Saguaro
09-29-2007, 05:31 PM
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised Friday to right "glaring inequities" in the U.S. justice system that he said were exposed by local officials' handling of a racially charged fight among high school students in Jena, La.
"We know these inequities are there," Obama said in a speech at the historically black Howard University in Washington. "We know they're wrong. And yet they go largely unnoticed."
The Illinois senator has been accused by some black activists, most notably Rev. Jesse Jackson, of insufficient passion in his response to the Jena incident. A South Carolina newspaper reported that Jackson said Obama was "acting like he's white" as he criticized Obama for not participating in a high-profile protest march last week in Jena. Jackson later said the remark was taken out of context.
Six black high school students in Jena were initially charged with attempted murder for beating a white student in an incident that capped months of racial unrest in the town set off when three white students hung nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard. The students who hung the nooses -- which appeared after black students tried to sit under the tree that previously had been used exclusively by white students -- were not charged with a crime, and the school superintendent overruled the principal's recommendation that they be expelled, instead handing them brief suspensions.
Despite his mixed-race heritage and work as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side, Obama's courtship of African-American voters has been complex. His Ivy League background and upbringing by a white mother and grandparents sets his life experience apart from most low-income urban and rural blacks. He also differs from many prominent black political leaders in rising to office outside the civil rights struggle and campaigning for the support of a white electorate that might be put off by too much overtly racial rhetoric.
At the same time, Obama's primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), is married to a political figure with an extraordinarily strong following among blacks.
With his speech at Howard, Obama cited the Jena case as an object lesson as he talked about what he said were broad disparities in the justice system's treatment of minorities.
Obama also cited lengthy mandatory prison terms for first-time drug offenders and disparate sentences for users of crack versus powder cocaine, both aspects of the criminal code that disproportionately affect minority groups.
"It reminds us of the fact that we have a system that locks away too many young, first-time non-violent offenders for the better part of their lives -- a decision that's made not by a judge in a courtroom, but all too often by politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country," he said. "It reminds us that we have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than where you come from or what you look like."
Obama promised to work to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine users and to change laws to steer more first-time drug offenders to rehabilitation programs rather than prisons.
He said he would try to improve the quality of public defenders with programs to forgive the law school loans of attorneys who defend low-income defendants.
Obama also offered his own background and life experience as a guarantee of his dedication to addressing racial inequities. He pledged to the overwhelmingly black audience that he would be a "president whose story is like so many of your own -- whose life's work has been the unfinished work of our long march toward justice."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/yahoo/chi-obama29sep29,0,2014365.story
"We know these inequities are there," Obama said in a speech at the historically black Howard University in Washington. "We know they're wrong. And yet they go largely unnoticed."
The Illinois senator has been accused by some black activists, most notably Rev. Jesse Jackson, of insufficient passion in his response to the Jena incident. A South Carolina newspaper reported that Jackson said Obama was "acting like he's white" as he criticized Obama for not participating in a high-profile protest march last week in Jena. Jackson later said the remark was taken out of context.
Six black high school students in Jena were initially charged with attempted murder for beating a white student in an incident that capped months of racial unrest in the town set off when three white students hung nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard. The students who hung the nooses -- which appeared after black students tried to sit under the tree that previously had been used exclusively by white students -- were not charged with a crime, and the school superintendent overruled the principal's recommendation that they be expelled, instead handing them brief suspensions.
Despite his mixed-race heritage and work as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side, Obama's courtship of African-American voters has been complex. His Ivy League background and upbringing by a white mother and grandparents sets his life experience apart from most low-income urban and rural blacks. He also differs from many prominent black political leaders in rising to office outside the civil rights struggle and campaigning for the support of a white electorate that might be put off by too much overtly racial rhetoric.
At the same time, Obama's primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), is married to a political figure with an extraordinarily strong following among blacks.
With his speech at Howard, Obama cited the Jena case as an object lesson as he talked about what he said were broad disparities in the justice system's treatment of minorities.
Obama also cited lengthy mandatory prison terms for first-time drug offenders and disparate sentences for users of crack versus powder cocaine, both aspects of the criminal code that disproportionately affect minority groups.
"It reminds us of the fact that we have a system that locks away too many young, first-time non-violent offenders for the better part of their lives -- a decision that's made not by a judge in a courtroom, but all too often by politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country," he said. "It reminds us that we have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than where you come from or what you look like."
Obama promised to work to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine users and to change laws to steer more first-time drug offenders to rehabilitation programs rather than prisons.
He said he would try to improve the quality of public defenders with programs to forgive the law school loans of attorneys who defend low-income defendants.
Obama also offered his own background and life experience as a guarantee of his dedication to addressing racial inequities. He pledged to the overwhelmingly black audience that he would be a "president whose story is like so many of your own -- whose life's work has been the unfinished work of our long march toward justice."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/yahoo/chi-obama29sep29,0,2014365.story