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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 1995)
VIEWPOINTS EDITORIALS OPINIONS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Juvenile prisons won’t solve state’s problems ■ OUR OPINION: Blame for t€ien crime belongs to Oregon voters, parents and neighbors Kids art* out of control in Oregon, and the state has dec ided to spend S24 mil lion to rectify the problem hv building prisons. As laudable as the idea of locking up teen offenders is. it will not solve the prob lem. No matter how many prisons we build in this country, they keep filling up. More prisons are a quit k fix to a complex problem that cannot Ik* solved by "tough" laws. What is most infuriating, however, is that while politicians will agree that the rise- in )menile crime points to a larger soc ial problem, no one in Salem or i).C seems willing to take on the issue. That’s because the rise in juvenile* crime is not the fault of politic ians. Oregon's teens nor spending any money on them until they break the law And vir tuoily all of that responsibil ity must lie laid at the foot of ordinary people. We talk about rebuilding communities and spending "quality time" with Ameri cas youth We wring our hands about the desperate stale of the Americ an family and the break down in fami ly values Meanwhile, every one stands around waiting for someone to do some thing. Someone does. The criminal justice system has become the nation's babysit ter. and it’s almost as expen sive as a c oliege education livery day on the talk show circuit, somebody stands up and says. What about the children'’'' ( ire.u question. It's vo easy to he self righteous iilxuit that sort cW thing Hut how many of us know the children in our neighborhoods or their par ents How many parents go to parent-teat her confer ences or ITA meetings? How many people c an* about who the boy next door is before his photo is on the front page of the morning paper for robbing the 7-Kloven? We shake our heads and say, "What went wrong?" And we blame the econo my, and we blame racism, and we blame television violenc e, and we blame drugs, and we blame the schools, and we blame Republic ans and Democrats and all of that is true Hut in the end. we have to det ide how long we will continue to ignore our own shortcomings. 1 )o we want to make ex; uses, or do we want to make a different o? It 's ours. ll may t»«* mere coinci dent c. but the riso in ()re gun's juvenile crime rale (m i urrod at the same time the now infamous Measure 5 t ut property-tax funding for public schools. The vot ers. not the bureaucrats, made that decision. Kalhor than streamlining statu government, it elimi nated school arts programs, extra-curricular sports or orei.ted financial harriers lor participation Main -.In dents now find themselves after school. 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J*nm* W. !»• o 'VurtaMi*-: f^ofacDM MtMitoit •'TU-totf*" mgrsaviMto onvittg&k SMima A&«« facNl C-u^smgiAim lawiUais«i Hsco# *+m :<*** ?a<a Angrx Vk*» a asu jit* Jc* Scflr* Ajfcux> Slcvtnp S«f«m w*r»» AM Mot vo«ng MiiyCartwm upmw iody Coma** Ci»»«ihni ta^iGau«nr» -n#.'ugto Chi«**•!*■ UA Jontwrj >y*» long Hrwt/MM JHM1I Chta>*| AMurtn-toy M I712 34iUU Cnu< i< *4* 4)43 2 Qngon D**v Emenud Wednesday Ociotxw 25. 1995 r THE MESSAGE TVOAV /J, TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY PoR VouRSELF GET A JOB, WORK HARD AND THEN... / .. A WO 1 W WE'LL c^7" J £AKw£D /A/COME 7AX f CZ£DIT AND GIVE IT ro THE AlftCAOV' U/EAL7W. a "T*I t'K / CAN T7* es Bt v I MPAfiATfJ /"Co* rHAT ? J Farrakhan focus misdirects debate t was quite (i sigh! Boys being held by their lathers, uncles and grandfathers Listening, embracing, hoping for answers All the -A. while gathering under a < ountrv s flag that had let them down many times The flag, per haps a hit faded and tattered from enduring gen erations of shattered dreams, seemed to promise that this would finally lx* the day of c hange They were told to put down their guns and pi< k up tlmir babies They listened They were asked to be witnesses to the sea of tranquility that they were i mating. They obliged They said that their march would be misunderstood by many. They were right. The focus on Louis Fnrrakhan as the icon of last week's Million Man March, n gathering that vve now know was the largest demonstration in ly thirsty. America's choice to sec th*» march through the Karrakhan lens indicates just how much ner vous, w hite egos need calming. The march gave all people the opportunity to address the pathol ogy of racism that is the infer lion of our nation al being By choosing to focus our anger on Far rakhan, rather than our energy on the issues being raised, we wrapped one another in a con formed blanket of opposition against the Nation of Islam's lender, while we blinded ourselves to I ho cancer. The message preached by Farrakhan, as well os the marchers, was that black communities must coalesce if letter lives are to l>e achieved for oil Is it so difficult to recognize that this message is larger than one man' Why must we remain fixated on a demagogue, when there is so much work to be done? We re told that the hint k unemployment rate is twice the rate of whites and poverty rates are three times as high for blacks as for whites. Young African-American men are more likely to he ill prison than in ( ollege, and one of every three is either behind bars or on parole. 1 hi-, st.uk re,i!it\ is i ert,iinly i a use for white egos to Ixtcome nervous Hut what should Ihi the response to this nervousness? Do we address the problems of racial discord and our responsibili ty in eradicating them, or do we bury our head in the sand with misdirected debate? Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison, in her book Flaying in the Dark, refers to "the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it It seems both poignant and striking how avoided and ummalyzed is the effect of racist infection on the subject ' It is time for white Americans to honestly look at their views on race and try to understand why blame and denial so often moti vate rac ial dialogue in this country. On Monday. Oct. tft, a multitude of African-American souls heard the call to take the initiative in rebuilding their families and communities The time for counting on white support was over Today, blai k America strug gles alone for well-being, survival and existence. Meanwhile, the rest of us pat ourselves on the back for opposing Farrakhan. I never knew white drums could be so deafen ing diet able as it is saddening If you haven't read the coverage of the event yet. don't worry You can still get plenty of the repetitive, Louis-Farrakhan-is evil cominentanes that are being mass-produced by our notion's most original thinkers They all go something like this That Units t'armkhan is OPINION something terrible, mi / Zip' Hates whiles. Hates jews Hates Catholics Hates gays Hates everybody hat those weird, militant limking guys with the how ties that always stand behind him They're even scarier Then he says all those strange things hke when he was on Larry King's show last week, talking about Colin Powell being president, he said. "It i alms the nervous, white ego." There he goes again talking in that absurd, coded lan guage that nobody gets He could learn a lot from Cohn That's the gay African Americans should he supporting. A person who served lus country' and didn ‘t ask ton many unnecessary questions An honorable African American who learned to stop whining and start achieving ncu ism. rat ism. racism i non i snow if i.onn has ever used that word I know President Clin ton and Senator Dole don 't They both spent the day far away from those ~marching“ throngs Ishouldn't they he at work?) boldly taking a stand and denouncing Farrakhan for all of his evil And with all this grumbling that has come from the O I and Million Man staff about blacks don't have this and blacks don't hare that, it’s nice to know we're all staying focused on what's important Farrakhan. The pundits constantly tell me that Louis Far rakhan is a hate-monger. All right, now that we've cleared up that complicated debate, where are we? We are left lie re standing, empty as before, without having engaged in the racial dialogue for which this country is so desperate Keith Cunningham, a senior majoring in English, i> a columnist for the Emerald WHAT DO YOU THINK’ The Oregon Da ly Emerald welcomes your opm ions on this and other issues You may submit a letter no longer than 250 words to the Emerald ottices at Suite 300 in the EMU or send us your thoughts via e-mail at odet^oregon uoregon edu
