Boston Metro dehumanizes blacks with racist photos, articles.

On Monday, May 8, 2006, the front page headline of the Boston Metro reads, "People have to understand." It is an article about the trial of the tour manager for the band Great White, at whose show 100 fans died in 2003, and about the pain the victims' families have endured.

On page two of the same Metro a headline reads, "5 shot, 3 dead in weekend violence." This article proceeds to outline the facts of the weekend shootings in Dorchester and Roxbury and asks people with tips to call a police hotline. No mention is made that one of the victims is Alex Mendes, a local black peace activist whose older brother was murdered 11 years prior.

So, (white) Metro readers have to understand the pain of mostly white families whose loved ones died in a fire at a rock show 3 years ago, but no one has to understand the pain of a black mother and peace activist who has lost both her sons to random street violence. Instead, the loss of her son is reported like a roll call.

This portrayal of loss implies that the loss of a white child is more significant than the loss of his black counterpart. While the loss of 100 people at the Great White concert was a horrific tragedy, the Metro should choose to focus on the more current issues affecting black Bostonians. The homicide rate last year (and thus far this year) is higher then it has been since the early 1990s. I hope that the Metro understands the devastation this violence is causing the family members and communities of current victims.

There were two photos of criminals on page two of this same Boston Metro, one white and one black. The white man, Mark (who did not want his full name used) had illegally planted two sequoia trees in the Boston Common. In the photo he looks like a hero, face at an angle, crouched down with his elbow on his knee. The black man, Darrell Smith, is shown being arrested for allegedly committing a bank robbery. He is portrayed shirtless, pressed to the ground by three police officers in full riot gear, with his face smashed into the concrete.

The contrast in these photos is astounding: a white man appearing statuesque, a black man animalistic. That the Metro would specifically choose this photo of Darrell Smith, when he looks completely dehumanized, half naked, face to the ground, is very telling. This photo implies that black men are not as human as white men. Images like this one make it seem OK that the percentage of black men in jail is significantly higher than that of their white counterparts.

With this analysis I am not implying that the crime of planting a tree comes close to the crime of robbing a bank at gun point. I am saying, however, that it is completely racist for the Metro to dehumanize black men with degrading reporting and photos.

The article about Mark, the tree planter, ends with a quote by his roommate. In it his roommate talks about the fear he felt when a police officer turned his lights on the Common as they were planting the trees. "But he was just busting a bum," the roommate said. I do not doubt that if the tree planters had been black men the police officer would have busted them too.

White Framework of Boston Globe Coverage of CORI Education Day Misses the Points

On April 20, 2006, a large rally was held on Boston Common and at the State House to educate legislators and the public on the Criminal Offenders Record Information (CORI) reform legislation. The CORI was developed in the early ‘70’s to make criminal records available to police, prosecutors, probation officers and judges. Buried in the CORI are regulations which protect the privacy and integrity of people with CORI’s regarding minor misdemeanors and cases where no conviction resulted. In the past 30 years and especially since 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot’s Act, this information has been made readily and widely available to potential employers, schools, landlords, etc, and it has been misunderstood, misused, and abused. Currently 2.8 million people in Massachusetts have CORIs and 1.5 million new CORIs are produced per year affecting thousands of people of all races, ages, and backgrounds, shutting them out of jobs, housing, entrance to college, loans, and other opportunities because of the misunderstanding and abuse of their CORIs. Because our criminal (in)justice system disproportionately affects men of color, abuse of the CORI is adding to the already high unemployment rate in communities of color and keeping those who have made -- and paid for – mistakes in their past from achieving the education, skills, and employment to change their lives. (go to
http://www.unionofminorityneighborhoods.org/marc/index.html for more information on CORI)

The Boston Globe coverage of CORI Education Day (“Controversy on Criminal Records Intensifies,” by Maria Cramer and Megan Tench, April 21, 2006), ignores this information which the rally was designed to disseminate. Furthermore, it overlooks the racist implications of the current CORI system by focusing exclusively on the controversy surrounding Bobby Dellelo. Mr Dellelo, a white man, now 64, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after his partner in a 1963 jewelry store robbery shot and killed a police detective. He was released in 2003 after serving 40 years; he has paid his debt to society and he deserves to be allowed to pursue his desire to become a paralegal. Instead, in addition to being deprived by his CORI of the opportunity for an education, he has become collateral damage in the white frame of this “news” story that makes invisible the racist impact of the CORI laws.

If you want to read the Globe story “Controversy on Criminal Records Intensifies,” visit the Boston Globe online (http://www.boston.com/news/globe) and register an account to view all their articles on the web.