Letters to the Editor

What You Say

THE OTHER VICTIMS

Is the treatment of Asian students at South Philly High contemptible? Yes. Has the response from administrators been equivalent to criminal neglect? Certainly, but Thompson's indictment of both through the quote [about school violence being] "everyone's problem" seems misguided [see "Adults, in Theory," Man Overboard, March 18]. Because media coverage, even from the alternative weeklies, has been as shortsighted as early statements that this problem is a "cultural thing." The cover page of Philadelphia Weekly several months ago depicted a cartoon of an Asian student in the foreground and six or eight 20- to 30-something thugs, clearly of African-American decent. The article clarified that those thugs represented the African-American students who were instigating the majority of the violence, a representation that does more to reinforce the criminalization of young African-American males than it does to blow the lid off a crisis that has been ignored for several years.

But guess what, Isaiah: This is everyone's problem. We live in a society where power is privilege. We live in a society where poor minorities are given limited access to power, power which garners resources and respect, power which is necessary to survival. Lacking in economic or political power, the urban youth reaches to the one source of power he can harness (and not coincidentally, the power with the smallest sphere of influence): physical might. There are two sets of victims here: the Asian students who are physically and verbally assaulted, and the African-American students who understand that the limited range of their power is threatened and must be reasserted at every opportunity.

In your recent article on Arlen Specter ["Reinventing Arlen," Cover Story, March 11], you infer that Specter is a Constitutional scholar. My question is, how could a Constitutional scholar vote for giving away the Senate's job of declaring war (Iraq) to the executive branch, [or support] the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, [and] the FISA bill, just to name a few instances that come to mind that totally trash our Constitutional rights? It looks like he is going to win the primary. It will be interesting to see how quickly Specter goes back to his old voting pattern.