Montgomery County debates merits of teen curfew

The article opened with relating the story of 15 young men in Montgomery County that were walking around late a night that appeared suspicious to county police and were tracked for the remainder of the evening. This came after an incident that had happened a few days earlier when a gang of 50 young men began a series of late night brawls that ended in the stabbing a young woman. That incident prompted County Executive Isiah Legett to lobby for a county wide curfew, dictating that teenagers 17 and younger are required to be in doors by 11 on weekdays, midnight on weekends. There's recently been an increase in juvenile crime and Montgomery's neighboring PG County and District have imposted teen curfews of their own, resulting in a "funneling" of teenagers and delinquent behavior. Some resident's feel that the proposed curfew would prove to be ineffective, is an overreaction and could lead to racial profiling. But most crimes don't occur late night anyhow, with 92% of assaults and 83% of robberies taking place outside of the parameters of the curfew.

At least their aren't forcing the parents of children found to be out after the curfew hours to take parenting classes which i do believe is insulting and beyond imposing. While a curfew ideally would curb teen crime, it doesn't appear, statistically, that it would make suck an impacting difference, and may cause more trouble trying to enforce the new regulation than generate noticeably reduced teen delinquency. Racial profiling is already prevalent, adding age prejudice might only worsen societal conflicts, black young men being the target of police discrimination as is. I do think though, that if the county feels DC and PG teens are fleeing their jurisdiction and negatively impacting Montgomery citizens, a curfew utilized as a deterrent for those teens may be a legitimate reason for implementation.

Living at Home When You're 30 is Okay!!!

I was reading an article in the Washington Post that was looking at a recent trend occurring in the D.C. area; this new trend is the rise of extended families living under one roof. An extended family is one that is made up of members outside of the normal father, mother, and child scenario; it can consist of a family with grandparents living in the home or aunts or uncles.  In the article the author focused mainly on three males (presumably white) all these men had returned to their family homes to live. In describing them the author was sure to point out their completion of higher learning, their work ethic, and their resilience in the recession.

This made me wonder how this article would have been shaped if it had been written focusing on the rise in Black extended families, and had focused on three Black men. Would the author have been as understanding of the situation the young men had fallen into as a result of the recession? Would she have attempted to point out the educational accomplishments of the young men, and mentioned the numerous resumes that they had sent in attempting to get a job? I can sadly say that most likely this wouldn’t have occurred. Instead of portraying the men as resilient despite their circumstance I feel as though, despite the author’s attempts, these men would be dancing to the tune of victimhood.

Black Stereotypes in Media

In Unit 3, we have been studying how or if the media affects the perception of Blacks amongst society. A key issue we have been looking at is in crime. In "Representation and Reality in the portrayal of Blacks on Network Television News", Entman looks at how the media fosters negative stereotypes of Blacks. The article which the Washington Post has covered on the actions of DC Council Chairman Kwame Brown, is a prime example of the discussion Entman provided. Apparently the Office of Campaign Finance found a discrepancy within Chairman Brown's campaign. "An audit released in April by the Office of Campaign Finance found that Brown's campaign failed to report contributions and expenditures totaling more than $270,000." (Debonis) This is quite similar to a finding Entman relates in his article, "By granting higher priority to dramatic controversy among the powerful and lower priority to ordinary processes of policy-making....any leader who receives concentrated attention is quite likely in some kind of trouble". (Entman) Not only does the media portray young black males excessively in crime stories, they also highlight those black leaders surrounded in controversial issues. This agenda setting reinforces the idea that African Americans are helpless and must be controlled by society (or whites). I was surprise to see that this kind of reporting is still going on in 2011. Hopefully soon, we will be able to see a variety of reporting on blacks which uplifts the race.

SlutWalk

The SlutWalk is organization that sends the message to stop sexual violence aganist violence. This organization was founded in Canada and made its way all around Washington D.C. Participants of the straights, gays, lesbians, feminist, and transgendered are all active in this organization. Just because someone is dressed very revealing does mean she is a slut or want the attention of a man to rape her. But media gives us the image that if she dresses of a certain way, that she is a hoe or a slut. Which is not always true.

D.C. summer jobs program finishes $6 million under budget

If the District of Columbia chief financial officer Natwar M. Ghandi agrees with officials of the District’s summer jobs program, that the program finished six million dollars under budget. Then the D.C. summer jobs program, created by Marion Barry, is continuing to fulfill its intended purpose: to create summer jobs for low-income kids while allowing them to earn money over the summer. It appears that the District’s summer program, run by the Department of Employment Services spent only $10.8 million of its $16.8 million budget. It seems of the 14,000 participants between the ages of 14 to 21, only just over 11,000 young people completed the program working in businesses and for the district government. Officials may have over-represented the amount left unspent, but even if a fraction of that amount was left unused, and every penny was accounted for, it would be a marked difference from the days of the previous mayor Marion Barry whose government was known for its alleged corruption. D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown, chairman of the oversight committee, suggested that the surplus, given the problems faced by the program in the past, would be a major achievement for a program that had run as much as $30 million over budget.

Obama....Is it the platform or just the man himself

I have been watching this recent budget situation with Congress and the many Nay Sayers for some time now and have come to the conclusion that the overly outspoken opponents of President Obama, is not against him so much for the way he runs this country or his ideologies on social reform, health care, economics or even gay marriage, this is just pure and outright racism. Now if you listen to some individuals regardless of political affiliation, you will hear them speak on the way they feel on the various topics, and some have never changed the way they feel regardless of Clinton, Bush or whoever. But it seems to me, that this newly found “Tea-Party” seems to be a driving force behind these blatted attacks that to me are out and outright racist. Today, we are hearing stories like we haven’t heard in years regarding leaders and media referring to our President as a porch monkey or using other racial empathies. These Tea-Party goes seem to even have issues with fellow Republicans feeling they are not conservative enough for them, now to me, that is saying something. These individuals want to go back to how it used to be, and I have a question for the non-Whites Tea-Party goers that have joined this contingency. How far back to you want to go? It hasn’t been 50 years since we had Civil Rights of the 1960’s. Not long ago as Blacks, we were part of segregated school, public transportation, restaurants and hotels. Actors were only seen cleaning homes and not owning them, until we were “Movin’ On Up”. With all this in mind I just feel that, yea some people dislike our President because of his policies as do many people when it comes to whoever is President but when it comes to Obama...I ask…Is it the platform or just the man himself.

Missing/Exploited Children

Let me start by saying I think that the abuse of children is one of the most heinous crimes in the world and those found guilty of this crime needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But in regard to this issue, what really bothers me is the inconsistent or should I say lack of coverage toward the abuse of our non-White children. The news recently covered the trial of Casey Antony and the death of her child Caylee. No matter where you were in the United States, newspapers, radio or TV news, the public was fully aware of what was going on with the situation at hand. Now as news worthy as this was, I think the media owes it to everyone to report stories involving missing, abused and exploited children of all races. Why do we not hear about Julio, Jada or Raheem? What about Maria or Jorge? These children have loved ones and people concerned about them just like the Caylee’s and JonBenet’s of the world. It’s sad but for many of the parents of these non-publicized cases, they have to turn to the web and post on site like http://www.omega7.com/html/MissingKids.html, to get any form of help with their cause. I feel there is a major problem when over 30% of the total amount of the children missing is African American when this demography of the total population accounts for slightly less than 13%. It’s important that all individuals regardless of race or economic background take a stand and demand that we get these men and women off the street that is harming our youth. Aren’t the children of today, our future of tomorrow? As such we owe it to all children to protect them since they are not able to protect themselves. We must not forget that these same individuals that are harming non-White children have the same capability to do this to White children so let’s make it a priority to assist all our children regardless of race.