The way I look at it is simple: these laws as enacted nationally over the last four decade was a backlash at both the civil rights of minorities and children (no matter the racial or economic background). Legislators were taken aback psychologically back then when they passed these laws at the sudden change in the legal climate both minorities and children had so fought for since the end of World War Two in 1945. A baby boom followed by the politilization of millions of blacks, hispanics, Asians, and even Native Americans over the time span of the thirty years between 1945 and 1975 was damaging to the white, Protestant good old boy power brokers. Add to this the Womans' Lib, Free Speech and Anti-War movements to equal a backlash called the Seventies. Many of the laws making it easier to charge kids as adults was part of that backlash, reenforced by the paranoia about crime in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when I was in high school. Since then, the anti-youth movement had seen a resergence that climaxed with the series of school shootings in Colorado, California, Oregon and the American South in the late 1990's, all incidentally sharing many of the same traits that shocked no one.
1. The teens were all white.
2. They typically came from middle-class to upper middle-class families.
3. Many of them were obviously bullied.
4. Many of them had some sort of psychological problem.
5. None of these shootings occured inside big metropolitan cities.
Though the ironic part is that no child is safe from the backlash that resulted from these unfortunate tragedies. Even if they had a clean record it is possible that their lives would be ruined for life by a minor misstep on their part. They are vunerable to getting falsely accused of something they did not do. Their childish fights and behavior are now met with criminal charges and sanctions often unbelievable thirty years ago. If I as a eleven-year-old boy who in these days fought back against another classmate, I would have maybe faced a five to seven day suspension for my defense and my assailent would be given similar treatment. (In this world both combatants face equal sanction no matter if one was the victim of the others assult.)
That is the world we did not want. It was foist on us to protect us from a paranoia involving a "supercriminal" who does not exist except in the paranoid mind of a right-winger. These laws were part of a conservative backlash cheer on by both major politico parties trying to one-up the other as "the law and order" candidate come election time. It has led to untold suffering for our youth because while they tightened their laws, they saw to it that the juvenile justice system rotted on the vine, while building prisons galore. Though as a result of their get tough on crime backlash, the prisons lacked the needed space to house all the new crooks entering the system. Add to that the decay of juvenile justice, creating future capacity problems in all jails. We incarcerate more people now than we did 100 years ago.
Again: a statistic... there are more black men in prison than there are in college. You heard this for decades. This was the result of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. They might have won intergration but white majority America was not ready for them at all. This happened all too fast for many white Americans to accept in their mental state. The Brown decision and its resulting backlase and counterlash scared many whites out of their minds. They did not want this forced down theri throats by so-called liberal judges. The whites showcase over the last sixty years that they are sore losers. It might seem fine to us on paper. But the 1970's and 1980's saw one result of intergration in our country brought upon by the winning of civil rights by non-whites, "white flight".
Fear of intergration led to white people just packing up and leaving for the safety of their lilly-white suburbs, moving further and further away from minorities that they can never understand or even live next-door too. They though that distance would keep them safe from the lawless colored masses.
The utter ruins of those former neighborhoods were the result. This was seen as confermation to the retreating white masses that what they escaped was real. They saw their ticky-tacky burbs as a oasis from the criminal underclasses, populated by non-whites who they saw always as undeserving. (Just look at the ruins they made of the hood we left behind!)
They had no idea that children would be the collateral damage of the paranoia over minorities and their criminal tendacies.
They also did not count on the minorities once they had cash and status to move to the burbs as well. At first, the whites just moved further out into the countryside. As soon as one minority family appeared in a city neighborhood, the whites moved out. This trend has moved in the opposite direction prior to the late 2000's with the return of many white families moving back to the old neighborhood, looking for the next big deal.
The political pressure to solve all this loss by the whites of their racial superiority was enormous. In the South, the Democrats were punished by a growing Republican backlash beginning in the late 1960's and still ongoing today. The party that turned their backs on blacks accepted them in droves while the GOP accepted enmasse ex-Dems, upset that they lost their manhood to a minority. This reverse brough the GOP to unheard of victories in many "safe" locales. This resulted eventually in many of the problems minorities face today with the legal system.
One of their pet projects was juvenile justice reform. It was their intention to strike back at the minorities and the poor of all races since they ofter supported their opponents at election time. Even though the Democrats also supported some of these pet projects in order to not look like they were soft on crime, the Democrats share some of the blame for not protesting these affronts to basic human rights. Fear prompted many to just look the other way while the GOP wrecked the futures of their fellow citizens before they even had a chance to live a decent human life.
What they did not want was giving people under eighteen a second chance or any chance at all if they happened to rape or kill someone. Even if they took a twinkie from the local supermarket, the GOP and their supporters wanted to throw all of them into prison with adults. This way, they can thin out their potential foes and stay in power. Their laws and their reforms had one agenda: to take back what they lost all those years ago. The had their eyes on taking back the prize they lost when they lost their chokehold on blacks and other minorities.
They succeeded to resegragate the non-white population in the last forty years. The white flight left us with majority white schools in many suburbs and many majority black and/or hispanic schools in our inner cities. Criminal felony convictions have taken away the right to vote of millions of people in a number of states (maily in the South), even after they completed their debt to society. Laws make it easier for a cop to racially profile anyone no matter where or when, like the Harvard professor busted for trying to break into his own house after he was accidentally locked out. There is now a number of public schools where it is required to wear a uniform. (Sound like a prison yet?) I would dare say that the attacks on our liberties since 9/11 have minorities in mind when they were force fed to our congress by George W. Bush.
Which leads me to Christian Fernandez, as seen by the eyes of one of the cogs of that draconian thinking: Angela Corey. She is a white woman in her 50's a product of the law school of the 1970's. She rode the grand wave of Womans' Lib as a stalwert of the GOP, the same party, goaded by their right wing, made up of its race haters, to make life a living hell for everyone not white and not rich. Corey came from an age where many law students thought like they need to uphold the law as it was changed before their very eyes. Once enshrined, they felt they were doing the right thing. The felt pity for the victim and none for the crook. Though this is common in every prosector. this should not be the case if the defendent is a child in the eyes of the law.
The understanding of child psychology fell behind legal logic incidentally at the same time the system started getting tough on minors. Many lawyers who either support or opposed the change would even today flunk a quiz on their understanding of children and teenagers when it came to understanding them fully. It looks like either psychology failed to work with the justice system or the justice system did not want to listen to what the shrinks were telling them. There is not understanding but hatred in the resulting legal system since the 1970's.
Christian Fernandez is being targeted with murder because he faces two prejudices: he is 12 and a Latin-American. Florida has had a terrible history to minorities since its founding. Examples are too numerous, but it is work here. Ms. Corey is only looking at Fernandez differently because of this reality. She clearly overstepped the oath she made when she was elected by defending an unjust law. She would never had charged the boy with murder if he was white. Though this is the same state the King brothers live in, this case stinks of intentional racial bigotry.
I hope by his not guilty verdict that it send a clear signal to the other prosecutors and politicos in this nation that their end is near. That children are not property of their parents or the state or this nation. They are going to be seen and heard, not the other way around.
Angela Corey, if you are reading this, I highly suggest you retire after this case is over or risk the wrath of your State Bar. Jack Thompson's downfall occurred just the same route you are going. Do you want to be an ex-lawyer?
