’round.

First off, we wrote about shaquanda’s case when it first came out and have a little connection with Howard Witt, the chicagotribune.com columnist who broke the story. I’m also the one who setup the ‘Free Shaquanda Cotton’ website on blogspot.

I tried to post this comment earlier, but no avail.

Differences:

1.) She pushed a hall monitor. They punched a teacher….possibly with brass-knuckles.

2.) She was trying to get back into the school, possibly for ADHD meds. They paced outside the school classroom almost 8 minutes before waiting for the teacher.

3.) She pushed (I stress push) a male. These boys hit a female teacher.

4.) She was 14. They are 16 and 17. That’s middle school vs. high school.

5.) She was one person. This was a coordinated effort between two boys.

6.) Paris, Texas has a history of racism in its town and the juvenile facility was being investigated by the federal government…which ultimately led to Shaquanda’s freedom. I know Mobile is in the South, but there isn’t a documented record of complete racial discrimination.

I mean, come on. If a dude hits me….that cat is going night-night. If a female hits me, I have to either restrain her or get out of the way. It is NOT EVEN CLOSE when you’re talking about two boys, regardless of race, to pre-meditate an attack on a teacher.

I agree with the sheriff in that video. ‘If you are going to attack teachers in this city, we are going to light your ass up’.

Light ‘em up!!

Side note: I added your blog to our little project at rsspect.org. Just wanted to let you know how I found it….via cobb via rsspect.org

Thanks.

That was absolutely disgusting. I am curious to know what the families have to say about thier sons hitting a 61 year old female teacher.

1. Cotton pushed the teacher’s aide.

2. Cotton was 14 at the time, these boys are 17 and 16, and need we discuss the obvious physical differences?

3. The judge and prosecutor lied or purposely used the wrong information in Cotton’s case.

4. Paris is not known as a bastion of racial harmony, which is why it’s being investigated by the Department of Education.

Duane, I really am missing your point.

The Cotton case dealt with race, yes, but also “punishment” not meeting the “crime”. This situation, the teenagers are being punished, appropriately.

I miss your point.

Again,

You are right, this case was about punishment AND RACE. It had more to do with race because if punishment was the issue then trust me there would be plenty of other cases like this that would reach the levels of outrage that was spilled over the Cotton case. I think we both know that had all the participants had been Black, this story would have barely seen the light of day in most cases. If punishment was the issue, there would have been equal outrage from the same folks on the Elizabeth Kandrac case where school officials did nothing to stop the constant racial comments she was getting from her Black students.

Nix that! With all the mess that had been going on in the Paris Juvie system, how many times did you see Black bloggers actually write about it with such anger and so widespread? How many “Save the kids of the Paris Juvie system” banners did you see on these websites? The harsh truth here is that the Black kids within the Paris Juvie system needed a symbol–someone who had been mistreated by WHITES in order to get Black NATIONAL attention. Until then, these kids would have remained the nameless and faceless statistics we often talk about in in the blogosphere.

If you and I were to spend a day in one of our local juvenile court systems we would see the extent of just how grossly mismanaged it is and how these kids suffer because of incompetence—oftentimes at the hands of (but not exclusive to) Black employees in that field. Based on your past comments, I know you have seen this to some measure.

So bottom line, the Paris juvie system is busted up and has been that way for a long time. Only when race was a factor did many folks care to see just how bad this system had been for a long time. You can apply the same template to New Orleans, Los Angeles and any other major inner city with a high concentration of Black folks.

still struggling to find a point.

it’s now even more painfully apparent how right P6 was to ignore you, other than to note in passing that you had posted an exercise in silliness…,

What is silly here is that if what I said did not strike a nerve with you or P6, you made it a part of your conversation. P6 even made a post out of it. You lack the will to explain what you claim to “not understand” (cough, cough) so you denounce it as “silly”.

Now that’s funny!

If punishment was the issue, there would have been equal outrage from the same folks on the Elizabeth Kandrac case where school officials did nothing to stop the constant racial comments she was getting from her Black students.

Sorry, but you can’t blame Black folks for lack of coverage of somethings. There are a few cases where Black men are on death row right now and they probably shouldn’t be there. P6 writes about it from time to time. Meanwhile, there seems to be no “blog swarm” over the cases P6 has highlighted. You can cherry pick, just like I can, but the truth is, what gets covered and gets legs is what gets covered and gets legs.

Prime example: In Baltimore, when Martin O’Malley became mayor, he got policemen from NYC to implement “broken windows” policing. Blacks complained, rightly in many cases, about police locking people up “on the humble.” Black conservative writer Greg Kane is one of them.

Blacks complained to the media; nothing. Black teenagers and adults were being arrested and in the process, getting arrest records which has an impact in hiring decisions, which has come to light lately. A ticket meter maid was arrested for writing tickets! A teenager was arrested for talking to his cousin, who was in a car, by the curb in front of his home. None of it mattered until a young white couple from Virginia, got lost leaving an Orioles game last season. They pulled over to ask police for help, and were locked up as a result. The girl was the daughter of a police officer. It made big local news and one day national news. THEN AND ONLY THEN, did the MSM pick up on it. In fact, a talk show host on WBAL said he had heard the stories before, and believed it, but it didn’t matter to him because he figured the police were getting thugs. After the white couple were locked up, he was on it like white on rice and THEN GOT OUTRAGED.

When the local Balt. chapter of the NAACP heald rallies against Johns Hopkins, or the police, that got press. When he supported the police and held rallies or events to get more support for the police, it was mentioned in the Black media but no where else.

but the truth is, what gets covered and gets legs is what gets covered and gets legs.

And again, what usually has “legs” are stories that feature White against Black offenses. Most Black bloggers usually are in sync with this selective view on what is deemed right vs. wrong. Yes, MSM is a factor in this, but many Black folks who are known to raise it when injustice is out there are just as guilty when “other way around” stories are made public.

As I have said many times in the past, I am not making the suggestion that ALLLLLLLLLL Black folks jump up only when a White person does a crime. That would be untruthful on my part. What I am saying is that there is an element in the Black community that does respond in this manner. This post was directed towards them. I had no control over who chose to respond.

When you have worked in the trenches with Black youths for the years I have in the past, you see first hand how hard it is to get people to not only help, but stay committed. It becomes straight up frustrating when you see that only when racism is thrown into the mix at any level that these same negroes are ready at a moment’s notice to get involved. When the coast appears to be clear, then it is back to the status quo. The Watts section of LA after the riots is a prime example. Again, MSM is very selective because quite frankly it is all about ratings for them. But on the flip side why is it so hard to get men involved (for example) to help work with the same youths we claim to want to help. I know already about 100 Black Men and other orgs. like them, but unfortunately they are only hitting a small part of a much bigger issue.

Having a tendency to “knee-jerk” at injustice is not a bad thing in of itself. However, knee-jerking at injustices based on ethnicity is wrong and should be called out no matter who is doing it.

Hold up. Hold the hell up. ShaQuanda’s case is not similar to this case at all. Number one, ShaQuanda was the one injured, not the hall monitor and her medical records verify that. Number two, the male teacher involved in the case admitted in writing that he shoved ShaQuanda. Number three, there was never a claim by the hall monitor that ShaQuanda hit her as you claim in this blog. Number four, the hall monitor stated she wanted to go back to work but was told by the school police officer who is also a teacher at Paris High, to go to the hospital and she went out on a stretcher approx two hours after the incident. Number five, there was most likely a videotape of the Cotton incident as well but when ShaQuanda’s mother requested in writing that it be pulled and viewed, the principal agreed but later claimed the multiplexer malfunctioned and the tape was lost. Number six, ShaQuanda’s mother was determined unfit by Judge Chuck Superville. She had no criminal record, she had no history of drugs, abuse, or alcohol. Her being unfit was based solely on school officials complaining about her filing civil rights complaints. ShaQuanda was given up to 7 years for Assault on a public servant, yet a 16 year old white boy set fire to something at Paris High and was ajudicated for Arson, criminal mischief, and Assault on a public servant because he hit the police officer. He got probation by the same judge, Chuck Superville. A 14 year old white girl burned down a house and was placedon probation. She violated that probation and was placed on more probation. Number seven, THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY LIED. He lied to the jury. After the tribune story, he lied to news media and after ShaQuanda’s release, he lied some more. Come on now. These two case have no similarities at all much as you would like. ShaQuanda’s case of blatant racism got what it deserved, media exposure. Anytime a child is taken from her mother because her mother files too many civil rights complaints, it calls for public OUTRAGE. White people should be equally outraged and some are. I don’t get your point. The case you are citing above is not a race issue and had it been a white boy hitting the teacher, you wouldn’t have created this blog. Where are the civil rights violations? Now if the two kids get something like life in prison or 40 years, race will probably be an issue because whites and blacks should get the same sentences for the same crimes.

I won’t go so far as to call this particular logic silly, but it is simplistic and faulty in the extreme. The published facts of this case do not even vaguely approximate the facts of the Cotton case. The only similarity is the fact that the victim was a teacher. For you to insinuate that there is some other juxtaposition between these two incidents is intellectually dishonest. The same is true of your comparison of the white teacher who was cursed at by some of her students. The same students who called her a “white bitch” most likely call their other teacher a “black bitch”. This is not indicative of a racially hostile workplace and frankly the idea is ridiculous. Anyone who has spent ten minutes in any inner city school can tell you that far too many of these kids have foul mouths, inherited from their foul mouthed parents. What they do not have is any identifiable racially motivated bias towards anyone. Using these ridiculous comparisons to make your case is the first sign that you have no case at all.

If my son sat in waiting to sucker punch an old woman, I don’t care what her race, I would probably beat him to within an inch of his life. Same thing if he was the one with the camera. This from a father who only had to spank once or twice during my son’s life. These two kids were so completely wrong that you almost do want to say that they are getting everything they deserve.

But it takes a bit more comprehensive approach to understanding that even though the boys were wrong, and there is no justification for what they did, there is still glaring disproportionate treatment of Black defendants throughout the justice system. That is what gets Black bloggers like me riled up. If the just system was colorblind in practice, there would be no need for the vigilance and advocacy that Black bloggers bring to these types of situations. Where we don’t get involved is where we don’t feel we are needed to try to maintain at least a semblance of equal justice under the law. For me, I evaluate each situation critically on its own merits; there is no knee-jerk reaction just because of the respective races of the actors. Of course it rankles even more when it’s a white judge who has expressed what any reasonable Black person can only view as anti-Black sentiments, but had it been a Black judge and prosecutor who did that to Shaquanda, I would have called for their heads even more and plus called them out as race traitors.

This is what we face as Black advocates. You want to simplify everything into basic Black and white when that is not how it is for most of us. This is about the systemic inequities that are constantly applied to Black people in the criminal justice system. It may indeed still crop up in this case, especially if there is a demonstrated pattern of lighter punishment given to similar actors who are not Black.

You also mentioned that no one in the Black blogosphere mentioned the overall problems with the juvenile justice system in that part of Texas. That is simply not true, as Black blogger Eddie G. Griffin was and is involved with the effort to correct the glaring problems in that area.

But you are right in one respect. We do cherry pick the cases we choose to highlight. I happen to be advocating for the release of Genarlow Wilson, a Black youth who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for consensual oral sex with a girl two years younger than him. The activities that Genarlow engaged in that night make me want to slap his mother silly for letting him ever get so far out of hand. But almost everyone commenting or involved in this case, with the notable exception of the prosecutor, the judge, and the Black state Attorney General, agree that this is a travesty of justice. If you check my blog (May 22, 2007) you will see that I called the Black state Attorney General out for his stance in this case.

The Georgia legislature used Genarlow’s case as the rationale to revise the law to take the discretion away from the prosecutors who have chosen to inappropriately apply this law as it was written. The legislature was very clear in the first version of this law in its intent that this law target adult sex offenders who target young children. In spite of that clear intent, the prosecutor in Genarlow’s case insists he was correct in his interpretation and application of that law. Too my knowledge, in the history of that law, it has only been (mis)applied in this manner twice. Both times involved a Black male teenager who had sex with a girl two years younger, both times by white prosecutors in rural (mostly white) counties. That is not a justice system.

There’s not a lot of traction for this case in the Black blogosphere, but that’s fine. Everyone can’t possibly get involved in every single problem case the Criminal justice system creates. It’s not reasonable to expect it of us. But I shouldn’t be surprised as this is yet another example of the higher standard Blacks are always held to.

What has happened to Ms. Cotton since her early release? Has see been in any trouble? Did she further her education?