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by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Your Black World
Professor Billy Hawkins of The University of Georgia has released a controversial new book that describes the experiences of NCAA athletes by comparing them to slaves on a plantation. According to the research of professor Hawkins, black athletes are exploited by the NCAA physically, financially and intellectually.
Hawkins cites the massive revenue earned by the NCAA via March Madness, which includes a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS sports. In spite of seemingly unlimited revenues to encourage athletes to stay focused academically, Hawkins notes that nearly one-fifth of the 64 teams participating in the NCAA tournament had graduation rates of less than 40 percent. Across the 36 sports monitored by the NCAA, men's basketball has the lowest graduation rates, where less than two-thirds of the players earn degrees.
The dismal graduation numbers for the NCAA support Dr. Hawkins' research, in which he argues and shows that black athletes at predominantly white institutions are being exploited while being neglected academically. In his book, "The New Plantation," the well-respected Professor of Sport Management and Policy uses a plantation model to present the black male athletic experience as part of a broader historical context.
by Dr. Boyce Watkins
On New Year's day of 2009, Oscar Grant was shot in Oakland, California. The shooter was a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer by the name of Johannes Mehserle. Grant was 22-years old at the time of his death, and the shooting was captured by cell phone cameras and disseminated throughout the Internet. Adding insult to injury, the Grant family just found that there will be no African American jurors in the trial of grant's shooter.
Jack Bryson, whose sons were with Grant the night he was killed, was angry about the jury selection.
"This is like a slap in the face," Bryson told The Associated Press. "This case came all the way to Los Angeles after the judge in Alameda County said they couldn't get a fair and impartial jury there.
"This is the best you can do, and you did this in two days. We could've stayed back in Oakland for this."
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.
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by Dr. Boyce Watkins
The United State Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the federal government has the right and power to keep sex offenders incarcerated after they've served their sentences. To keep him/her, the government must prove that the the offender may be "sexually dangerous" in the future.
"The federal government, as custodian of its prisoners, has the constitutional power to act in order to protect nearby (and other) communities from the danger such prisoners may pose," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the opinion for the majority.The primary plantiff in the case, Graydon Comstock, was certified to be dangerous six days before his prison term was set to end. Comstock had been arrested for processing child pornography and was filing suit with other inmates at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.
Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University
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?...
by Dr. Boyce Watkins
I started the day thinking about Elena Kagan, Barack Obama's most recent nominee to the Supreme Court. I was wondering how in the world the president could appoint someone who has no experience on the bench, given the number of highly qualified judges he had to choose from. Then I was informed that this might be a good thing, since the Republicans don't have a judicial record to scrutinize. No problemo.
I then noticed that Kagan has past affiliations with The University of Chicago, The Harvard Law School and Goldman Sachs, and that she was appointed to her position at Harvard by Lawrence Summers, the head of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. I was starting to get uncomfortable at that point, because Kagan's appointment would mean that the entire Supreme Court would be filled with Harvard and Yale grads, which effectively says that every other law school in the country need not apply (so much for having a meritocracy). I also saw a very disturbing pattern of cronyism, elitism and Wall Street loyalty that lets us know that perhaps the President of Hope and Change is not quite what we ordered, making back room deals with his buddies, all for the sake of keeping American power locked into tiny social circles.
Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University
9:00 AM on 03/15/2010
OPINION - While some might call this political pragmatism, others might describe this outcome as the modern-day version of the Three-Fifths Compromise...
Journalist, author and broadcaster.
8:37 AM on 03/15/2010
OPINION - In an address to a joint session of Congress in 2001, then President Bush blasted racial profiling, "It's wrong and we will end it in America." It hasn't...
Journalist & Activist
9:02 AM on 03/12/2010
OPINION - If this disturbing new study doesn't prove once and for all that America isn't 'post-racial' I don't know what does...
Professor of Journalism at Georgetown University
8:22 AM on 03/12/2010
OPINION - If Lil Wayne regards his cell as an extension of his studio or his label's offices, he will suffer...
Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University
8:17 AM on 03/12/2010
OPINION - The amount of money made during March Madness exceeds that which is earned in the playoffs for the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball...
Psychiatrist
7:05 AM on 03/12/2010
OPINION - What's notable is reportedly not only did Woods not wear a condom, but his partner's didn't insist upon it...
Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University
11:10 AM on 03/11/2010
OPINION - A new study shows that blacks are more economically optimistic than whites, with 36 percent stating that we expect our financial future to improve...
Psychiatrist
10:42 AM on 03/11/2010
OPINION - According the Center for Disease Control nearly half of all African-American women are infected with the HSV-2 virus...
Sports and social commentator
8:57 AM on 03/11/2010
OPINION - By associating Dominican players with blacks, it disguises the fact that MLB has a long way to go in competing with the NFL and NBA in urban communities...
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.
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.
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