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Often when a child radically resists direction it's because she or he 1) fulfills the quiet expectation of rebellion that everyone already seems to have for them; 2) or she or he is NOT being listened to, or dialogued with: just told what to do.
Now, be ous voices "sweet" and nice-nasty like many white parents and educators ("now put the glass down junior") or snap-vernacular-biting and signifiying like some black parents and educators, it's still TELLING a child what to do.
Socrates all but invented a form of education called padeia built on dialogical interaction--intensive questioning and answering. In the METAPHYSICS, Aristotle said that WONDER is the entrance way to philosophy. We are better off opening up avenues to wonder in children and young adults.
Patience, however challenging, is important too.
But Benjamin it is also about the media's love to see black pathology and how operative racism is in almost every part of American life.
Even with the college students I teach (who have the gall to call themselves "kids" when they are in fact young adults) I find that if I dialogue with them and ask them WHY they do what they do that sometimes I get them to understand different approaches.
Of course, I already knew I'd get such a response from you were you to comment, but still it is always good when Jonathan weighs in...
Hopefully some of the progressive bloggers whom I admire will take this one up. So far not that I've seen...
What inside information do you have about how this "outburst" occurred or about what may have happened previously? What information do you have that I don't about the nature of girl's parenting? There are many things that might cause a five year old to act out that do not involve moral judgments of her or her family.
If the video was so important for protecting the teachers from speculation, why don't they air the part that shows the beginning of the conflict? It seems to me that the excerpts that are available do nothing but invite speculation. Why not show video excerpts from the first part of the class, before anything happened, so we can be assured that the teacher's conduct towards her students is nothing but respectful and responsive?
I don't believe you or I have enough information to know what caused the girl's behavior. You are very quick to blame the girl who is five and the parents about whom you know nothing. Why is that?
While your first inclination is to ask what is wrong with the child and her parents, mine is to ask what is wrong with the teacher and the school. However, I must admit there is not enough information to make conclusive judgments in either direction.
What I do know is nothing about the girl's behavior as shown on the video excerpts can convince me that a) the police were a necessary presence and b) there was any justification for the police to bind the girl's hands and feet.
The skin color of the people involved matters because we live in a society where Black children have unequal access to education and unequal treatment in schools and where police brutality and racial profiling is an unrelenting fact of life for Black Americans.
an ABC Action News report 04/22/05 - updated 6:49 p.m.
[Text of article deleted. Follow the link if you want to read a news article slanted in favor of the actions of the teachers and police. Original comments, rather than cut and pasted articles, will generally be left intact and unedited. --BG]
That was before any racial bias could enter into the audience's mind, as the original reporting on this appalling case didn't mention race. Now the school releases the child's name and video as if to say, "But don't you understand, she's a very SCARY kindergartener, she's black don't you know." They even released her name! She's a minor child! She's five years old! I hope some organization will step forward to assist the mother in suing the school system for damages.
Teachers have one of the hardest jobs in the world. It may be harder now than it's ever been. But there's got to be a better way for Ja'eisha than this.
I agree that handcuffing was completely inappropriate. I have no opinion on what could've been done differently. I'd like to hear the ideas of those who are so shocked and appalled that this happened as to what they should've done.
The handcuffing by strangers, regardless of a 5-year-old's behavior is a horrific, act of terror. In fact, if done by family members themselves, in a punitive manner, it would be such--even judged deeply disturbed. Why? Well, if every such young child was dealt with in a similar way, when behavior was described as inapprorpiate, imagine the lifetime of emotional scarring. And this is the reason behind middle class children never having to face such treatment--middle class white children, that is. But minority children seem to draw a particular harsh set of responses from those in charge--one of contempt, one of brutish reaction, and brooding resentment.
Historically, there is nothing new to to such traumatizing and coercive display of force, even against the very young, St Petersburg or anywhere in the state. Florida's past is littered with attacks on minority children, black children in particular. In the days of legal segregation, black children as young as 6-years-old could end up in "convict-lease" system, a conscripted prisoner system, in which work on private projects, such as road construction, was mandatory, six days a week. (PBS.org) Only black children, and latino children, and the occasional poor white kid, were effected. Such a thing was unthinkable to have happen to the middle class white child.
Individuals may not know their history, the state may elect to exclude such historical facts from hand-picked history books, but institutions, such as police forces, and schools, carry on business as usual, acting smugly and justifiably to criminalize whenever and wherever they deign to do so.
No unbiased, rational thought can justify criminalizing a 5-year-old in the name of orderliness. Equally, no society can support the brutalization of its youngest, and expect healthy adults. More, no society can call itself decent and democratic, and yet find ways to crush those of color.
Remember, one police officer, confidently stated that he had given the child's mother an earlier warning--next time, handcuffs. To make doubly good on that warning, the little girls's hands and feet were cuffed. Now, imagine a little blond white girls in those cuffs.
Thanks for your needed antidote to the many other comments that seek to blame the little girl and her mother for this act of police brutality. I thought your comments deserved more attention than they might get in my comments section, so I posted them as a new post on HungryBlues.
If you look around at the other things I've posted on this story, you will see (as you may already know) that in addition to the important historical context which you raise, there is ample evidence of broad scale, institutionalized racism at play in the present: a statewide epidemic of arrests of children under 12, with grossly disproportionate numbers of African American children affected; a class action suit against Pinellas County schools on behalf of ALL African American children in the county for an achievement gap between Black and white children that violates equal protection; other heinous examples of African American children being targeted by teachers, administrators, and fellow students for harassment and abuse.
This is a profound human rights crisis. I wish a major human rights organization would address it. On Monday, I think I will call Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
And there is also another reason: the great charters--Constitution, Bill of Rights--of U.S. democracy can't just be real and consequential for some, and mere half-remembered school history for others. A basic premise in all the talk of government is the dignity of personhood. And yes, this principle extends to the very young, especially to a 5-year old, who cannot speak for themselves, or process through the events of an heavily-handcuffed arrest by three uniformed adults.
This doctrine comes with the expectation that every citizen is to be treated and accorded the equality of respect that comes with being a human being and citizen. It regards each person as an equal unit of importance because that person exist, not because given members of an institution chooses to disqualify certain persons based upon ethnic and socioeconomic grounds.
In the world of police science, an arrest occurs with the handcuffing of an individual--double cuffing, hands and feet, indicate something even more sinister. This, by the standards of those doing the criminalizing, is criminalizing. It is yet another reason for it to be unthinkable to befall the middle class white female child--the child is simply considered too valued.
A state away, over the weekend, a middle class white female was reported to have petpetuated a hoax: runaway bride: "bride-to-be gets cold feet," decides to disappear. Kidnapping was suspected, and later with the surfacing of the would-be bride, an alleged fabricated story was told to authorities. The search for the missing bride had involved 100 people on various government levels. Yet, upon learning of the fabrication, and seeing the bride-to-be arrive safely back in her hometown, there has been little criticism. In a carefully crafted statement, the police, called the experience most stressing--that is, for the bride-to-be. No charges have been filed the 32-year-old.
Institutions have long memories, and carry out their own aims and goals. The 5-year-old, acting up in kindergarten, is quickly claimed as disposable. The 32-year-old is deemed valued, and even criticism of her actions is muted, despite learning her disappearance a hoax. Accordingly, we're told the 32-year-old needs to have private time with her family, given the stress of it all. (Part of her disappearance was to Vegas.)
Two headline-grabbing examples, with the dignity of personhood being honored in one case, and summarily dismissed in the other, despite one being a very young child. But both are female.
In both instances, the institutions made judgment calls--they expressed harsh, severe reaction based upon the perceived social value of one person, while with the other, expressions of leniency, sympathetic support and even empathy, applying a different social value.
Interesting to note, there exist another disparity between the stories, on a different level: the 32-year-old received no heavy negative commentary of having been spoiled, of being overly privileged, or simply, of being too selfish, although much had been spent and scheduled for her Saturday wedding, and equally, much expense given in searching for her.
Last year, Tony Snow, then the host of "Fox Sunday News," provided a commentary, in which he said, "Racism is dead." He cited a couple of viewers, writing into the program, who had expressed agreement. What other support of this contention? None. It was anecdotal. No statistical scientific support. Here, I believe, is a prime example of the media, having one of its goals aired--simply wishing racism to go away for the sake of ratings and ease of reporting. To report on race and racism are complex underakings. Or, as the Today Show's Katey Couric asked one civil rights thinker, "Why do we have to re-open old wounds." Her question really begged another question, What is the state of race and racism in America?
The media is a firm member of society's set of institutions which are among the first to hear the cries and protests against violations of the dignity of personhood.
Criticisms leveled against the mother of the 5-year-old are also anecdotal, and worst. They are too ready, too often, to cavalierly dismiss the brutalization of a 5-year-old as of no real consequence, a necessary function of order. They provide the strawperson argument that protests against criminalization and brutalization of minorites by institutions is, in reality, no more than an attempt to manufacture cover for wrongdoing. Even an excuse for malcontents.
It should be note that brutalization and criminalization is rarely defined by the administering of physical blows. This is why adults can win litigation efforts after citing "mental anguish" and "emotional abuse."
At Harvard University's institute for housing, there is for the reading public, results of a 5-year multidisciplinary study on housing stock trends. One of the findings of the study was this--there is "systemic discrimination" surrounding "jobs, housing and education" in the nation. In such a report, there is no place for the anecdotal.
Behind this systemic form of discrimination is institutional racism; in fact, without this scope, systemic discrimination could not exist. These ominous housing patterns, if we trust the study, really point to a trend boding the re-segregation of America.
Institutions, having extremely long memories, never have doubted the achievement of the goal--return to the old status quo: a social value system based soley upon race, with only contempt for the dignity of personhood.
It is into this mix of tragedy that fell a 5-year-old girl.