GBOC Lightning Round: Friday Morning Edition

Kick off your Friday morning with another GBOC lightning round. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Item 1: "What is the Age of Responsibility?"
Wednesday's Talk of the Nation posed that very complex question to journalist Alan Greenblatt of Governing Magazine and Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg. The conversation came in response to Greenblatt's recent article describing the "mixed messages" young people receive from state and local laws that dictate different minimum ages for different behaviors (e.g., consenting to sex, drinking alcohol, voting, etc.). Of interest to criminologists, the experts discussed both the minimum legal drinking age and the processing of juvenile offenders as adults. In addition, Steinberg -- who appeared on NPR last year to criticize the adultification of youthful offenders -- explained how chronological age restrictions bear little correlation with developmental science regarding the maturation of adolescent brains; however, as meaningful tests for maturity are impossible to develop, chronological age is the only viable proxy for maturity we've got. Finally, the conversation touched on some of the issues we discussed here with respect to LWOP sentences for juvenile offenders. If you've got a few minutes, it's definitely worth a listen (or read).

Item 2: The High Cost of Capital Punishment
Speaking of LWOP sentences, last week the Death Penalty Information Center altered us to a recent NYT editorial encouraging states to abolish the death penalty based on economic considerations:

To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets...

According to the [DPIC], keeping inmates on death row in Florida costs taxpayers $51 million a year more than holding them for life without parole. North Carolina has put 43 people to death since 1976 at $2.16 million per execution. The eventual cost to taxpayers in Maryland for pursuing capital cases between 1978 and 1999 is estimated to be $186 million for five executions...

A Republican state senator in Kansas, Carolyn McGinn, pointed out that her state, which restored the death penalty in 1994, had not executed anybody in more than 40 years. In February, she introduced a bill to replace capital punishment with life without parole. The bill gained considerable attention but stalled. Similar arguments were made, unsuccessfully, in states such as New Hampshire and Maryland. Colorado considered a bill to end capital punishment and spend the money saved on solving cold cases. But this year, only New Mexico went all the way, abolishing executions in March.

I don't have much commentary about this, other than to add that financial considerations provide lawmakers who oppose capital punishment a more palatable platform for public opposition than, say, moral appeals. Thoughts from others?

Item 3: Say it Ain't So, Joe!
Bad news yesterday for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (he of the pink clothing policies for DUI offenders and, more importantly, the bobblehead on Velma's desk):

Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff's department have had an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security since 2007 that allows his department to enforce federal immigration laws. But Arpaio says the federal agency is moving to revise the agreement to limit that power to checking the immigration status of inmates already in his Phoenix jail...

Now he faces a Justice Department investigation into allegations of civil rights abuses, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona is suing the sheriff over immigration raids conducted by his department. The class-action lawsuit alleges that Arpaio has abused the power delegated to him under his agreement with Homeland Security, known as the 287(g) program.

Hmmm. Perhaps "America's Toughest Sheriff" is about to become a little less tough? Interesting to see how this develops.

Item 4: President Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize!
And he's only the third sitting president to do so.

(I'm sure Scooby, in particular, is thrilled.)

GBOC Lightning Round: Looooong Overdue Edition

Hello, loyal readers. Please enjoy another GBOC lightning round. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Item 1: Rick Rosenfeld on the Economy & Crime
In several prior posts we've considered what effect (if any) the recession will have on patterns and rates of offending, especially violent crime. Recently, ASC President-elect (and Velma's colleague) Rick Rosenfeld spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about this very topic:

Reports of crime were down across the nation last year — especially in the Midwest — but the St. Louis area saw a mixed bag, according to figures released by the FBI on Monday and other available data.

The national crime rate continued a downward trend started in 2007. But an expert who tracks local and national crime statistics said the data provide few clues about how the global recession might have influenced crime rates.

"If one were going to see crime increases, one would have expected to see them later in the year last year and into the first part of 2009," said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and president-elect of the American Society of [Criminology].

I don't have much to add, other than that I appreciate Rosenfeld's clear, consice discussions of crime statistics. For more of his media commentaries, see here and here.

Item 2: "AG Holder Vows Science-Based Crime Policy"
I saw this headline about Holder's remarks to the NIJ in my Ted Gest e-mail a few weeks ago and was ecstatic! Here's an excerpt:

President Obama has renewed our nation’s commitment to rely on science in the development of public policy. He understands, as do I, that sound judgment derives from solid evidence. Moreover, we understand that the production of such evidence requires resources. As a result of this understanding, the President’s 2010 budget calls for increased investment in scientific research, including criminology.

Woo hoo! The word "criminology" appeared in a description of President Obama's proposed budget! How exciting is that? Finally, I thought, there might be some recognition at the federal level that criminal justice policy is often divorced from empirical research, especially where drug policy is concerned. But then I wondered if my excitement wasn't a bit misplaced; after all, isn't this step just a necessary corrective? More importantly, what does it say about the state of contemporary U.S. crime policy that we are celebrating the announcement that policy decisions will now be based on actual research? It sort of begs the question: what are these decisions based on now? Intuition? Fear? Personal beliefs? A giant Magic 8-Ball?

Item 3: Chris Brown Sentenced
Chris Brown struck a deal with prosecutors earlier this week just hours before the hearing in his assault case was set to begin. Brown avoided prison time for assaulting then-girlfriend and fellow pop star Rihanna back in February. However, in exchange for pleading guilty to felony assault he was sentenced to five years' probation, a year-long domestic violence class, and six months of "community labor" . He also was ordered to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna for the next five years (though the restriction was lessened to 10 yards for industry events at which both singers are present).

It will be interesting to see whether or how this story develops: will the two reuinte? Will there be a lot of publicity during his community service? (I'm thinking TMZ cameras at his trash-pickup sessions or something). Stay tuned, I guess.

GBOC Lightning Round, International Version

It appears the GBOC has been pretty quiet this week, what with our fearless leader Dr. H&K spending time with the newest addition to her family (Congrats!).

In her place, I humbly present another GBOC Lightning Round!

Item 1: The "Right to Rape" Women in Afghanistan

CNN reports this morning that a new bill designed to give the Shia community increased rights actually serves to limit women's rights in Afghanistan. Under the new law, women would need permission to leave their homes without permission from a male relative. In addition, a woman cannot legally deny her husband's request for sex--thereby legalizing marital rape.

While President Karzai claims the law has been misinterpreted by western countries, others claim they passed it without understanding all the implications of the law. Mr. Karzai responds:



It is impressive that women have gained the right to speak out and demand equal rights. Here's hoping all women and girls in Afghanistan can exercise their rights in the near future.

Item 2: Plane Stolen in Canada Lands in Missouri

U.S. fighter jets chased a small plane stolen from Thunder Bay, Ontario over several states before the pilot landed in Missouri where he exited, walked to a convenience store, and purchased a Gatorade. He then sat down and waited for the authorities:

"He just came in, got a Gatorade, tried to get a beef jerky, didn't have enough money, went over and sat down and just kind of watched people come and go," said Tammy Bailey of Simmons Grocery & Hardware in Ellsinore in southern Missouri.

So, thanks to this first class a-hole, the state capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin was evacuated as he flew overhead. I'm even more irritated by his expression in the booking photo.

Item 3: Turkey's Denial of the Armenian Genocide

I've been preparing a new course on "The Criminology of Genocide", and the research I've been doing has opened my eyes to the importance of speaking out against these atrocities. One common theme across history is the tendency for those guilty of such horrors to deny that genocide has taken place. In the case of Turkey, this denial persists 90 years after the Armenian Genocide. The Republic of Turkey refuses to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide as such.

There is some debate about how many Armenians were killed or driven out of Turkey between 1914 to 1918. Turkey claims 300,000 Armenians were killed, but modern Armenia (with backing from several countries, including Argentina, France, Russia and Canada) puts the number of dead closer to 1.5 million.

How can anyone claim that many deaths cannot be genocide? Government officials claim the deaths were the result of the chaos following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. A recent New York Times article explains:

Mr. Bardakci subscribes to that view. The figures, he said, do not indicate the number of dead, only a result of the decline in the Armenian population after deportation. He strongly disagrees that the massacres amounted to a genocide, and he says Turkey was obliged to take action against Armenians because they were openly supporting Russia in its war against the Ottoman Empire.

“It was not a Nazi policy or a Holocaust,” he said. “These were very dark times. It was a very difficult decision. But deportation was the outcome of some very bloody events. It was necessary for the government to deport the Armenian population.”

This argument is rejected by most scholars, who believe that the small number of Armenian rebels were not a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire, and that the policy was more the product of the perception that the Armenians, non-Muslims and therefore considered untrustworthy, were a problem population.

President Obama has committed himself to this issue, as he did as a Senator from the state of Illinois in 2006 when the Ambassador to Armenia was recalled by the U.S. State Department after referring to the event as a genocide. While he did not use the word "genocide" in his speech to the Turkish government yesterday, Obama addressed the "events of 1915" and encouraged Turkey to come to a reckoning with the past.

I will be very interested to hear Obama's speech to the Armenian-American community on April 24th, Armenia's Day of Remembrance. Armenians are hopeful that he will take steps to ensure the United States joins Canada, Argentina, France, and other countries in formally recognizing the Armenian genocide.

GBOC Lightning Round, Episode Four

This week brings a shortened work week and a nice, long holiday weekend -- what a perfect time for another GBOC Lightning Round! (See previous rounds here, here, and here.)

Item 1: Office of Urban Policy

Recently, Obama transition team leader Valerie Jarrett discussed with NPR one of the new positions being created by the incoming administration: a federal Office of Urban Policy:

Jarrett said Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy that will be charged with focusing on cities and "have a comprehensive approach to urban development."

It is unclear who will lead the office, which will be tasked with advocating for cities and targeting programs in a "logical and systematic way," but it is a key position, according to Jarrett.

"For those of us who have worked in city governments across the country, we recognize how invaluable that person will be," she says.

Though perhaps an unsurprising decision for a president-elect who hails from Chicago, the creation of this office has much potential for addressing crime issues at the federal level. One measure of the extent to which the Office of Urban Policy will focus on crime (as well as poverty, a key correlate of urban crime) is the background of the person selected to lead this office. I'm very curious to find out who Obama names to fill this post.

Speaking of cabinet appointments, I'm equally curious to find out who Obama selects for "Drug Czar" (a.k.a. director of ONDCP). I've got my fingers crossed that it will be a criminologist or other social scientist who actually studies drug policy, and not an ex-Secretary of Education, a state governor, an Army general, or a Department of Education official*.


Item 2: The 8-year old boy in Arizona
ShockProf recently blogged about this case, so I don't have too much to add at this point. However, Michelle at Public Criminology reminds us that a similar case unfolded in Chicago a decade ago:

the defendants in that case were two 7- and 8-year-old chicago boys. the police attained confessions from these two young boys for the muder of 11-year-old ryan harris who was killed while riding her bike in their neighborhood. the charges against the boys were finally dropped when semen was found in the victim’s underpants, and prosecutors were forced to acknowledge that it was unlikely boys so young could produce semen. so how much were those confessions really worth?

How much, indeed. This also speaks to the question raised by Michigan Family Doc in the comments to ShockProf's original post.


Item 3: Nate Silver: Stats Lovers' Biggest Crush?
I'm not sure how many of you followed FiveThirtyEight.com during the election season, but if you're are a stats lover (unlike me), you'll adore this political data-crunching site run by baseball statistician (and East Lansing native!) Nate Silver. Based on statistical analyses he performed on polling data, Silver produced shockingly accurate predictions of the 2008 presidential and congressional races. Want more? In a recent post, Silver used regression analysis to predict the winner in the undecided Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota. His forecast? Franken will win by 27 votes:

We can address this phenomenon more systematically by means of a regression analysis. In the regression, we are attempting to predict a variable I've defined as franken_net, which is the net gain by Franken per 10,000 ballots cast in that precinct. The independent variables considered in the regression are as follows:

t: the proportion of the two-way vote received by Franken in the initial count (e.g. excluding votes for third parties)

c_f: the number of challenges initiated by the Franken campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

...Suppose that the number of challenges is zero -- as will happen once the state canvassing board finishes considering all such challenges in December. In this case, all terms in the regression equation reduce to zero, except for the constant term and t, which is Franken's share of the two-way vote in that precinct. We are thus left with the following:

franken_net = t * 8.922 - 3.622

...When we plug in a t of .499956 -- Franken was picked on just slightly very less than half of the ballots during the initial count -- we get a value for franken_net of .837. That is, Franken will gain a net of .837 votes for every 10,000 cast. With a total of 2,885,555 ballots having been recorded in the initial count, this works out to a projected gain of 242 votes for Franken statewide. Since Norm Coleman led by 215 votes in the initial count, this suggests that Franken will win by 27 votes once the recount process is complete (including specifically the adjudication of all challenged ballots).

c_c: the number of challenges initiated by the Coleman campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

See? I told you -- totally crushworthy for folks who love statistics! It makes it even cooler that his real love is baseball statistics. You can watch him chatting up Colbert here.

OK, that's it for now: comment away!

*Though, I can't be too hard on John Walters -- he's a Spartan, after all.

GBOC Lightning Round, Take Three

Over the last few weeks I've compiled a list of stories I've been meaning to share, but I haven't quite found the time to write about each one. So, rather than let these stories go unblogged (gasp!), let's commence another GBOC Lightning Round! (See previous rounds here and here.)

Item 1: Criminology, Genocide, & Darfur
The other day I received in the mail an advertisement for the forthcoming book Darfur and the Crime of Genocide by John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond. I am really looking forward to reading this book. Recently I have been part of an effort to boost the level of activism in one of the feminist organizations to which I belong, partly in response to the brutalization of women and children happening in Darfur and in the Congo. I share the sentiments of Robert Sampson, who wrote in his endorsement:

"Why has the field of criminology ignored genocide for so long? The answer to this question has important implications for theories of crime and international policy alike. The terrible tragedy in Darfur serves as the motivation for Hagan and Rymond-Richmond to trace the intellectual history of competing approaches to genocide, from the pioneering work of Sheldon Glueck on Nazi war crimes to controversies over official reaction to atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and now Africa. A call to action, Darfur and the Crime of Genocide is disturbing but necessary reading for all those concerned with international justice and a more general criminological conception of collective responses to crime around the world." --Robert J. Sampson, Harvard University, Henry Ford II Professor of Sociology

Item 2: "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower"
A colleague forwarded to me this Atlantic essay about the challenges of teaching students who by most estimations should not be in college. Writing anonymously, the author discusses the cultural shift in recent decades that has made college attendance compulsory for many students -- even those poorly suited to higher education -- and the ramifications of that shift for the faculty members who must evaluate the academic performance of these students. In particular, the author discusses the challenges of grading papers written by students with remedial writing skills. An excerpt:

America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.

Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades.

For I, who teach these low-level, must-pass, no-multiple-choice-test classes, am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: that they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; that they are in some cases barely literate; that they are so bereft of schemata, so dispossessed of contexts in which to place newly acquired knowledge, that every bit of information simply raises more questions. They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.

My guess is that most of us would recognize more than a few of our students in this essay...

Item 3: Kids Count Data & Juvenile Justice Reform
A few weeks ago the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its 2008 Kids Count report, an annual state-by-state survey that evaluates the well-being of children using a variety of indicators: employment, education, health, poverty, and so on. Criminologists may be particularly interested in the juvenile incarceration data. For example, according to a Detroit Free Press article:

Among the most alarming trends: Michigan continues to incarcerate kids at a much higher rate than the national average and often for nonviolent crimes.

There are 137 children per 100,000 in some sort of state facility or detention in Michigan, compared with the national average of 125 per 100,000. That puts Michigan 33rd in that category.

This report might be a useful teaching tool, as the website allows users to generate profiles by state, so that you can see how children in your particular state (or, if you live in a large enough metro area, your city) are faring. Finally, accompanying the report is a thoughtful essay, "A Road Map for Juvenile Justice Reform", that also includes a state-by-state summary of child well-being indicators.

Item 4: Supreme Court Bombshells!
As Velma noted earlier today, this week the U.S. Supreme Court rendered two opinions particularly relevant for criminologists:

(1) In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court banned capital punishment for child rape, stating that such punishment is disproportionate to the crime and therefore constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th amendment.

(2) In District of Columba v. Heller, the Court struck down Washington DC's ban on handgun ownership, ruling that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms extends to individuals.

I will leave the commentary about the Heller decision to the gun experts (and enthusiasts?) on the blog, and instead will share my thoughts about the Court's death penalty decision. Though I've disclosed my secret retributionist stance toward child rapists, I agree with the Court's decision. (I'm sure that Justice Kennedy and the four justices who joined him in the majority are relieved to know that I approve of their reasoning.) As several analysts have noted, because most child rapes are committed by someone the victim knows (often a relative or close family friend), asking a child to testify against the assailant with the knowledge that a conviction could lead to that person's execution understandably would cause undue emotional distress for the victim. Much as my maternal instincts might favor stringing these guys up on the courthouse lawn, the rational part of me knows that it would be utterly inhumane to put child sexual assault victims in a position where telling the truth could get their father, uncle, or other loved one killed, no matter how much we might think that person deserves it.

That's all for now. As always, I look forward to reader comments!

GBOC Lightning Round, Part Deux

As evidenced by the lack of posts over the last few days, everyone is no doubt swamped with end-of-semester duties. (Either that, or everyone has given up on this blog without telling me!) I'm no exception, so in this post I've compiled several items -- all of which I've been meaning to write full posts about -- for another GBOC lightning round.

Item 1: The Work of Justice Now
Last week, Feministing featured a series of stories about Justice Now, an Oakland, CA-based organization committed to "working with women prisoners and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons". Interesting, huh? Here is their mission statement:

Our mission is to end violence against women and stop their imprisonment. We believe that prisons and policing are not making our communities safe and whole but that, in fact, the current system severely damages the people it imprisons and the communities most affected by it. We promote alternatives to policing and prisons and challenge the prison industrial complex in all its forms.

We fulfill our mission by:

Providing legal services and supporting prisoner organizing efforts that promote health and justice;

Working with prisoners, their families and community members on political education and mobilization campaigns;

Building coalitions to create safety for women and individual accountability without relying on the punishment system;

Training the next generation of activists and lawyers committed to working for social justice.

Honestly, I'm not sure that abolition of prisons and police forces is either: (a) feasible, (b) desirable, or (c) the appropriate strategy for addressing the incarceration of battered women and other female victims of violence. That said, I applaud their efforts to assist incarcerated women, and agree that the criminal justice system -- the very system that is designed to offer recourse for those who have been victimized -- too often serves as a source of violence and victimization for women. You can read Feministing's ongoing profile of Justice Now addressing a variety of issues related to incarcerated women here, here, here, here, and here.

Item 2: The Motherhood Penalty
A while back Velma posted a very handy table she created examining average professor salary by sex. She also discussed the economic difficulties women with children face in the academy -- the "motherhood penalty," so to speak. Grad School Mommy carries on this important conversation with two posts -- found here and here -- filled with many links and lots of good information about the motherhood penalty. Be sure to check out the posts' comments, too, for even more insight from moms in academia.

Item 3: Beating a Bad Reputation
There is an interesting story in today's Detroit Free Press about the efforts of the Frederick Douglass High School in Detroit -- now a college prep academy -- to outgrow its reputation as a holding pen for students too troubled to last in regular schools:

Once a bad boys' school -- an alternative for those kicked out of other schools -- it has been academically and culturally turned around and now is a college preparatory academy. The only all-boys public school in the state, its freshmen all take JROTC to improve discipline and leadership skills, a National Honor Society chapter flourishes and male mentoring programs help build self-esteem.

I couldn't help but think about labeling theory when I read this article. Turns out the reputation of being "Douglass High" is hard to shake, even though its students now wear coat-and-tie uniforms and excel academically. What really got my attention, though, was this incredibly sobering (and disheartening) statistic:

But [school administrators'] mission is about more than changing the school's reputation. It is about changing negative statistics about urban male students.

Detroit Public Schools ranks last among the nation's 50 big cities, graduating 25% of ninth-graders after four years. The remainder drop out, transfer or take more than four years to earn a diploma, according to a report released by America's Promise Alliance based on research by the Maryland-based Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

"When it comes to boys, 3 out of 4 will not graduate on time," U.S. Secretary of State Margaret Spellings said of Detroit teens during a speech last month at the Detroit Economic Club.

And people wonder why social ills like crime, poverty, and drug use plague urban areas like Detroit....

GBOC Lightning Round

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 Indicted
This 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 Blog
The 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!