March 7, 1997

A Woburn lesson: There's a double standard about kids and justice

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist

No matter the hell white children put themselves in, it is
assumed they are angels. In Woburn, 14 youths
overdosed on a muscle relaxant most of us had never
heard of, and the primary response was "Leave It to
Beaver" shock. "Oh, Ward, dear, isn't peer pressure
terrible in the suburbs?" If anything, this neartragedy
exposes the extent to which we have dumbed down
education.

These kids don't even know how to get high anymore.

``These kids, with their background being on the honor
roll, involved in sports ... you just didn't expect something
like this from these kids,'' said one parent.

In the projects of South Boston, teen heroin abuse
spurred people to see youths as victims of drugs. ``It's
children being molested for profit,'' said Jack Leary,
assistant probation chief at South Boston District Court.

In Newton, Mayor Thomas Concannon has asked that
Louise Woodward, a white au pair, be released on bail
from MCIFramingham. Woodward is accused of killing
a baby. Yet she remains too much of a Snow White to
be soiled by prison.

``I'm the father of two daughters,'' Concannon said. ``I'm
concerned what would happen to them. As a place of
rehabilitation, I have no faith in MCIFramingham.''

No black person accused of killing a baby could dream
of having a mayor write a letter asking for bail. When
Boston thought a black man killed pregnant Carol Stuart,
Mayor Ray Flynn oversaw a stopandfrisk frenzy that
stripped the underwear off innocent black men and jailed
William Bennett for months.

The Woburn youths OD'd at a Boys and Girls Club
dance. You know what would have happened if 14
black kids smoked crack at a dance. Honor rolls would
not matter. There would be no talk of cartels molesting
them for profit. They would go to jail while the media
blasted club supervision, parent discipline, and individual
responsibility.

The sensitivity accorded to white teens who make
mistakes is commendable. It would be a spectacular
moment in American race relations if white folks
extended the same hand of empathy to
AfricanAmericans instead of the crushing blow of
condemnation.

White Americans do their fair share of drugs. At 76
percent of the population, they consume 75 percent of
the powdered cocaine. White people even consume the
majority of crack, 52 percent, according to the US
Sentencing Commission, and report using much more
speed, LSD, and heroin than AfricanAmericans.

The people who do heavy time for drugs are
AfricanAmericans. AfricanAmericans use 38 percent
of the crack but are 88 percent of those arrested for it.
White Americans are 75 percent of the powdered
cocaine users but make up only 32 percent of arrestees.
The average sentence for crack is 2 1/2 years. The
average sentence for powdered cocaine is 3.2 months.

A Florida study found no difference in cocaine use
between pregnant women who use public clinics and
women who saw private doctors. But AfricanAmerican
women were 10 times more likely to be reported to
authorities for cocainerelated child abuse.

Both the US Sentencing Commission and two authors in
the Journal of the American Medical Association have
said there is neither a criminal nor a medical basis for
crack laws so harsh that it takes 100 times more volume
cocaine in its powdered form to get the same sentence.
That has not mattered to Congress and President
Clinton. To please white people they sentence black men
to prison and little prevention. One out of every three
AfricanAmerican men ages 20 through 29 has a criminal
record.

White kids do not even have to worry about prevention,
since if they screw up, they will get patience, pity, and
pampering. After the Central Park rape in 1989, Donald
Trump took out fullpage newspaper ads demanding the
death penalty for the black ``savages'' who beat but did
not kill a white woman. One month later several white
high school football stars in Glen Ridge, N.J., gangraped
a mentally retarded girl. Many residents defended the
character of the boys.

Newton's mayor says prison is no place for a white
woman so far from home. No one fretted about family
separation when Governor Weld shipped 299 convicts
to Texas, nor that the vast deportations of black men into
jail now mean that one of every seven black men cannot
vote. Wealthy O.J. Simpson was about the only
AfricanAmerican who could defend himself the way he
did against murder charges. But Woodward, who does
not seem to have much money, will get one of O.J.'s
lawyers.

As Woburn hugs its children and calls in the counselors
for stress, it would be amazing if America could view the
mistakes of innercity AfricanAmerican children as those
of fallen angels rather than of rising devils angels
molested by disinvestment and discarded to a mortality
white America would never tolerate for itself.

It is questionable that white America can do that. This
week, a Newark theater company received death threats
and ticket cancellations when it cast a black actor as
Jesus. The actor, Desi Arnaz Giles, is also playing the
devil at another show. Giles said about his role as the
devil: ``We'll see how many people object to a black
man playing him.''

Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page a21 of the Boston Globe on 03/07/97.