Dr. Boyce: DEA To Hire Ebonics Translators to Understand Drug Dealers

by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Scholarship in Action – Syracuse University 

The Associated Press is reporting that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is considering hiring translators to help agents understand the language of drug dealers. Apparently, the agents are having trouble interpreting the words and sentences being used by suspects during wiretaps. The agency reached out to some translation services companies to find someone to help them with the problem. No, this is not a joke.
"They saw a need for this in a couple of their investigations," Special Agent Michael Sanders said. "And when you see a need - it may not be needed now - but we want the contractors to provide us with nine people just in case."
Yes, this story is making me laugh as much as you are. When I heard that the DEA was considering such a move, I could almost appreciate their intentions, but I think they might be a bit misguided. The first thought that came to mind was whether or not they are presuming that drug dealers speak a dialect of English which matches that of the rest of urban black America? Sure, there are going to be similarities, but most of my urban friends don't understand drug dealers either. Dealers don't just sound like rappers, but actually structure a variation of language and sophisticated codes that nearly anyone would have trouble translating. Rather than hiring an ebonics expert to understand the lingo of drug dealers, they'd be better off hiring a former drug dealer.

Click to read.

Killer of Three Black College Students Convicted

by Dr. Boyce Watkins, The Institute for Black Public Policy

Nearly three years ago, two black college students and a friend were murdered in a schoolyard in Newark, NJ. Monday, a jury returned guilty verdicts for three of the murders and one attempted murder after deliberating for less than a day.
Rodolfo Godinez, a 26-year old gang member and native of Nicaragua, was convicted of all charges against him, including multiple counts of robbery, weapons possession and conspiracy. He can get up to 30 years to life for each murder count, and the sentences can be given out consecutively.
"This man will never see the light of day," said Robert D. Laurino, the acting Essex County prosecutor.
Sentencing for Godinez is set for July 8. His lawyer, Roy Greenman, said,"Obviously, there will be an appeal on a number of grounds," but he declined to state the grounds on which he'd be filing.
The prosecution did not assert that Godinez was the one who hacked at the victims with a machete or shot each of them execution-style, in the back of the head. He was argued, however, to be the one who summoned the other gang members to the schoolyard on the night when the murders took place. The murders were particularly chilling because all four of the victims were "good kids" with no criminal history and educational plans for the future.

Click to read

 

Find more black news at:

Your Black World

Black Scholars Blog

Black Political Blog

Black News Blog

Mass Incarceration Remains a Problem here in the US

Legal News: Dr. Boyce Watkins Debates Harvard Law Professor Ronald Sullivan

Dr. Boyce Watkins

Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University

Kagan's record on race has White House on edge

4:33 PM on 05/14/2010

OPINION - If Kagan didn't have the courage to stand up against injustice at Harvard Law School, what makes us think she will on the Supreme Court?...

> MORE

Kagan Hired No Black Professors While Dean of Harvard Law School

Read more about Kagan Hired No Black Professors While Dean Of Harvard Law

TAGS: education, Elena Kagan, Harvard, Supreme Court

Athletes Get Nothing from NCAA's New $11 Billion Dollar Contract

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is expanding, starting next season, but not on the large scale once expected.

The sport's signature event will grow to 68 teams from 65 in conjunction with a new 14-year, nearly $11 billion television agreement with CBS and Turner Sports announced Thursday. That gives the NCAA a 41% hike in annual media and marketing rights connected to the tournament — and "financial stability through the first quarter of this century," interim President Jim Isch said — without the controversy of a more dramatic move to a 96-team bracket.

Negotiations with CBS/Turner, ESPN and Fox Sports initially had targeted a 96-team field, drawing concern and criticism from traditionalists and others over the impact on the tournament's aesthetics, effect on college basketball's regular season and conference tournaments and potential for further intrusion on players' time and studies.

 

Click to read

The Racism of the Prison System

This data was gathered from the prison initiative and shows that there is more racism in the US prison system than there was in South Africa During Apartheid:

 

Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment

by Peter Wagner
Updated June 28, 2005

On June 30, 2004, there were 2,131,180 people in U.S. prisons and jails. That's a rise of 2.3% during the 12 previous months. Federal prisons are growing almost 5 times faster than state prison populations.

As of June 30, 2004, the U.S. incarceration rate was 726 per 100,000 residents. But when you break down the statistics you see that incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment.

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2004

Gender is an important "filter" on the who goes to prison or jail:

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer

Or you can make some international comparisons

South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society. What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black men at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?

Statistics as of June 30, 2004 from Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2004, Tables 14; except for the race rate statistics which are calculated from Table 13 and Census Bureau population estimates. South Africa figures from Marc Mauer, Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration. All references to Blacks and Whites are for what the Bureau of Justice Statistics and U.S. Census refer to as "non-Hispanic Blacks" and "non-Hispanic Whites".)

Is the NCAA a Billion Dollar Sweatshop?

by Dr. Boyce Watkins 

I was invited this week to speak to the Stanford University NAACP about whether or not college athletes should be paid.  When I am asked whether I think college athletes should be compensated for their labor, I simply respond to the question with another question:  “Why shouldn’t they get paid?  Did they not earn the money?  Is someone else earning money from their labor? Is the labor of the athlete essential to the revenue-generating process?”  Answers to these questions help us to understand how insane it is that athletes earn billions of dollars for coaches, but aren’t entitled to any of that money for themselves.  I’ve seen race horses get better deals than that.

Click to read.

 

*******************************************************

Please join Your Black World to get the latest in black news from Dr. Boyce Watkins and leading black scholars.

*****************************************************

Black Legal News: Michael Jackson’s Doctor Pleads Not Guilty

Hours after Dr. Conrad Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with Michael Jackson's 2009 death, the embattled physician pleaded not guilty Monday afternoon (February 8) during an arraignment hearing at a Los Angeles courthouse, according to The Associated Press.

Murray's bail was set at $75,000, three times greater than the bail usually set for such crimes. Without being handcuffed, Murray was then taken into custody for booking. He must surrender his passport, allowing him to travel within the United States but not out of the country. Prosecutors had been seeking bail of $300,000, but Superior Court Judge Keith L. Schwartz rejected that amount. The involuntary-manslaughter charge carries a maximum jail sentence of four years.

 

Click to read.

Al Sharpton Calls for Us to Fix Our Prisons

by Rev. Al Sharpton 

As the battle lines for health care reform are being drawn – and redrawn – a silent segment of the population is strategically left out of the conversation.  A group of individuals who have been deemed enemies of society, and cast away behind iron bars to fend for themselves.  In California, health care in the state’s 33 prisons is so inadequate that one unnecessary death takes place per week, as inmates are often stacked in triple bunk beds in hallways and gymnasiums.  With nearly twice the number of prisoners than it was designed to hold, California prisons will have to be cut by about 40,000 in the next two years – and it’s about time.

Federal judges just released a 184-page order demanding that California’s inmate population be reduced by 27%, and gave the state 45 days to come up with a plan.   In what they termed an ‘unconstitutional prison health care system’, the three-judge panel concluded that disease was spreading rampantly and prisoner-on-prisoner violence was all but unavoidable.  Forced to close a $26 billion dollar budget gap, California will now have to look at mechanisms to reducing its extensive prison spending, which in 2007 topped out at nearly $10 billion (approximately $49,000 for each inmate).

Whether it’s for pure economic reasons or for an actual concern over the well being of prisoners, California will hopefully serve as an example for a reversal of the ever-growing prison industrial complex.  A system that unfairly profiles and detains minorities, American jails produce a vicious cycle of recidivism and community breakdown.  Last year, the Pew Center on the States released a scathing report stating that one in every 100 American adults was in jail, and that an astonishing one in 15 Black adults was behind bars.  According to government reports in 2007, there were three times as many Blacks in jail than in college dorms, with Latinos not far behind at 2.7 times more behind bars than in secondary schooling.

Click to read.

Opinion: The Heather Ellis Case is Not the Only Injustice in Missouri

• Supporters of Heather Ellis gather on the Dunklin County Courthouse steps on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009, in Kennett, Mo. (AP Photo/Daily Dunklin Democrat, Deanna Coronado)
• by Brenda L. Jones – MSNBC’s TheGrio.com

When hundreds of people rallied outside a Wal-Mart in Kennett, Missouri Monday, they did so to protest the treatment by police and local prosecutors of Heather Ellis, the now infamous 24-year-old African-American college student who three years ago made a routine trip to that very same Wal-Mart to run some errands and ended up leaving in handcuffs after being accused of cutting a checkout line.

Led by civil rights activist Dr. Boyce Watkins and a coalition of civil rights organizations including the ACLU, the protesters marched to the Dunklin County Courthouse where, beginning today, Ellis, a Kennett native whose father still serves the Church in God in Christ congregation in town, will find herself fighting for her freedom after being charged with multiple felonies that could land her up to 15 years in prison. They were there to decry what Ellis has said was the abhorrent treatment she received from both her fellow shoppers and police. In a complaint she filed with the NAACP, Ellis says she was pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees and called racial slurs by police who physically mistreated her. The police were called to the scene after Ellis and her cousin got into two separate checkout lines, and after Ellis joined her cousin when one line started moving faster than the other.

Click to read.

Black News: Boy Gets Burned Alive by His Classmates

Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 5:23 am
By: Denise Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

A black Missouri teen, who last month was doused with gasoline and set afire by two white schoolmates, now faces charges himself as he recovers from burns over most of his body.

Walter Currie Jr., a 15-year-old in Poplar Bluff, Mo., was burned on June 13 after an exchange with two teens with whom he reportedly had a previous altercation.

The youth who allegedly doused him with the gasoline and lit the fuel has been charged with assault as a juvenile, Currie’s parents said. 
On July 6, several weeks after the incident, authorities gave Currie and his parents notice that he is being charged in connection with another incident where a teen related to the youth who set him afire was hit in the face, said Winonia Currie, Walter’s mother.

“All of a sudden, they decided to charge him with something that happened on June 10, but Walter said he didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said.

Because all of the people involved are juveniles, court officials in Butler County, Missouri said they can give only limited details on the incidents and cannot discuss names.

“I can tell you that there are charges against everyone involved,” Lesi Smith, chief juvenile officer for Butler County, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Click to read.

Eric Holder Visits Chicago to Discuss School Violence

Chicago will get a double dose of Obama Cabinet members next week in the wake of a brutal fatal beating of a Fenger High School honor student.

Attorney General Eric Holder will visit Chicago on Thursday to discuss youth and school violence. The new date contradicts first reports from the White House that the trip will be Wednesday.

Hannah August, a Holder spokeswoman, disclosed the new date today, saying final arrangements still are being made for his visit. It’s expected Holder will meet with school officials, students and community residents.
“I would anticipate him talking about not just violence in Chicago, but at a national level,” she said.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaks in Chicago on Wednesday at an education grant conference. He also plans to speak about school violence.

 

Click to read

Visit Your Black World for the latest in Black News!

Did This Man Murder His Children?

Florida authorities were searching Sunday for a 33-year-old man after his wife and five children were found dead in their Naples home.

 

 

The bodies of Guerline Damas, 32; Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; Megan, 3; and Morgan, 11 months, were discovered Saturday, Rambosk said.

Authorities have been unable to locate Mesac Damas, who possibly left the country Friday morning and may be in Haiti, Capt. Chris Roberts of the Collier County sheriff's department said Sunday at a news conference.

"We don't see at this point any indication of an individual out in the neighborhoods committing additional crimes or homicides, but certainly we will look at every opportunity," Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said at an earlier news conference.

There had been a "handful" of domestic disturbance calls to police since 2000 involving the Damas couple, with the latest resulting in the arrest of Mesac Damas in January, Roberts said. Mesac Damas pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor battery against Guerline Damas in June, and Roberts said he does not think Mesac Damas served any jail time for the crime.

Click to read.

Boyce Watkins: College Athletes Should Be Paid

 

 

The NCAA, which is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 'educational' organization, has come under fire recently for capitalizing on the commercialization of college sports. Many athletes have accused the organization of unfairly using them for financial gain.

Since 1995, the NCAA has spent more than $84 million on legal fees, including some settlements. Former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon filed a lawsuit on July 21 against the NCAA and its member schools, accusing them of illegally profiting from using the likeness of former players for commercial pursuits like video games, DVDs, and jersey sales.

Dr. Boyce Watkins, a finance professor at Syracuse University, has become a vocal critic of the NCAA, for what he calls its exploitation of the black community.

click here to read more

Pres Barack Obama: Stem Cells Linked to Scientific Integrity

President Obama will sign an executive order Monday lifting limits on human embryonic stem cell research and will direct federal agencies to "restore scientific integrity" to decision-making, White House aides said Sunday.

Obama's order follows years of wrangling over stem cells and scientific decision-making in the Bush administration.

"Public policy must be guided by sound scientific advice," said Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, discussing the order and memorandum Sunday.

Melody Barnes of Obama's Domestic Policy Council added that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will set standards for federal science advisers, insulating them from political interference.

The executive order will reverse President George W. Bush's 2001 decision to withhold federal support of research on newly collected colonies of embryonic stem cells, the master cells from which all tissues are formed. Bush, who opposed the destruction of embryos necessary to harvest the cells, limited research funding to 21 stem cell colonies, or lines, already in existence.

Click to read.

 

Technorati Tags: barack obama,black news,african american news

VP for Baltimore NAACP Arrested on a Drug Charge

Baltimore City police arrested the vice president of Baltimore's NAACP on Thursday after heroin and marijuana were recovered during a search of his car.

Joe Sviatko, a spokesman for the State's Attorney's Office, said prosecutors have declined to prosecute the case because they do not believe it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Police said Ellis L. Staten Jr., 44, who is also an executive committee member of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People Maryland Conference, was in the driver's seat of a car that had stopped near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street.

 

Click to read.

Technorati Tags: naacp,black news,african american news,black politics,african american politics

Marc Lamont Hill Talks Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh

by Dr. Marc Lamont Hill

Columbia University

Over the past week, the political world has been tuned into a highly  unusual soap opera involving Republican Committee Chair Michael Steele  and conservative radio jock Rush Limbaugh. After Limbaugh was publicly  lambasted for stating that he wanted President Obama’s agenda to fail,  Democratic leaders wisely used the moment as an opportunity to anoint  the polarizing pundit as the de facto leader of the GOP. Steele, the  actual leader of the party, dismissed Limbaugh as a mere “entertainer”  whose show trades in “ugly” and “incendiary” remarks. Limbaugh soon  fired back, telling Steele to do his job and to stop acting like a  “talking head media star.”

Of course, partisan infighting is not uncommon in politics –though  such public spats are typically the property of the Democrats.  The  difference, however, has been the party’s response. Instead of  rallying around its newly appointed leader Steele, GOP honchos have  either taken the side of Rush Limbaugh or remained conspicuously silent. Even Steele himself caved into Limbaugh, apologizing for his  remarks and removing any lingering doubt about who the real don is.
By allowing Michael Steele to be publicly undressed by a party  extremist, Republicans have tacitly confirmed what many of us already  knew: they haven’t changed one bit. Despite their post-November promises to rise above bitter partisanship, the GOP decided to cosign  Limbaugh’s antipatriotic machinations. Instead of living up to their  promise to broaden their message and appeal, Republicans have instead opted to defer to the steward of its most vile, ignorant, and bigoted  constituency. Most disturbingly, they have legitimized their antidemocratic enterprise by hiring a black man,  but giving him no more political muscle than the queen of England.

To be clear, I am not trying to diss Michael Steele, who I know personally and like a great deal despite our political differences. My concern is that the seductive aroma of power and prestige have  diverted his attention from the harsh realities of his circumstance. 
Like many prominent African Americans, Steele has climbed the heights  of white society under the false premise that he is being judged purely on merit rather than color. This couldn’t be further from the  truth. While the Republican party is willing to use Steele’s black  face to celebrate its ostensible progress, it is equally committed to  reducing him to nothing more than a paper champion. Hopefully, Brother  Steele will stop drinking the Kool-Aid long enough to recognize this  and come back home.

Technorati Tags: marc lamont hill,michael steele

President Obama’s Budget Getting Attacked by Republicans

Republicans attacked President Obama's proposed $3.6 trillion budget Tuesday as offering "red ink as far as the eye can see," and Democrats even suggested that the president might be trying to solve too many problems at once.

As administration officials trekked to Capitol Hill to defend Obama's budget, they were met with skepticism from both sides of the aisle because of the huge changes the president has promised to make in taxes, health care, energy and education.

THE OVAL: Proposals and analysis

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, in separate appearances, stuck to the administration line that the president's budget would benefit 95% of working Americans.

Higher taxes for affluent Americans would not come until 2011 once "we are safely into recovery," Geithner told the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

"I'm confident this is the right path for the country," he said.

But Republicans disagreed.

"The president's budget increases taxes on every American, and does so during a recession," Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., told Geithner.

Camp also complained about provisions that would limit the size of charitable deductions that could be taken by families earning more than $250,000 a year.

Orszag faced similar questioning before the House Budget Committee.

Click to read.

Technorati Tags: barack obama,black news,african american news,black politics,african american politics

Black News: Michael Steele Takes a Public Lashing from Rush Limbaugh

Over the weekend, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele called Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric "incendiary" and "ugly" and insisted that he, not Limbaugh, is in charge of the GOP.

"Rush will say what Rush has to say; we'll do what we have to do," RNC Chairman Michael Steele has said.

But that was two days ago. Monday, after a blistering response from the conservative talk-radio kingpin, Steele told the online journal Politico that he "was maybe a little bit inarticulate."

"There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership," Steele said. He added, "There are those out there who want to look at what he's saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That's what I was trying to say. It didn't come out that way."

Steele's original remarks came from an interview on CNN's "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," which aired Saturday. They came as Democrats, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, have tried to paint Limbaugh -- who has said he wants to see the Obama administration "fail" -- as the effective head of the opposition party.

Steele rejected the idea, saying, "I'm the de facto leader of the Republican Party."

"Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment," Steele told CNN. "Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly." iReport.com: Limbaugh and Steele show divisions in GOP

Limbaugh fired back on his radio show Monday, saying the Republican chairman appears to be supporting President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He said Steele appears "obsessed with seeing to it President Obama succeeds."

"I frankly am stunned that the chairman of the Republican National Committee endorses such an agenda," Limbaugh said. "I have to conclude that he does, because he attacks me for wanting it to fail."

Click to read.

Technorati Tags: michael steele,rush limbaugh,black news,african american news,black politics,african american politics