Even 5-Year-Olds Have Civil Rights
By Lester Kenyatta Spence*, AOL BlackVoices columnist
I still don’t see how someone can agree with what happened in Florida just because teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. But people all over the country are agreeing, and many of them are black people.
Black people who believe in this claptrap are being hoodwinked into believing that our rights are based on something close to black perfection. It isn’t the first time.the civil rights movement would have looked a lot different if Rosa Parks was a single mother with a drinking problem.
Here is a lesson in American Citizenship 101: You do not have to act “right” to be treated like a citizen. You do not have to act “right” to be guaranteed an education. Wake up (emphasis added).
Granted, you can’t break the law, but we’re not talking about law breaking here.
We’re talking about a 5-year-old kid who had a couple of bad days at school. She wasn’t packing. She didn’t threaten to blow up the school. She didn’t get caught with weed in her locker. She wasn’t caught having sex in one of the bathrooms.
She.
Had.
A
Temper.
Tantrum.
That’s IT.
Racism in America has sunk to an all-time low
Baltimore Editorial Staff, The Afro American Newspapers
There must have been a better way to handle that situation.
First, the principal, rather than waiting for the student's mother to come to the school, invited the police to come in and inflame the situation. And the police, rather than reassessing the situation when they saw how quiet the child had become, shackled and "perp walked" the kindergartner, no doubt terrifying the child.
There must have been a better way.
A St. Louis principal was suspended, according to CNN, in a similar situation. The police spokesman in that case said handcuffing 5-year-olds "is not the practice of the department."
"Handcuffing indicates an arrest is being made," said Roxanne Evans of the D.C. Public Schools Office of Communications and Public Information. "In DCPS, a 5-year-old has not yet reached the age of reason to be charged with a crime. Therefore, there would be no reason for a 5-year-old to be handcuffed."
According to Baltimore City Public School System spokeswoman Vanessa Pyatt, the local policy is the use of passive restraint. The policy's description is disseminated annually to families in the "Information Guide for Parents and Students." She said a student would never be handcuffed without having been charged with a crime and being formally under arrest, which has never happened in our system to a 5-year-old.
School police would be called in because policy demands they be notified when situations erupt, but the goal is always that they be handled internally.
Florida apparently has no such policy.
The police procedures used to take that child into custody are reserved for people under arrest, who are violent, dangerous and might pull out a weapon and injure the arresting officer. None of those elements existed; therefore, there must have been another motive for such rash, demonstrative and dramatic action (emphasis added)
"Children need to have hope that they can succeed, and they need family stability and adults they can trust. They also need counseling when trauma affects them," said Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, in reference to a similar case. "At critical points in their development, however, from birth through adulthood, a disproportionate number of poor children of color lack access to these important keys to healthy development and struggle to compete on an unequal playing field. Many fall inexorably behind. The pipeline to prison robs children of their God-given birthrights to opportunity, fulfillment and self-actualization, making it far more likely that they will end up behind bars" (emphasis added).
*Lester K. Spence is also a blogger over at Vision Circle.
BLOG POSTS
COMMENTS
PODCASTS
