At the very time public schools across the nation are working hard to eliminate violence, the Rev.

Monday, November 22, 1999

At the very time public schools across the nation are working hard to eliminate violence, the Rev. Jesse Jackson storms into Decatur, Ill to defend students who were expelled for violence. Jesse Jackson ought to use his considerable skill and influence to support school efforts to eliminate violence not just even when-but especially when-perpetrators are black.

At a September football game six boys started and continued a fight in the bleachers. All are black. One withdrew from school and another was not a student, so that school officials expelled the remaining four. They are now also charged with the felony offense of mob action.

Jackson does not live in Decatur but Chicago, and is usually chasing around the world confident he can solve everyone’s problems, or at least those that interest him. He has demanded that criminal charges be dropped and the boys be immediately readmitted to school, although his demands keep changing yet remain demands.

Both he and the school officials agree the expulsions are not race related. The school people are correct, because they would treat any students rioting the same way. As a matter of fact, the only to riot are black. Yet, Jackson has made it a race issue by his very presence. Despite his explicit statement, his rhetoric strongly implies white students wouldn’t be so treated and that these are expelled because they are black, and he gives evidence of counting on the public catching his message without his being held accountable for it.

He dismisses the boys’ violence as innocent fist fights, without having witnessed it and even after network television has shown a full scale melee under way. Even if it were as mild as Jackson claims, no school can take the risk of treating such lightly. The school has an official and clearly announced policy of zero-tolerance for violence. To depart from this wise and necessary policy would be an open invitation to ever increasing violence and surrendering all authority to correct or prevent it.

Jackson gratuitously employs his usual MO of a mass demonstration by thousands of people imported from distant parts. Does this make sense: defending rioters by staging his own riot? It does to Jesse, because he seems to understand little else. He actually encourages future violence by seeking to demonstrate that might makes right. If you want your own way, start a fight or create a riot.

Again disingenuously, he argues that black students are generally doing more poorly than whites (which is fact) and that putting these black boys out of school only increases black academic failure. The fact of the matter is that all the students expelled have chronic absentee records. They might want to be allowed to attend classes as a political victory, but they have consistently chosen not to attend classes. So, Jackson’s plea for the students’ educational opportunities falls flat. There must be another reason.

Moreover, the mass demonstrations Jackson has staged forced the closing of all three Decatur schools for the safety of all students and staff. It is almost as if his definition of equal protection under the law is: If five black students are not allowed attend school, all 2,700 students are kept from attending. He, then, tries to argue education opportunities for those who refuse to use them and denies them to the greater number of even black students who are eager to learn.

Jesse Jackson needs to sit down with all six boys and convince them to attend classes, actually study, and teach them to express themselves in appropriate ways. He needs to address the black community about self-destructive conduct within it. He should stand with the school officials, even if they are white, and oppose violence, even if by blacks.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays