March 27th, 2007 | | Posted in Uncategorized
UPDATED! SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATED INFO.
I am going to break this post into two parts.
Side One
In case you haven’t heard by now, there is a case down in Paris, Texas that is getting a whole lot of attention regarding the racial overtones of the issue:
(chicagotribune.com) “Among the leading candidates for early release is Shaquanda Cotton, a 14-year-old black girl from the small east Texas town of Paris, who was sent to prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school while other young white offenders convicted of more serious crimes received probation in the town’s courts.
Shaquanda’s story was the subject of a March 12 Tribune article that triggered hundreds of Internet blog articles and thousands of message board postings and led to a nationwide letter-writing campaign to the Texas governor decrying perceived racial discrimination in her case.
Cotton, now 15, has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn earlier release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison.
Looking at the cover of this case as it has been presented in chain e-mails and e-boards around the net, this definently looks like a case of sho’ nuff racism. After all, this same judge sentenced a White girl a much lighter sentence for burning down her family home. After the emotion died down, I decided to do some more hunting around the net for additional information about this case because most folks have been using the Chicago Tribune’s version as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Here are two items that stuck out to me that left me with more questions than answers
More from the Chicago Tribune:
“But officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex have repeatedly extended Shaquanda’s sentence because she refuses to admit her guilt and because she was found with contraband in her cell–an extra pair of socks.”
According to her own blog, she admits to shoving this hall monitor, yet she refuses to admit this to prison officials knowing full well that her sentence is being extended as a result. That doesn’t make any sense! Plus, I have never heard of someone’s sentence being extended IN YEARS just because a pair of socks were found in their cell.
Point 2 - Why does it seem that the ACLU is not moving forward with the charge of racism?
If you read the rest of the article, a gentleman by the name of Will Harrell (executive director of the Texas chapter of the ACLU) is mentioned. While it seems that he is keeping a pulse on this case, based on the article it seems that he is more interested in addressing the corruption in the overall system and not exclusively the Cotton case. Anybody who knows anything about the ACLU knows that when it comes down to discrimination cases, they are always on top of it. Why then does it seem that they do not share the same adrenaline rush about this case as so many Black folks around the country?
My next question from reading this information was “Did she have any priors?” According to her website, “No”. According to the Chicago Tribune…
“Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school,” said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. “Some of the write-ups weren’t fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story.”
Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage.
[…]
But [Brenda] Cherry (local civil rights activist) alleges that Shaquanda’s frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District. (source)
Still IMO, giving someone seven years in prison is quite an excessive sentence. Here is a comment I found on the blog “State of the Qusan“. Apparently, this commenter lives in Paris, Texas and knows more about the overall situation down there than most of us:
I agree that the punishment for Shaquanda Cotton is excessive, but many parts of this story have been taken out of context.
The comment about a 19 year old white man killing two black people and getting probation is the most egregious. The white man was convicted of criminally negligent homicide because of an automobile accident. A car containing a 53 year old black woman, her son, and her three year old grandson was stopped on a busy farm-to-market road in preparation to turn. The white male was not paying attention to the road and ran into the car, killing the woman and child. This was a tragic accident, but is being taken out of context. To the average reader that does not know the background information, the description sounds like a murder. That was most definately not the case.
There is a great deal of relevant information that is being left out of the Chicago Tribune story about Ms. Cotton to help give the impression that there is pervasive racism in Paris, Texas. There were black administrators and teachers who testified against Ms. Cotton in court, and recommended that she receive a stiff sentence because she was a habitual offender at school. I still contend that she received too severe a sentence since she did not have a criminal record, but it is not as though a group consisting entirely of whites conspired to teach blacks in Paris, Texas a lesson.
There were black leaders in the community who spoke up in support of Paris ISD, and its good treatment of students regardless of their race. The complaints against Paris ISD were found to be without merit during the investigations. What became evident is that there is a significant parenting problem, not a school district that singles out black students for more severe punishment.
As to the segregation in Paris, I doubt very seriously as to whether or not there is a single community in America in which the citizens do not, to a large extent, voluntarily segregate themselves. I am not saying that voluntary segregation is a good thing, but to attempt to label a community racist because of it would be as absurd as calling a business that caters to blacks more than whites (for instance a black barber shop) racist against whites.
I live in Paris, and the neighborhood that I live in is comprised of both white and black families right next to each other. To say that there is no racism in Paris would be just as inaccurate as to say that there is no racism in Detroit or Miami or New York, but it is dying. There are whites who are racist against blacks and blacks who are racist against whites in every single town in this nation. That’s a damn shame, but the truth is it’s dying.
Trying to interject racism into a situation in which there is none only serves to perpetuate that which a community is unfairly being accused of.
This commenter had much more to say about the case as well as Paris, Texas in general (check out this link and read all the comments)
Funny how folks have been leaving out the race of the school officials who recommended prison for Cotton.
Here is an article I found on the Paris News website. It features County Judge Chuck Superville’s reasoning behind the sentence (an article I have yet to see in any chain e-mails, blogs or e-boards).
So from the way it looks, while the sentence of 7 years does seem way too excessive (and downright racist if lighter sentences were assigned to Whites for greater crimes—again, follow that link to Qusan’s site for the 411 on some of those other cases), there are just too many unanswered questions and assumptions that are being made about this overall case. Like the local ACLU chapter in the area, I tend to be more interested in the level of corruption of that local Juvenile system than this story regarding Shaquanda Cotton.
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UPDATE: The seven years sentence claim
According to Judge Superville, she was given an indeterminate sentence up to seven years.
He also said:
“Once I set the indeterminate sentence, Shaquanda holds the key to her jail cell,†Superville said. “It is up to the child and TYC.†(more here–you may need to register)
In other words, she was NOT given a seven year sentence, but a sentence that could not exceed seven years.
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This is starting to sound a bit like the rise and fall of the Duke rape case.
Side Two More »
). Such is the case with the Shaquanda Cotton issue where many of my fellow Black bloggers all over the net are in the midst of high fivin’ themselves believing that they have made Internet history by replicating a very fragmented story written by one White man (Howard Whit). What was especially disappointing to me was that when you do a 
.
It is a shame that issues like this only see the full light of day in American press when it can be used as fodder in the political blame game. 
TIFFANY SMITH
