Things I read in the newspaper

Beginning in April 2007, the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh conducted a year-long test of local mortgage lenders to see if there was racial discrimination in lending and if so, how it was being expressed.

Yesterday, they reported their results. Tim Grant wrote the story; I think his last line is a killer.

Sounds like the banker at the end of Eddie Murphy's classic, "White Like Me."

But that was satire; this is reality. As then-Senator Barack Obama said in his March 2008 speech, "A More Perfect Union,"

"what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people."

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On Sunday, the PG ran a large piece by Jerome L. Sherman about the Mac Can Do bar, at Brushton and Kelly. At the very least, it raises questions about the City's process for granting liquor licenses. Check it out.

I find this quote striking:

"It's a good bar. It's just the young people," said Greg Freeman, 49, a longtime patron whose mother lives on nearby Alsace Street. "They start standing out there and then all the shooting starts coming."

The facts of the story bear out Mr. Freeman's thesis; in two of three incidents described, the shooters are aged 18 and 19.

A month ago, the PIttsburgh police department swept up four homicide suspects in a 12-hour period. When I read the story, I noted the ages of the suspects.

They should be in school. All of them. They should be out there learning particle physics, or organic chemistry, or the theological subtexts of August Wilson's plays, or something, anything that could make them better able to contribute to others, to create value in the world.

Kids + books = great. Kids + guns = stupid.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm thankful for you.

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Posted Nov 25 2009, 12:50 PM by Elwin Green

Comments

NativeDaughter wrote re: Things I read in the newspaper
on Wed, Dec 2 2009 9:47 AM

In reference to your statement "They should be in school."  They could be in school if someone cared that they were not there. I'm putting blame on parents, family members, teachers,  principals, administrators, and school board members.  EVERYONE!  If someone just cared enough to find out.  Instead no one has tracked the students that dropped out (more black students!).  They drop out and no one knows where they’ve gone or why they aren’t here.  Keeping track of where all the kids have gone would be a good start but doing outreach to get them back would be even better.  The school district has been looking at how to bring families back to the district to increase the student body population; I’m sure reducing the dropout rate would help.

Elwin Green wrote re: Things I read in the newspaper
on Wed, Dec 2 2009 6:05 PM

Actually, one of the encouraging things these days is that the school district has begun to give new attention to dropouts. Linda Lane, deputy superintendent of instruction is conducting a study to learn from them: www.post-gazette.com/.../982440-53.stm

And just a couple of weeks ago, a summit focused on dropout prevention: www.post-gazette.com/.../1013110-298.stm

Are these things enough? No. Should they have happened long ago? Heck, yeah.

But we can't fix yesterday, we can only learn from it.

Thanks for writing!