Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

"Your Laundry is out on the street at 3PM"

When Bill Cosby was taken to task over his commentary about the behavior of a segment of black youth, he responded to one inquiry that blacks "dirty laundry' get's aired when our children leave school in the afternoon. To this I haven't heard much of a retort other than perhaps to attempt to ignore Mr. Cosby or discuss how wrong it is to pick on the poor. Well this week in NY we have had a rash of school violence (which really isn't new) one incident apparently involved a firearm that was stashed in a bathroom. Apparently many of the fights were gang related and some even suspect race-related though the footage I saw consisted of black on black violence. One clip, recorded by NY1 at Springfield Gardens High School in Queens showed an overweight black girl with her hand wrapped around a much smaller black girl with whome she was fighting. And of course there were numerous students watching and cheering on the event. I won't say that such behavior only happens with black youth, but as Cosby said, I'm here to discuss our own. School admins and some parents have been attempting to blame school overcrowding for the violence. I'm not sure how this is the source of problems. Are you saying that once a school reaches some critical mass of students that people suddenly lose control of themselves and must engage in violence? If so? why is it that folks on crowded subways do not end up in fistfights everyday? How come people in Japan who live in quarters that make a studio apartment look spacious not have the level of violence that we see here in the US?

Let's be real here folks: Fights happend among youth. We know this, But the level of violence and the type that we are witnessing is NOT acceptible. Most educators will tell you that it has nothing to do with classroom size, but has everything to do with the parents and the expectations put on children to behave in a certain manner and to repect the honor of thier families when they are out in public. I know a teacher in the Newark School System who told me that the day after she had to discipline a child for disrupting a class, the parent came in the next day ready to fight the teacher. The parent actually threatened the teacher. THIS is what the problem is and we need to address it.

GG