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In reply to the discussion: Dying Teen Is Being Denied A Heart Transplant Because He’s Had Trouble With The Law [View all]jtuck004
(15,882 posts)assumption and try to take me to task for doing the same fucking thing. I could take the wrinkles out of my clothes with such irony. So stick it in your ear.
From your high-horse perhaps it's hard to see that I could have been asking about biology and how that might impact it...
"Across the board, if you look at the 15 leading causes of death in the U.S., blacks have higher death rates than whites in about 12 of them, including heart disease, cancer and stroke," said David Williams, the Norman professor of public health at the Harvard School of Public Health.
More Here.
On the other hand, your head-in-the-sand approach of pretending that it isn't likely in a situation where there is no accusation of overeating while sick or self-medicating, only behavior, one is right to wonder, and perhaps be offended, and perhaps take action against the appearance of racism. Only an idiot or a Teaparty Republican would argue that it doesn't pervade everything we do. Hell, there was a whole rodeo crowd cheering on a clown in a black-face mask just this week, and unless one has been under a rock in a Geico commercial, they've probably heard about it. The announcer was the SUPERINTENDENT OF THE FREAKIN' SCHOOLS.
Which brings me back to my point. Racism in the schools is nothing new. Ever read Jonathan Kozol? He wrote about his experience as a new teacher in Boston, where they kept vinegar-soaked switches in the basement for the black kids, because, he was told. "their skins are tougher, you know".
But we are more civilized than that now, aren't we? Because now we just have them arrested, in much higher numbers, for much the same behavior as white kids - unless one wants to argue that blacks "behave worse", which would lead me to wonder if Louie Gohmert has a login here
Black students being arrested from school, for behaviors that are no different from the white kids, is a growing phenomenon, so much so that it has a new name: The School-to-Prison Pipeline. It doesn't garner near the public outrage that the one to carry shale oil does, which hasn't even been built yet, yet it is destroying the lives of thousands of families, and is very profitable for corporations.
Last year, 75 percent of the students arrested in Chicagos public schools were black, according to new research conducted by Loyola University and Project NIA.
The study provides a total racial breakdown on arrests in 2012: That year, 3,240 black students were arrested, along with 889 Latinos, and 136 white students. Whats more, the numbers of arrests varied hugely from district to district, with one district, the eighth, accounting for a total of 461 arrests.
These statistics add to the growing evidence that the so-called school-to-prison pipeline a phenomenon in which students are funneled into the criminal justice system for mere disciplinary violations can have disproportionate racial impacts. Similar complaints have arisen in other schools across the country. In Mississippi, children were sometimes arrested and locked up for for infractions as minor as violating the dress code, with black and disabled students experiencing a disproportionate share of the draconian punishment.
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More here.
And this is nothing unique to Chicago - this happens in schools all across the nation, but even more so in the East, and the South. And we haven't even touched on the Court decision this week which says the police violated the rights of tens of thousands of black Americans with New York's stop-and-fuck-wth-the-black-man program, a strategy which is followed by many departments, who don't give it a name lest they be taken to court and chastised as well. Especially since they shoot and kill a few that never make it to prison.
Those are just the obvious ones that indicate being black, alone, may sentence one to hardship, tragedy, and/or death.
Given that, I don't think it is unreasonable to wonder if racism is playing a part here.
ymmv.