ered of the Black PressThe Black Press believes that America can best lead the world away from racialand natural antagonisms when it accords to every person, regardless of race,color or creed, full human rights. Hating no person, fearing no person in thefirm belief that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back.It Does Happen There, Too...The images of the mayhem that tore aparySpringfield, Oregon recently are by now familiar to us all, nomatter how far away we live from the six suburban and rural communities where since last October heavily-armedteenagers have gunned down a total of nearly three score of their classmates and teachers.The toll is stunning; Jonesboro, Arkansas, 5 dead, West Paducah, Kentucky. 3 dead, 5 wounded; Fayetteville,Tennessee, | dead; and now, Springfield, Oregon, 4 dead, 26 wounded.Familiar, too, is the grief of the survivors and the shock of residents of these individual communities, andmany of us in the larger society, which has followed each of these murderous rampage. Why is this happeninghere? is the question being asked with increasing disquiet. "There is no sense to it," Gary Bowden,the wrestlingcoach at Springfield's Thurston High School, said, struggling to cope with the enormity of the crime there.But itTs not true that there's "no sense" to these killings. In fact, many people have identified the cause ofand contributing factors to these seemingly anarchic bursts of horrific violence.Norma Paulus, the Oregon state superintendent of Schools, said in the wake of the shootings, "This is nota school problem. This is a societal problem.Kitzhaber, Oregon's Governor, pointedly asserted, "All of us should look at how we have failed as a societyand how this could happen in the heart of Oregon. It has been a priority to build prison cells and prison beds--afterthe fact. These actions in no way prevent juvenile violence."Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, of the Harvard School of Public Health, suggested on ABC's "Nightline", thatwe are seeing the "Second Wave" of the youth homicide epidemic that primarily convulsed black and Hispanicinner-city neighborhoods during the past 15 years now erupt in white small towns and rural communities."The late '80s, early '90s was when the youth homicide rate in urban America almost doubled, started withwhat one might have thought were isolated incidents," Dr. Prothrow-Stith explained. "Eventually, we learned tounderstand that that was an epidemic,? she continued. "I can't, as a public health person, look at what's happenedin schools over the last six to eight months and say these are isolated events. If you take troubled kids and addguns and add a precipitating event in a society that glamorizes explosive responses to anger, you've got dangerand I think it's now happening pretty much across the country."Many experts on children and adolescents believe that dynamic is helping to fuel the extraordinarycallousness and the calculated indiscriminate ferocity shown by these young killers.Sissela Bok, a philosopher and ethicist who has studied violence in America, told the New York Times, lastweek,"We have movie role models showing violence as fun, and video games where you kill, and get rewardedfor killing, for hours and hours. It is a very combustible mix: enraged young people with access to semiautomaticweapons, exposed to violence as entertainment, violence shown as exciting and thrilling.?But the situation is far from hopeless. The successful effort by public agencies, private institutions andcommunity organizations in Boston to reduce that city's climbing youth homicide rate is just a piece of thevoluminous quilt of evidence that we do know how to get great numbers of young people live their adolescencein productive fashion. The current spasm of horrific school violence is another warning that American societymust intensify its efforts to do so.Finally, there 1s another point about these murderous incidents that cries out for notice -- a point that becomesclear it one imagines it had been African-American youths in six different inner-city neighborhoods who hadturned their predominantly-black high schools into killing fields.We know what oanswers? would have been put forth--and what blame assessed--then. We know that wewould have been subjected to the purplest "mean streets of the ghetto" prose then--prose that is used to implicitlydeclare the problems of the inner cities a "Negro Problem" which has nothing to do with White America.The public discourse about these killings is entirely different precisely because it is not black children butwhite ones who are showing the horror a deep alienation from society can produce.We should examine why some white youths who are not poor are having and acting out murderous impulses--not to play the racial "dozens," but to determine what commonalities and differences exist in how the dynamicof violence operates in those places where violence is expected to happen and in those places where it's notsupposed to happen.To do otherwise would be to ignore the overwhelming evidence that the 'mean streetsT produced by thedynamic of violence in American culture can in fact be anywhere.Young Killers: Mowy rierd Boyd 2422 eeSince young African-Americans are often depicted as the source of rampant violence, it is very ironic thatwhite children are responsible for all of the recent high profile shootings in schools. This is not a point tocelebrate, given the terrible loss in human lives from each of these incidents.These brutal killings should horrify all Americans, and the actions of a few deranged white youths does notstigmatize the race, a wish we hope would be extended to Black Americans when our children are less than civil.Still, the increasing rampages in our schools must be understood that they are a national problem that affects usall. Children killing children as a way of releasing pent-up emotions and settling scores is becoming too commonnowadays, and if our experts on these tragedies are right,things will get worse before they get better.What is most baffling abut most of these killings is the absence of motive. Many of the drive-by shootingsamong African-Americans that gained so much media attention a few years ago were the result of pang rivalry.Only the incident in Pomona, California, in April, in which two teen-agers were killed by a 14-year old boy, seemsto have been gang-related. The possible motives in the other seven or so shootings are either vague or motivatedby revenge of some sort. And are these acts of violence manifestation of past cruelties which occur all too oftenamong the perpetrators?"There are some 1.2 million children in the country who go home where guns are present," said youthpsychiatrist Mary Benoit, who has been grappling with this denne te for several years. "Several factors maycontribute to these acts of violence: Guns are available in the home, the children receive poor parental supervision,and we live in a violent culture."_ Benoit believes it is a "complex situation," and there are no easy or pat answers. She also dismissed thenotion of the media as culprit. "The media is not causal," she noted.The media may not be causal, but Dr. Jack Levin of Northwestern University seems to feel it does help toset the climate. "A steady diet of violence is unhealthy... and with all the blood and gore, the children becomedesensitized," he told a television reporter. But is this anything more than the violence-laden fairy tales thatanother generation heard without the attendant mayhem among their playmates?That the shootings have occurred in small towns, according to Levin, may be an important factor. "They arenot happening in the big city, and many of the small towns are playing catch-up when it comes to social policyand other matters," he added._ One answer to this problem that is as preposterous as it is novel -- and-- is to arm some teachers with concealed weapons. Such a strategy is doomed from its proposed inception.Arming teachers will surely precipitate even more bloody encounters. Fewer guns, not more is the answer."Until we teach our children to resolve anger without using fists and guns, we will continue to be unable toreassure them that they are safe," writes Dr. Joyce Brothers. "Until we make sure kids who hear threats reportthem without feeling they are ratting, and until we keep guns out of the hand of youngsters, we will continue tohave more to worry about than drugs and sex."Perhaps, as Dr. James Comer of Yale University has suggested in improving the classroom performance ofSra! Foetal alee problem is far too complex for parents alone. The entire community has to get involved if ourCc n are to be saved.Several leaders in Greenville have initiated an effort to run Ed former Maer of Geoenvile, a5 #9 usetlircandidate for the North Carolina House seat #8, representing parts of Pitt, Greene and Edgecomb Counties, Themove requires the to obtain 4% of the of the voters in the district on a petition. All 4% couldcome from any one of the four counties or beThis action is taken to assure representation for theneeds and concerns of all people, ie ee eesthe status quo. Too have we beento gious boards andby a Georgia state legislator parks,29th came and William R. Sanderson was still riding his dead horse. His negative attitude andshould be a part of our school curriculum.us rather than Dr. Charles Drew who set up bloodefields and for other emergency transfusions, savingAprilexpressions are prime reasons why National Negro HistoryHe chose to talk about drug users and pushers amon,banks and convinced physicians to use plasma for the bamillions of lives.He chose to talk about the high rate of school drop outs rather than Dr. Mary McCloud Bethune, the founderof Bethume-Cookman College or Dr. James E. Sheppard, the founder of North Carolina College for Negroes nowNorth Carolina Central University. .He choose to talk about people on welfare rather than Dr. George Washington Carver who revolutionizedthe agriculture of the south developing more than 300 products from the peanut, 119 products from the sweetpotato and 75 from the pecan thereby creating thousands of jobs. ZHe chose to talk about people on welfare rather than the difference in job opportunities and pay scales forblacks and whites.I am currently serving as the Chairman of the Pitt County Social Service Board, and I know that all welfarerecipients are not black, nor are all illegitimate babies are black, nor are all drug addicts are black. [In additionto this] Blacks don't own the boats, ships and planes that bring illegal drugs into this country.There are few if any black members of the NRA, and of course we don't own gun factories.The students who shot and killed other students and teachers in Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas andPennsylvania were not black.Timothy McVeigh, who was found guilty of bombing the Federal Building in Oklahoma killing more than150 people was not black, nor was Ted Kaczynski the "uni-bomber," nor was the girl who was found guilty ofgiving birth to a baby in a motel in the presence of her boy friend then killing it and putting it in the trash binwas black, nor was the man in Pitt county who was arrested for killing his father with an ax to get drug money,black. I know of no welfare recipient who got as much money as that high profiled politician, Jimmy Green, whowas convicted for fraud.The man who injected his infant son with HIV virus so he would die and relieve him, the father from payingchild support was not black.Is this behavior typical of any race of people? Certainly not and thus a whole race should not therefore bejudged or stereotyped by the act of a few.If Sanderson really wants to solve the social ills in our society, maybe he should call the leaders of allraces together and share his expertise since we all share some of the same problems.Perhaps the Native Americans - the "Indians," should be angry with Sanderson's ancestors for takingtheir country and [General] Ogelthorpe for bringing those murdering, thieving prisoners here.I speak with my own convictions, not what anybody else wants me to say, nor what everyone expects me tosay.I am convinced that the real issue that has caused the incident at the Wintergreen School and the negativediscussion that ssubsequently followes - is "RACISM." I see that as an act designed to degrade, to humiliate andto rob a person of his self-esteemand; | find that very offensive.I am a survivor who grew up in Pitt County just two-tenths of a mile from a brick school building withsteam heat, indoor toilets, a library, buses and lunchrooms, but as a osix year old child," I had to walk. nearlytwo miles to a run-down shack for a school, with no library, no-idoor toilets, no running water with pot belliedstoves for heat. While walking to school, busses with white kids would pass us, and some of them would yellN-----r, N----r and throw things at us.Finishing elementary school was the end of formal education for most black children in the ruralcommunities because there were no high schools available for them, and there were no buses. I had to leave hometo go to a high school that was under staffed and under equipped, and yes, we still had to be warmed by potbellied stove, use outdoor toilets and had no library.When I graduated from high school as the valedictorian, I could not go to East Carolina Teacher's Collegein Greenville, instead I had to travela hundred miles from home to go to an understaffed, under equipped college.While I was there, I was drafted into the Army and for three years, I lived in fear of having to one day forfeitmy life defending a country that had not granted me full citizenship.However, by the grace of God, | made it back home and reentered college and working every day, I wasthere from my freshman year through my senior year.___ We had to work harder for less pay than our counterparts and under sub standard conditions, BUT we madeIt.I give thanks to God, I give thanks to my parents, I give thanks to those Black teachers who worked overtimewith us without pay and even even spent part of their own meager salaries on school supplies for us. No one elseSanderson, you did not talk over my head. I read you loud and clear and so did a lot of others. | don'tthink there are too many people in Pitt County who can talk over my head and those I know are too intelligentto attempt thatI know that those persons who can only see the negative side of us and those who refer to us as niggersdon't mean us any good, but those people aren't fooling anybody either. The intent is to degrade, humiliate andoffend others.You know, it must be difficult for people who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths to relate tothose who had no spoon at all. I have every reason to be angry - but I am not. I am truly a survivor, nobody couldkeep me down. As I look back, I get more determined to do everything I can to see that no child; legitimate,illegitimate, black or white will ever have to undergo what I had to undergo to prepare himself or herself to earna decent living.I repeat, if we truly believe that our nation was established upon the principles of freedom, equality, justiceand humanity, then the time is now for all of us to put it into practice.For responces to his Commentary,Gaston Monk can be reached by writing him at the Pitt County NAACP ,Post Office Box 8626, Greenville, NC 27834 or he may be reached by calling him at (252) 752-1996This Way for Black EmpowermentSe Lamers PenTHE DEBATE "ON" WHO GETS TO DEBATELast week the Supreme Court ruled that a government-owned television station sponsoring a debate amongcandidates for political office could exclude candidates from participation, without violating their constitutionalguarantees of free speech. The case, Arkansas Educational Television Commission v. Forbes, started when theArkansas public television network (AETC) excluded Ralph Forbes, a third-party candidate for Congress in 1992,from a televised debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Because the network excluded himon the grounds that his campaign was insignificant (and not because they disagreed with his extreme right-wingviews), the court ruled there was no constitutional violation.It is not yet clear what impact the decision will have on the ability of independent and third party candidates-- who are entering the electoral arena in ever-increasing numbers -- to participate in televised debates with theirDemocrat and Republican rivals. But the minority opinion suggests that the institutionalized bias againstindependent candidates and parties in many televised political debates could ultimately be subject to a seriousreevaluation.The Supreme Court ruled on a very narrow question, and AETC v. Forbes will almost certainly not be thefinal word on this issue. Specifically, the Court was asked to decide: "whether, by reason of its state ownership,the station had a constitutional obligation to allow every candidate access to the debate." The lower court had "said that the debate was a "public forum" to which all-ballot qualified candidates had a "presumptive right ofaccess." The Supreme Court replied that the doctrine of opublic forum," which arose in the context of streets and"should not be extended in a mechanical way to the very different context of public televisionbroadcasting." In other words, no one can stop an independent from going door-to-door or holding street cornerrallies, but when it comes to public TV, such access "would be antithetical... to the discretion that stations andtheir editorial staff must exercise to fulfill their journalistic purpose..."It's precisely this "discretion" that troubled the three dissenting justices, whose minority opinion is perhapshenciasrsaghel ae ply ss noses ciel pamveaipanion, Anpcher-ig-al- Atay vache pare y with bipartisanmonopoly control of can politics and access to major media. Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg agreedelie ir idl palo perarecn rd ln weal el at [capes recesponsors. But they had serious trouble with 's onearly limitless discretion to exclude Forbes from thebased on ad hoc justifications." The network staff based their refusal on judgments about the"news-worthiness" or opolitical viability" -- purely subjective criteria, an issue I have raised in the courts since1992. The dissent argued that the important issue in this case is not whether the AETCTs debate was a publicforum or not, but whether the network odefined the contours of the debate" with enough specificity and objectivityjustify excluding a ballot-qualified candidate. Since the staff of a television network are not oordinaryjournalists" but rather oemployees of government," the "First Amendment demands more" of them. Specifically,Constitution demands that "access to political debates planned and managed by state-owned entities be¥ of sore enabled, chjective cuts through the blatant self: it rvationssubjectivity tha tio tities pod ellied wanda inatieations. In 1995, a federal judge ended thet the League ofWomen Voters had violated the law when it used subjective (as opposed to pre-established, objective) criteria tojustify my exclusion from their nationally televised debate in 1992 In response to sustained pressurefrom independent candidates, including myself, the Federal Election Commission amended its debate regulationsthis requirement. An in another lawsuit, independent candidate Ross Perot will be arguingFEC violated these regulations when it permitted his shutout from the debates in 1996.tape dnneag eho sil rar eg . edt cy aogetionr tea honpaleopinion, asa diminishing monolithic two-partyism that coulfuture reforms on this critical front. °B Fulaniwriter] Lenora B. twice v President of the U.S. 2rt bec irst woman VAs yo apd shy a 7 peso min the Reform or ok mma Independent Party.SAf.es|2She can be reached at 800-288-3201 or ati