African-American News and Commentary: 2011-03-06

Friday, March 11, 2011

Gang Rape of 11-Year-Old Girl Sparks Racial Tensions in Texas Town...

ABC News

The alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by at least 18 boys and young men has sparked shame and outrage in a tiny Texas town, but it has also stirred racial tensions that threaten to split the East Texas hamlet.

All of the defendants arrested are African-American and the girl is Hispanic.

The hardscrabble town of Cleveland, which is 45 miles from Houston, has fewer than 8,000 residents and since the saw mill closed the biggest employers are Wal-Mart and a nearby prison. In a town this small, everyone is a neighbor, but that small town ambience is being severely strained.

The rape allegedly occurred last November, and the list of suspects has been growing as arrests keep coming. It's not clear whether more arrests are in the works.

The suspects range in age from 14 to 26, include stars on the high school's basketball team as well as the son of a school board member.

But as the investigation drags on, the shock and indignation has been tinged with an undercurrent of racial tension.

"I feel sorry for the little girl. I feel sorry for everyone involved...the city is in turmoil," Inez Dickerson said.

Dickerson, 68, is the great-grandmother of one of the defendants in the case. Her grandson has not been publicly identified by police because he is a minor.

Dickerson remembers when her great-grandson called to tell her the crime he's accused of committing.

"When I got on the phone, he was crying. He said, 'Granny, I've been accused of something. I'm scared,'" Dickerson said. "He's pretty tore up about it."

"I'm not going to play the race card on this because my grandson and all the rest were very young men and they could have given a second thought on this," Dickerson said.

While Dickerson believes the flaring of racial tensions isn't warranted, others disagree.

Houston community activist Quanell X will host a town hall meeting this evening called "What's the real truth behind the rape allegations?"

"Every adult male that had sex with this child should go to prison, I don't care what the color is. But I do not believe black males are the only ones that had contact with this young child," said Quanell X, the leader of Houston's New Black Panther Party. "It appears to me there's only been the selective prosecution of one community, which is African American."

Quannell X said the rally has been moved from a church to a community center because, "The church received some death threats."

The village has a history of racial violence. In 1988, an African American man was arrested in Cleveland for allegedly stealing a fountain pen. The man, 30-year-old Kenneth Simpson, was allegedly beaten to death by white police officers while in prison. The officers were acquitted of murder charges and returned to work.

In addition, Cleveland is embroiled in a political scandal where three city council members are facing a recall election following complaints of corruption. All three of those city council members are African American.

More than half of the town is white, with the rest of the residents split between blacks and Hispanics.

Most of the defendants have ties to Precinct 20, the nickname for the predominantly African-American neighborhood in Cleveland. The black neighborhood is sometimes referred to as "the quarters."

Cleveland police began investigating the rape in December of last year after cell phone video showing the alleged sex attack started circulating among students at Cleveland schools, according to court documents. The video shows the girl engaged in sexual acts with several men.

The girl told authorities that the weekend after Thanksgiving she was asked if she wanted to ride around with three of the defendants in the case. The girl, described as a straight A student by those who know her, rode with the young men to a blue house with white trim, according to court documents.

As the night unfolded, numerous men came to the house and later an abandoned trailer to have sex with the girl, according to court documents.

The video surfaced because some of the girl's attackers used their cell phones to take photographs and to film the assaults.

The girl, who has not been identified because she is a minor and the alleged victim of a sex crime, said that she was told by the men that they "would have some girls 'beat her up' or she would not be taken back to her residence" if she didn't have sex with them, according to court documents.

When a relative of one of the defendants was heard returning to the blue house, the group hurriedly moved to an abandoned trailer. The girl left behind her bra and panties, according to the court documents.

The girl has been removed from the custody of her parents.

Brenda Myers knows the girl and her family. Myers runs the Community and Children's Impact Center in Cleveland, one of the few programs for Cleveland's youth.

The 11-year-old girl and her two sisters frequently attended meetings held by Myers' organization. Myers said the girl was a happy and talkative girl, but something abruptly changed last October.

"This little girl was always hugging and loving and in October, she was really, really quiet," Myers said.

When Myers asked the girl what was bothering her, she said, "It's just something I can't tell you," Myers said.

When Myers heard the news of the alleged crime, she cried.

"I got angry and then...thought where were the parents?" she said.

The girl's mother was recently in the hospital and her father is an unemployed construction worker, Myers said. She said that the family cares deeply about the children.

"The mother was in tears. She feels extremely bad about what happened. She's devastated for her family," Myers said.

"It's becoming a black and white issue because it happened over in the quarters. It's segregating our community again," Myers said. "The reaction is anger, devastation."

Lance Blackwell helps organize weekly prayer sessions for theCleveland Prayer Center. Recently, an impromptu prayer session included both defendants and family members of the girl.

"It's clear these family members and friends know one another and are in a deep amount of pain," Blackwell said. "The young men that were involved were very emotional...obviously we didn't discuss details, that wasn't what it was about."

U.S. Guatemala Syphilis Tests: Attorneys Seek Lawsuit For Thousands Of Victims

MIAMI — Attorneys representing potentially thousands of Guatemalans who were affected by U.S. syphilis experiments decades ago said Tuesday they will sue top federal health officials unless a system is created out of court to settle claims by the victims or their survivors.

The legal move comes after revelations last year that U.S. scientists studying the effects of penicillin in the 1940s deliberately infected about 700 Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients, soldiers and even orphans – some as young as 6, according to the lawyers. None were informed or gave consent.

The American team convinced officials at orphanages and prisons to cooperate by giving them other supplies such as refrigerators and difficult-to-get medications for malaria and epilepsy. Sometimes, individual subjects were paid with cigarettes and, in the case of prisoners, infected prostitutes were used to expose them to the disease, according to court documents.

Two law firms said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that the lawsuit, which could become a class-action, will be filed in federal court in Washington unless President Barack Obama's administration responds positively to the settlement offer by Friday.

"We have decided to create one opportunity to see if we can settle the issues presented in this tragic situation without involving the judicial process," said the letter from attorneys Andres Alonso and Terrence Collingsworth.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. Last October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the experiments "reprehensible" and issued a public apology. Obama also apologized to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom in a phone call and created a special bioethics panel to look into international medical studies, the White House said.

The administration's apologetic tone led the Guatemalans' attorneys to seek the unusual out-of-court settlement before a lawsuit is filed. They want the U.S. to waive any sovereign immunity defenses to block the Guatemalan claims or, as an alternative, they want a claims process similar to those set up in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the 9/11 terror attacks.

"This is to encourage the administration to take the next step," said Piper Hendricks, an attorney with Fort Lauderdale-based Conrad & Scherer LLP who is working on the case.

The Guatemalan experiments ran from 1946 to 1948 and were funded by the National Institutes of Health. Their existence was hidden for decades, until Wellesley College medical historian Susan Reverby uncovered the records in 2009.

The U.S. has been involved in numerous other infamous medical studies on human subjects. The most notorious was the Tuskegee syphilis research on 600 black men in Alabama who were studied without being offered any treatment. The physician involved in that study, Dr. John Cutler, was also involved in the Guatemalan research.

The attorneys said Guatemala was chosen because it would be easier to escape ethical scrutiny there.

"This decision to move to Guatemala was part of a deliberate plan to continue the Tuskegee testing offshore, where it would not be subject to the same level of oversight as in the United States," their draft lawsuit says.

It's unclear how many potential plaintiffs could be part of the class, which would include not only those directly involved in the research but also their relatives and survivors. The lawsuit, if filed, seeks an unspecified amount of damages for violations of people's rights including "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" and medical experimentation on humans without consent.

Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

Obesity increases a person's risk of illness and death due to diabetes, stroke, coronary artery disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, and kidney and gallbladder disorders. Obesity may increase the risk for some types of cancer.

According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 65 percent of American adults are overweight or obese. The obesity rate has been climbing steadily over the last several years. Carrying extra weight increases the chances of developing serious health problems, such as heart disease, stroke, certain kinds of cancers, as well as diabetes.

The incidence of Type 2 diabetes in our country is increasing also, in correlation with the rise in obesity. The American Diabetes Association estimates about 21 million people have diabetes, with another 54 million people diagnosed with pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetesis a condition in which fasting blood glucose levels are elevated, but not yet to the level indicated for Type 2 diabetes.

Obesity and Insulin Resistance

Type 2 diabetes is associated with insulin resistance. Insulin is an important hormone that delivers glucose (sugar) to our cells. When a person is overweight, the cells in the body become less sensitive to the insulin that is released from the pancreas. There is some evidence that fat cells are more resistant to insulin than muscle cells. If a person has more fat cells than muscle cells, then the insulin becomes less effective overall, and glucose remains circulating in the blood instead of being taken in to the cells to be used as energy.

Cutting The Fat Cuts The Risk

Studies have shown that it can make a big difference if people work to lose only 5 to 7 percent of their body weight. For many people, this works out to about 7 to 10 pounds. Even if someone already has diabetes, losing a moderate amount of weight can dramatically slow the progression of the disease. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels also benefit when just this small percentage of body weight is lost.

It's not just how much people weigh, but also where they carry the weight, that put them at greater risk for health problems. People who carry more weight around their waist -- an "apple-shape" -- are more likely to suffer from obesity related problems than someone who is "pear-shaped," or carries more weight in their hips and thighs.

Live Healthier, Live Longer

Other health risks associated with being overweight or obese include: gall bladder problems, certain types of arthritis, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), pulmonary diseases such as sleep apnea, or diseases of the liver. The scales are certainly tipped in favor of losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle. So many serious diseases can be prevented or at least delayed by moving towards a more normal weight.

Sources: "Weight-control Information Network." Do You Know The Health Risks Of Being Overweight?. Nov. 2004. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. 23 Oct 2006

"Diabetes Statistics." Total Prevalence of Diabetes & Pre-diabetes. 2005. American Diabetes Association. 23 Oct 2006

"The Nutrition Source." Healthy Weight. 2006. Harvard School of Public Health. 25 Oct 2006

The Only African American Firefighter Museum in the U.S.

I was amazed when I found out about the oldest and only African American Firefighter Museum in the country, which is right in Los Angeles!

The museum preserves and shares the great accomplishments of African American firefighters throughout the decades. It opened on December 13, 1997 to acknowledge and praise the service of the first 100 years of service by African American Firefighters.

The history and the memory of those who helped start the museum are also preserved. It is something that is so striking and breathtaking that it truly makes you appreciate the past, the present, and the future to come.

According to its website, in 2002, the Los Angeles Times found that the history of the museum actually started before 1897 with a man named Sam Haskins. Haskins was listed as the first Los Angles Fireman of African decent when he was hired in 1892. Sadly, Haskins was killed in 1895 while responding to a fire.

The lives and impact of African American firefighters throughout time is shown so gracefully along the walls and within the atmosphere of the museum.

As you walk throughout the museum, you will notice all of the photos and firefighting equipment from a previous day in time. You will probably feel the great emotion and even the great passion for providing service that the African American men had.

For example, the first floor contains vintage fire apparatus, stories and pictures of pioneering African American Los Angeles Firefighters. Additionally, the museum also has a gallery that has pictures, artifacts and other memorabilia of African American Firefighters, Captains, Chief Officers and historical women fire service professionals from around the country. There is even a memorial tribute to all of the firefighters that perished during 9/11.

Yet there is also another capturing part of the museum.

Visitors will most likely meet 92-year-old retired firefighter Arnett Hartsfield. Hartsfield is so enthusiastic and lively. It is quite surprising to meet someone who has given so much to society throughout his entire life and yet still keeps giving.

Those who work at the museum say Hartsfield is the most cherished volunteer. In fact, visitors especially cherish him for the amazing stories of courage he tells them.

According to the museum's website, Hartsfield was a Los Angeles firefighter during the 1940s and 50's. He led the integration of the Los Angeles Fire Department. As a graduate of USC's law school, he and his fellow firemen known as the Stentorians, the NAACP and the local community, were instrumental in successfully integrating the LAFD.

He still continues to tell the stories of the men that endured a horrific fight today.

His stories and this museum especially touched me as I reflected on the changing history of the United States. From wars to segregation to equal rights for all, the people of our country, especially minorities, have dealt with many issues in their lifetime.

In my opinion, this museum is the epitome of how one's courage, strength, and intellect can make a brighter future for all. We each just have to continue to give back to our communities and inspire generations to come to make a difference in the world for the better. I just wonder why there are not more museums like it throughout the United States.

NYPD Report Finds Significant Spike in Black Murder Victims

Authorities probing whether gang activity is behind increase in homicides.

Updated 9:26 AM EST, Wed, Mar 9, 2011 | Print

African Americans accounted for more than two thirds of murder victims in the city last year, and prosecutors are probing whether gangs are behind the double-digit spike.

Citywide homicides climbed 14 percent in 2010, driven largely by a 31 percent surge in black murder victims, according to a new NYPDanalysis of crime statistics.

Black people account for just a quarter of the city's population but comprised 67 percent of the 536 homicide victims in 2010, the report said. Those ages 15 to 29 were most likely to be victims,according to the Wall Street Journal.

Despite making up just 3 percent of the city's population, they accounted for a third of all homicide victims.

Surprising Way Race Colors Attitudes To Health Care Reform

Some opposition to the Obama administration's health care reform law is linked to racial bias, according to a study released by the Greenlining Institute on Tuesday.

But, according to the research, much of this opposition to health care reform is not attributable to racially charged views about President Barack Obama in particular, but, comes from a complex idea called racial resentment.

"The racial bias that I looked at is a construct called racial resentment, it's the idea that the reason why blacks don't get ahead in society is because they don't work hard enough," said Daniel Byrd, research director at the Greenlining Institute. "Obama isn't affecting their attitudes towards the healthcare reform law, it's more about the idea that blacks may be getting something they don't deserve."

According to the report, which analyzed data from the 2008 to 2010 American National Election Survey of opinions and voting habits:

"Whites who like Obama are more supportive of the health care reform when compared to whites who do not like Obama. In contrast, for whites high in racial resentment, Obama is not a factor in their attitudes towards the health care reform law. Instead their attitude towards blacks as a group, specifically the belief that blacks do not work hard, is related to their attitude towards the recently passed health care reform law."

The study found that during the summer of 2010, 44.3% of all Americans backed healthcare reform, 35.8% opposed it and 19.8% had no opinion. There was also a "racial component" to support for the measure, the report found, as 78.6% of African Americans, 52.6% of Latinos and 43.6% of people from other racial backgrounds backed reform, compared with 38.4% of the white people surveyed, according to the study. This could be linked to the fact that, according to the Center for American Progress, black and Latino Americans are less likely to have health insurance when compared to their white counterparts.

Opposition to the health care reform bill has sometimes been racially charged. In 2009, a swastika was painted on a sign outside the Smyrna, Ga., office of representative David Scott, D-Ga., who backed the bill, after a town hall meeting about an unrelated issue became a confrontation over health care reform.

“This kind of hate and racism is bubbling underneath the surface,” Scott told the AJC at the time. “You hear these people say I want my country back, but from whom?” Scott told the paper. “They feel somebody has taken their country. What has happened to demonstrate that? I think it speaks for itself.”

Several other representatives who backed the bill received death threats, according to the AJC:

"Democratic congressman, Brad Miller of North Carolina, has received death threats for his support of health care reform. Two other Democratic congressman, Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Frank Kratovil of Maryland, were hanged in effigy by protesters opposed to President Barack Obama's health care reform."

The Obama administration is currently defending healthcare reform against a barrage of challenges after courts in Florida and Virginia ruled against aspects of the legislation.