Chris Powell: Prosecute kids for wearing blackface? Perpetual poverty in New Haven

Promotional poster for Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled, about a disgruntled black television executive who reintroduces the old blackface style in a series concept to try to get himself fired, and is instead horrified by its success.

Kids can be horrible -- stupid, cruel, hateful, sadistic, reckless, and worse. But in spite of the indignation lately contrived by the Connecticut chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wearing blackface is not high on the scale of youthful offenses.

The other week, at a press conference outside a middle school in Shelton, Conn., one of whose white students recently posted on the Internet a photo of herself wearing blackface, the NAACP suggested that kids deserve to be shot for that kind of thing or at least criminally prosecuted for a "hate crime."

On top of that, according to the Valley Independent Sentinel, the NAACP demanded that Shelton authorities account to the organization for the progress of the "investigation" of the incident and include the organization in a mandatory discussion with students and school staff about racial diversity.

Make wearing blackface a "hate crime"? That's fascism. For no matter how offensive the blackface-wearing student was, and no matter what she meant, if anything, she did it on her own time to her own looks in her own life. A school can disapprove of certain things that rise to public attention, and of course a school always should be teaching decent behavior, but First Amendment freedom of expression in one's personal life is and must remain inviolate. The government has no authority to punish it.

In peacefully protesting racial oppression in the segregationist South, the civil rights advocates of a half century ago struggled and even died for freedom of expression. The NAACP was part of that struggle. Now the organization wants 12-year-olds prosecuted for putting on makeup and making faces.

But it's even more ironic. Lately the NAACP has supported Connecticut's new laws increasing leniency for juveniles who commit crimes like car theft. So now in Connecticut juveniles can get caught stealing cars twice before a court can impose any punishment on them. Many of those juveniles are black. But the NAACP thinks wearing blackface is worse than car theft.

Most kids grow up. The premier of Canada wore blackface when he was young. So did the governor of Virginia. They lately were caught through old photos and repented. Blackface is not who they are now. Most of the kids in Connecticut who lately have advertised themselves wearing blackface have been reprimanded and likely will grow up too. With luck many of Connecticut's young and coddled car thieves will not only grow up but stay out of prison.

The NAACP should grow up as well. There are far more serious things to be indignant about.

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WHY THE PERPETUAL POVERTY? Fresh from his victory in New Haven's Democratic primary for mayor, Justin Elicker has urged Yale University students to devote some time to civic life in the city. According to the Yale Daily News, one student snarked back, "We're a university, not a soup kitchen."

Elicker replied that some city residents "can't put food on the table" while Yalies enjoy an all-you-can-eat dining hall.

But despite that snarky student, Yale is not quite the bastion of privilege it once was. Now about half Yale's students receive the university's own scholarships under "need-blind" admissions policy so that even kids who grew up dining at soup kitchens and don't have much money can get into the university.

Also the other week CTNewsJunkie reported that Connecticut is the only state in which poverty recently increased. So Yale students and Elicker himself might perform a great civic service if they could ever determine why poverty and urban policies are failing so badly.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Chris Powell: He won't stand for the country that made him rich

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Good for President Obama for acknowledging that the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers has a right to protest racial injustice by refusing to stand when the national anthem is played.

Thanks to a heroic decision of the Supreme Court during World War II, schoolchildren also have the right to refuse to salute the flag in class -- a right that actually proclaims the flag to be the flag most worth saluting.

But the quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, isn't necessarily persuasive. For of course the country isn't and never will be perfect; it will always be full of legitimate grievances, like Kaepernick's -- recent shootings of black people by police officers, several of which, captured on cellphone video, seem murderous.

The key questions are whether such shootings are policy or aberrations and whether the country remains worth supporting for its ideals and the rights it bestows on everyone -- worth supporting for its objectives of "liberty and justice for all."

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick said last month. "To me this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

But "people getting paid leave" is only a matter of due process of law while they are being investigated. Further, since the criminal-justice system will always be imperfect, either because its participants are fallible or because proof is not always available, some people will always be "getting away with murder." They're not all white police officers. Some are black, like O.J. Simpson.

Kaepernick is black, and if this country is really so oppressive to black people, why does he stay? Obviously the country is not so oppressive to him, as he is being paid $114 million under a six-year contract with the 49ers, wealth that casts an ironic sheen on his indignation. That's because his own well-earned success, duplicated by many other members of minority groups, is no aberration. National policy, flawed as it may be, is to facilitate it.

Exercising them as he has done, Kaepernick at least has reminded people of their constitutional rights and thus of the country's greatness. But he still may be rebuked, since, as Robert Frost wrote:

No one of honest feeling would approve

A ruler who pretended not to love

A turbulence he had the better of.

INDIGNATION INDUSTRY IS ASKING FOR IT: Years ago the comedian Steve Martin apologized facetiously to the National Association of Colored People "for referring to its members as ‘colored people.'" The other day a host of ABC's Good Morning, America, Amy Robach, apologized seriously for having said "colored people" on the air in a report about casting practices in the movie industry.

For reasons that aren't clear, it is OK for the NAACP to perpetuate the phrase but insulting if not racist for anyone else to use it. It's also OK to say "people of color."

So what's the difference? Only fashion.

Robach may have been unaware of that fashion and she plainly meant no harm, but she was quickly condemned on "social media" and was intimidated. So she issued a statement calling her choice of words "a mistake" and "not a reflection of how I feel or speak in my everyday life," adding that she had intended to say "people of color."

The indignation industry may snicker at all the innocents it is intimidating, but if it wants to understand what has given rise to Donald Trump and other forms of angry reaction in politics and public life, it needs only to look in the mirror.

Chris Powell, an essayist on social, political and economic maters, is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Uber Urban Partnership in Conn.

This from the New England Council:

New England Council member Uber has announced a new initiative called UberUP (Uber Urban Partnership) in Connecticut. The program seeks to relieve transportation issues that workers face when seeking employment. In addition, the program seeks to recruit drivers in urban areas that could use the work by adding over 1,500 drivers over the next year. In January, Uber and the New Haven chapter of the NAACP published a report on the affects of lack of transportation on chronic unemployment in the area. Now, Uber is working to relieve these problems through their urban program. The program waives the deposit and weekly fee for drivers who do not have a smartphone and offers seminars in skill-building for locals. Uber is working with the NAACP, The WorkPlace, and Workforce Alliance to put on these events. In addition, Uber will recruit new drivers who live in urban areas who could use the work.

Scot X. Esdaile, president of the NAACP Connecticut, praised the program stating, “The Connecticut NAACP & Uber partnership helps brings jobs and greater economic opportunities to the inner cities of Connecticut. The Connecticut NAACP is committed to thinking out of the box and creating new relationships that deliver economic substance for the communities we serve!”

The New England Council commends Uber for its mission to create employment opportunities and looks forward to this new program’s success.