Pubdate: Fri, 20 Jun 2003
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI) 
Copyright: 2003 Detroit Free Press 
Contact:  
Website: http://www.freep.com/ 
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Leonard Pitts Jr.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas)

VERY DIFFERENT PLACES: TULIA AND CLEVELAND

A 13-year-old girl was jumped in Cleveland last month. This week, charges
were filed against her alleged assailants -- all 18 of them. 

According to authorities quoted in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the girl's
heritage was the catalyst for the beating. She's white and apparently, some
kids in Cleveland have a bizarre tradition that May 1st is Beat Up A White
Kid day. 

The girl is recuperating and her accused attackers -- 12 girls, six boys,
all black or Hispanic between the ages of 9 and 15 -- are facing charges of
felonious assault, aggravated riot and ethnic intimidation. 

This was an act of hatred. It offers visceral proof, should any be required,
that this contagion is not limited to white folks. 

My purpose in bringing it up, though, is not to belabor that obvious point.
Rather, it's to make another point. But first we must turn to the Texas town
of Tulia. There, to great media attention, 12 convicted drug dealers were
released this week after questions were raised about the investigation that
landed them in jail. 

Coleman's Shady Past

In 1999, 46 people -- published reports say 39 of them are black, seven
white but with ties to the black community -- were arrested after a one-man
sting operation conducted by an itinerant lawman named Thomas Coleman. For
his work, he was named Texas' narcotics officer of the year. 

But Coleman was more Barney Fife than Joe Friday. 

He kept no notes of his alleged drug buys, unless you count those he claims
to have scribbled on his legs. He had no videotape, no fingerprint evidence,
no witnesses, no corroboration of any kind other than his sworn word, to
indicate that he bought cocaine from whom he said he did. 

That was enough for the jurors, almost all of them white, to send 38 people
- -- 36 of them black -- to prison for terms ranging up to 90 years. 

It turns out, though, that Coleman had a shady past. Arrested in 1998 on
charges of theft. Reportedly stole more than 100 gallons of gas from county
pumps and once skipped town on $7000 worth of credit debt, for which he
later made restitution. Perhaps most telling, he was given to referring to
black people by noxious epithets. 

Called before an appeals court in March to defend his "investigation,"
Coleman was reportedly vague and evasive, leading a judge to name him "the
most devious, non-responsive witness this court has witnessed in 25 years."
He was indicted on a charge of perjury. 

A Group And A System

Yet it was on his word that a diabetic hog farmer who lived in a shack with
a dirt yard was imprisoned as a drug kingpin. 

I'm often challenged by white readers to explain what I mean when I use the
term systemic racism. For the record, I mean the difference between a group
of idiot kids who allegedly beat up some poor white girl and a system that
throws away black life like tissue paper. I mean the difference between
converting prejudice into policy and converting it into petty violence. I
mean this, right here. 

No, we cannot condone what happened in Tulia or Cleveland. But neither can
we pretend the effects are the same. 

And if my fear for Cleveland is that race will be used to mitigate
accountability, my fear for Tulia is that its lesson will go right over our
collective head.
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MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk