Between the Easter holiday weekend, a recent out-of-town trip, and pre-school spring break, I have had little time to post lately. This is especially unfortunate because there are several items I've been meaning to post about. Rather than write separate blog entires for each of these items as I had originally planned, I decided to offer a brief blurb about each one here. Without further ado...the very first GBOC Lightning Round!
Item 1: Detroit Mayor IndictedThis past Monday Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy
announced that she was bringing charges against Kwame Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty for perjury, obstruction of justice, and a variety of other felonies, giving Kilpatrick the dubious honor of being the first sitting Detroit mayor to be indicted. (Full coverage of the whole sordid tale can be found
here.) There is not a great deal to say about this situation, other than that the mayor's tastelessness, arrogance, and seeming lack of remorse or dignity truly boggles the mind. It is a low point for a city that has had its fair share of low points; the fact that the (alleged) crimes were committed using taxpayer dollars makes the mayor's actions even more reprehensible. You know things are bad when folks are citing Eliot Spitzer as someone whose lead the mayor
should follow. At least Spitzer had the decency to resign when he saw that the jig was up....
Item 2: Professors Who BlogThe
New York Times ran
this interesting story last week about the increasing number of faculty members who write blogs, maintain social networking pages, or otherwise use the Internet to make their lives an "open book". While some professors believe that making (benign) personal information available online humanizes faculty members and facilitates communication with students, others fret that these professors are trying too hard to get students to like them at the expense of maintaining appropriate professional boundaries. I had a few thoughts about this piece when I first read it, but they've long since flown from my brain. What say all of my fellow PWBs (Professors Who Blog)?
Item 3: Barack Obama's "Race Speech"By now everyone surely has
watched the video or
read the transcript of Barack Obama's speech about U.S. race relations. If you haven't yet seen or read the senator's remarks, you need to. In fact, I think this address should be mandatory viewing for every single solitary person in the United States.
I knew that a wide variety of commentators had heaped praise on the senator's remarks. It was not until I watched it for myself, however, that I appreciated just how remarkably reasoned and candid an analysis of race relations Senator Obama offered. Never in my lifetime have I heard a politician so plainly and intelligently address complex issues of race and inequality that too often avoid discussion in college classrooms, let alone in presidential campaigns.
In particular, some of his remarks were especially relevant to criminologists. Some excerpts:
So when [whites] are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time...
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments [among whites] aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism...
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings...
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper...
That's it for now. Stay tuned for another Lightning Round in the future!
From CNN.com: 
