Boston March 7, 1997 A Woburn lesson: There's a double standard about kids and justice By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist No matter the hell white children put themselves in, it is assumed they are angels. In Woburn, 14 youths overdosed on a muscle relaxant most of us had never heard of, and the primary response was "Leave It to Beaver" shock. "Oh, Ward, dear, isn't peer pressure terrible in the suburbs?" If anything, this neartragedy exposes the extent to which we have dumbed down education. These kids don't even know how to get high anymore. ``These kids, with their background being on the honor roll, involved in sports ... you just didn't expect something like this from these kids,'' said one parent. In the projects of South Boston, teen heroin abuse spurred people to see youths as victims of drugs. ``It's children being molested for profit,'' said Jack Leary, assistant probation chief at South Boston District Court. In Newton, Mayor Thomas Concannon has asked that Louise Woodward, a white au pair, be released on bail from MCIFramingham. Woodward is accused of killing a baby. Yet she remains too much of a Snow White to be soiled by prison. ``I'm the father of two daughters,'' Concannon said. ``I'm concerned what would happen to them. As a place of rehabilitation, I have no faith in MCIFramingham.'' No black person accused of killing a baby could dream of having a mayor write a letter asking for bail. When Boston thought a black man killed pregnant Carol Stuart, Mayor Ray Flynn oversaw a stopandfrisk frenzy that stripped the underwear off innocent black men and jailed William Bennett for months. The Woburn youths OD'd at a Boys and Girls Club dance. You know what would have happened if 14 black kids smoked crack at a dance. Honor rolls would not matter. There would be no talk of cartels molesting them for profit. They would go to jail while the media blasted club supervision, parent discipline, and individual responsibility. The sensitivity accorded to white teens who make mistakes is commendable. It would be a spectacular moment in American race relations if white folks extended the same hand of empathy to AfricanAmericans instead of the crushing blow of condemnation. White Americans do their fair share of drugs. At 76 percent of the population, they consume 75 percent of the powdered cocaine. White people even consume the majority of crack, 52 percent, according to the US Sentencing Commission, and report using much more speed, LSD, and heroin than AfricanAmericans. The people who do heavy time for drugs are AfricanAmericans. AfricanAmericans use 38 percent of the crack but are 88 percent of those arrested for it. White Americans are 75 percent of the powdered cocaine users but make up only 32 percent of arrestees. The average sentence for crack is 2 1/2 years. The average sentence for powdered cocaine is 3.2 months. A Florida study found no difference in cocaine use between pregnant women who use public clinics and women who saw private doctors. But AfricanAmerican women were 10 times more likely to be reported to authorities for cocainerelated child abuse. Both the US Sentencing Commission and two authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association have said there is neither a criminal nor a medical basis for crack laws so harsh that it takes 100 times more volume cocaine in its powdered form to get the same sentence. That has not mattered to Congress and President Clinton. To please white people they sentence black men to prison and little prevention. One out of every three AfricanAmerican men ages 20 through 29 has a criminal record. White kids do not even have to worry about prevention, since if they screw up, they will get patience, pity, and pampering. After the Central Park rape in 1989, Donald Trump took out fullpage newspaper ads demanding the death penalty for the black ``savages'' who beat but did not kill a white woman. One month later several white high school football stars in Glen Ridge, N.J., gangraped a mentally retarded girl. Many residents defended the character of the boys. Newton's mayor says prison is no place for a white woman so far from home. No one fretted about family separation when Governor Weld shipped 299 convicts to Texas, nor that the vast deportations of black men into jail now mean that one of every seven black men cannot vote. Wealthy O.J. Simpson was about the only AfricanAmerican who could defend himself the way he did against murder charges. But Woodward, who does not seem to have much money, will get one of O.J.'s lawyers. As Woburn hugs its children and calls in the counselors for stress, it would be amazing if America could view the mistakes of innercity AfricanAmerican children as those of fallen angels rather than of rising devils angels molested by disinvestment and discarded to a mortality white America would never tolerate for itself. It is questionable that white America can do that. This week, a Newark theater company received death threats and ticket cancellations when it cast a black actor as Jesus. The actor, Desi Arnaz Giles, is also playing the devil at another show. Giles said about his role as the devil: ``We'll see how many people object to a black man playing him.'' Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist. This story ran on page a21 of the Boston Globe on 03/07/97.