inkbluesky

blurred justice 

To some in Paris, sinister past is back - In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family’s home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.’

Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the “black” side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she’s begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself “the best small town in Texas.”

“Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston,” Cherry said. “They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s.”

There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims’ family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor–a 58-year-old teacher’s aide–was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town’s juvenile court, convicted of “assault on a public servant” and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family’s house, to probation.

“All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?” said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. “It’s like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated.”

Shaquanda might have had some disciplinary problems, but those problems were well within the realm of the kinds of problems many teens have – especially if they have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Prison should not have even been on the table as far as dealing with those problems. She is in jail and she is scared. She is scared because most of the youths that are put into detention facilities have pushed society to its limits – everyday she has to deal with people who were convicted of violent robberies, sexual offenses and similar crimes. She is getting a new kind of education while a 19 white male who ran over and killed a black woman and her grandson got probation for his crimes. Some people have said that there is no racism in America, its a thing of the past and they’re tired of others whining about something that doesn’t exist – sure and the earth is flat.

Map proves Portuguese discovered Australia

SYDNEY (Reuters) – A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia.

At least it does say first Europeans. Travel tip: If you go someplace and there are people already there, you did not discover that place.

101 Shareware and Freeware Programs Every Nerd Needs. I did find a couple that I didn’t already know about.