The Man Who Cried Wolverine

The mayor of Detroit is in the midst of a crisis. A crisis that could eventually cost the mayor not only his job, his political future; a future that was looking very rosy prior to this crisis, but also his freedom. The mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick was elected the youngest mayor in Detroit history in 2001 at 31, promising to reinvigorate the troubled city. The young mayor received criticism from the outset primarily for his extravagant spending habits on the public dime. The current crisis involves the Mayor, his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty and 4 members of the Detroit Police Department. Normally I have become immune to political corruption cases because they have become so prevalent, but this one is important not because of the details of the case but the defense being employed by the defendant.

You see according to the Mayor this case is based on racism. He is being unfairly targeted by “The Man” to silence another up and coming black politician. As a black man I recognize the deep dark tentacles of racism in American society, but I am equally aware of the use of racism by blacks to cover their personal defects of character. I don’t know why but I always feel a deep sense of betrayal by black public officials who are caught in wrongdoing. I guess I want to believe that black politicians won’t succumb to the same temptations of their white counterparts, of course I am regularly disappointed because greed and the hunger for power have no color barriers. There are some sins that are older and stronger than racism, Mr. Mayor; pride, lust, and greed seem to come to mind.

For those who are unfamiliar with the case it is a multifaceted case that involves the Mayor’s sexual relationship with his former chief of staff, the police officers who were terminated for investigating complaints concerning the Mayors involvement in a wild party at the Mayor’s residence, and the possible use of public funds by the Mayor to subsidize his extra-marital trysts. The case began with a member of the Mayor’s security detail reporting an alleged wild party complete with a stripper at the Mayor’s residence. According to reports the stripper was assaulted by the Mayor’s wife and there was a big scene. The party has never been verified by a police investigation or by the State’s Attorney General. However, a few months after the allegations the stripper is killed in a drive-by shooting where the assailant fired multiple shots and according to witness turned around and proceeded to fire more shots. It appears someone wanted Tamara Greene dead.

Since that slaying there have been allegations of infidelity by the Mayor not just with his former chief of staff, but also other women. There have been lawsuits by the fired police officers as well as by the family of the slain stripper. The Mayor has repeatedly denied any wrong-doing and has characterized the investigations as a legal lynching and racially motivated. The Mayor even went so far as to invoke the N-word during his State of the City address. Why is it that whenever a black politician gets caught the first thing they utter is racism? It is cases like these that undermine the true cases of racism and allows those race apologists to announce that racism is dead and that it is now a false claim to cover criminal behavior by black athletes, entertainers, and elected officials.

The problem with deception and deceivers is that it often times appears as truth, it has to, in order to be believable. So, the man who deceives women says the same things that an honest man would say. Thus leaving the victim with not only a loss of dignity but also a loss of truth. So that any man that comes along afterwards has an almost insurmountable obstacle to overcome. Those who falsely use racism as an excuse for being caught at bad behavior cause the same loss of truth and integrity in the fact that racism exists. Often times racism isn’t the cause for their demise but actually pride, lust, and greed on their part. If the Mayor were in fact innocent then no amount of racism could fabricate the charges he is faced with. There is actually a trail of text messages from the Mayor, his chief of staff, and some high ranking police officials detailing the alleged dismissal, infidelities, and cover-up.

The other problem I have with those caught in bad behavior is their almost instant transformation to religious zealots. If those who now confess an epiphany of religious conversion had been more sensitive to those religious tenets like maybe the ones concerning adultery, lying, and stealing they might have prevented them from being in a position to be nabbed. It is these types of believers that have brought much of the condemnation upon the Church. Those who only choose to invoke “The Almighty” when their bacon is about to be cooked bring denunciation upon those who struggle to live according to their faiths. While as a Christian I believe in the power of reconciliation through persecution and tribulation, I also know that this is a process and is not completed in the matter of hours so frequently displayed by these fallen people.

This my friends is not a case of a black leader being brought low by racism and I as a black man am offended that this man would try to insult my intelligence claiming otherwise. This is a case of a black politician who believed that he was above the laws that govern public officials and that he could do as he pleased with no repercussions. From the reports that I have read we have the “hip-hop” Mayor who ran Detroit like Shug Knight ran Deathrow records through intimidation and favors. For the sake of the city and your family Mr. Mayor it is time to close this ugly chapter and let the city get on with its business. It is time to step down for all concerned.

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The Students Aren’t Failing, We Are

School District	Graduation Rate Percentages
Detroit, MI	21.7%
Baltimore City, MD	38.5%
New York City, NY	38.9%
Milwaukee, WI	43.1%
Cleveland, OH	43.8%
Los Angeles, CA	44.2%
Miami-Dade County, FL	45.3%
Dallas, TX	46.3%
Pinellas County, FL	46.5%
Denver, CO	46.8%
Memphis, TN	48.5%
Broward County, FL	48.7%
Fort Worth, TX	48.9%
Houston, TX	48.9%

I recently came across some statistics that seemed unbelievable to me in America. It appears that in 10 of our largest cities the public school systems are graduating less than half of their students. That is correct they will graduate less than 50% of their students. According to the report compiled by EPE Research and published in the USA Today, there are 14 school districts that graduate less than 50% of their students. This should be a national emergency; except for one small caveat the majority of students in these schools are minorities.

The city of Detroit was by far the worst; their schools will only graduate 25% of their students. This is a travesty on a national scale and yet it goes unnoticed and unreported. So what if only 25% of those black students graduate, what is that to me? What it is to me is a national disgrace. That we allow an entire school district to only graduate 1 in 4 of their students and there is no outcry is a scandal in itself. Where are the protest marchers and the 2 Reverends holding press conferences? Where are the appeals to Congress for investigations? We have too many people making a living on poverty and keeping the forgotten masses of capitalism buried. If we were churning out millions of white kids without diplomas I guarantee you there would be an outcry. There would be rioting in the streets, but a bunch of minorities, silence.

These appalling figures diminish all of us. How can a country, our country accept these graduation numbers from one of our largest cities? How can we accept less than 50% graduation rates from 14 school districts? How can we spend 500 billion dollars in Iraq and have the Detroit School District graduating 25% of its students? We should be bringing every resource we have to bear on this problem, this is unacceptable. We must begin to deal with the systemic problems that lead to 1 in 4 kids graduating. There is an ever widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in this country and news like this only accelerates it. There will be a day of reckoning if we continue to ignore and fail to educate all of our children. Here is a list of the top 14 districts and their graduation percentages.

These are millions of children who will not have the basic tools to earn a living, let alone to progress beyond the inter-generational poverty they were born into. We are beginning to create the class societies of third world countries, of great wealth being concentrated in the hands of a very few people. What happened to the dream that once was America? What will these children have to look forward to, to dream about? A life of menial minimum wage jobs, street crime, or the slow death of addiction, is this the future we want to offer them? Not everyone wants or is able to go to college, but a high school diploma represents the bare minimum one needs to function in our high-tech world. As our world becomes more technology based and there are fewer and fewer manual labor opportunities, we will be sentencing these children to a life without hope for a better tomorrow. Once we remove hope, what shall they have left?

It is amazing to me that we can spend billions of dollars in Iraq, on space exploration, and a host of other military projects, but we have no money to save millions of American kids from a life of hopelessness. It is time we elect a true "education President", one who will provide more than just rhetoric and catchy phrases. A president who will fund the programs needed to correct this gross injustice being perpetrated against America's minority youth. This is just further proof that separate will never be equal, we have not ended segregation in our schools we have just gotten better at disguising it. It has gone from direct racial inequality to an economic mask covering the racial component lurking beneath the surface. How are we to have a society based on equality for all, if we are willing to accept sending millions of minority kids into the world uneducated and untrained for its demands.

Have our children failed? No, we have failed them and continue to do so as long as a school district in this country is allowed to fail at educating ¾ of its students. We have failed them because we have not been willing to accept the challenge of successfully educating them. Can we as a nation afford to throw millions of lives away, millions of minds?

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