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Title: The 1999 Bureau of Justice Assistance National PartnershipMeeting: Working Together for Peace and Justice in the 21st Century.(Keynote Speeches, Speaker Biographies, and Contact list, pp. 186-288)Series: MonographAuthor: Bureau of Justice AssistancePublished: BJA, July 1999Subject(s): Crime prevention and criminal justice system132 pages264,000 bytes-------------------------------Figures, charts, forms, and tables are not included in this ASCII plain-textfile. To view this document in its entirety, download the Adobe Acrobatgraphic file available from this Web site or order a print copy from BJAat 800-688-4252 (877-712-9279 For TTY users).-------------------------------KEYNOTE SPEECH TRANSCRIPTSKeynote Address--Henry GardnerManaging Partner, Gardner, Underwood, and BaconAbout 17 years ago, shortly after I was appointed City Manager ofOakland I was asked if I would provide welcoming remarks for a verylarge convention. I readily consented. The person presiding wasintroducing me and during the introduction I became concerned becausethe introduction was longer than the comments that I had planned tomake.And just as that thought occurred to me, the person said I'm very pleasedto introduce to you this morning our keynote speaker. I went to thepodium and whispered to him that I was not the keynote speaker, that myrole was simply to bring greetings.He said, did you not receive our call, he said, our keynote speaker had tocancel and we asked if you would be the keynote speaker. Whereupon Itook a deep breath and spoke for 30 minutes. Now I was given morenotice than that for this morning but not much.I understand that the designated keynote speaker is a very prominentperson here in Washington and one who I'm sure you would have beenvery pleased to hear from. And so it is your misfortune that I have beendesignated to speak instead.I thought long about what I would talk about and I had conversations andvoice-mail message exchanges with Patrick Coleman. And I looked at theprogram and I thought what I can I talk about that others are not going totalk about.And what could I talk about that the designated speaker probably wouldnot have talked about. And I decided that the title of my speech and thenature of the speech is the Color of Justice. Now you can relax, this is notgoing to be one of those in-your-face speeches.But I do want to talk about something that I think is extremely importantto us as a nation and very important to me as a person of color. Almost
 
100 years ago a very fiery individual who had a sharp pen wrote:Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question:unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through thedifficulty of lightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter around it. Theyapproach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously orcompassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel tobe a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or Ifought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make yourblood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to asimmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does itfeel to be a problem? I answer, seldom a word.And yet being a problem is a strange experience. . . . I remember wellwhen the shadows swept across me. I was a little thing away up in thehills of New England. . . . In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put itinto the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards--ten cents apackage--and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tallnewcomer, refused my card--refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Thenit dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from theothers; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out fromtheir world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil,to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and livedabove it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. . . . [Idecided that I would beat them at everything] by reading law, by healingthe sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head--some way.With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youthshrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale worldabout them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in abitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my ownhouse?--W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.Could have been written today, if we changed two words, perhaps for"mayhap" and Black for "colored." Otherwise it could have been writtentoday. Race matters. And it's uncomfortable to say that, but it matters inour justice system. Race matters.There are several things that are uncomfortable for us to talk about, buttalk about them I believe we must. Americans have had a historicproblem talking about race, about religion, about sex, and about politicsamong strangers. And those are some of the most important things to usthat affect us more profoundly than most others except perhaps one, andthat's family. And many of us don't want to talk about that either. But it'simportant that we do so.We spend, at the last count that I saw, over $200 billion on crime control.That is a lot of money--$200 billion. I made several trips to Hong Kongand their currency is tied to the U.S. dollar and it takes several of those tomake one U.S. dollar. And whenever I talk about big numbers I tellpeople that, the number I just gave you, those are U.S. dollars, those arenot Hong Kong dollars, $200 billion annually.I was talking to the past superintendent of Oakland public schools severalyears ago. And he told me that he had visited several of the schools andduring the question and answer period one young boy raised his hand andhe said, "Dr. Mesa (phonetic) nobody cares about us, nobody cares." Hesaid the community does not care and the school does not care.
 
And Dr. Mesa said, "But that is not true." And went on to explain what heand the school board and the community were doing about publiceducation. The young boy would not back down. He said, "I visited mybrother in San Jurerto (phonetic) the county jail."And he said the jail looked better than our school. Dr. Mesa said helooked around him and saw the peeling paint and he did remember beingconcerned about the exterior of the building as he approached it and thesurrounding community. And he said he went back with the resolve, ifnothing else, at least they were going to paint the school.But it speaks volumes to us when a child can say truthfully that the jailslook better than the schools. And who is in the jails? Now before I evengo through this recitation, I want to tell you that coming from a minoritycommunity and having been raised in a minority community, a poorBlack community, safety is as important to minorities, in some waysmore important to minorities than to the majority.And the reason for it is that people of color in American communities, forthe most part, witness crimes every single day. It is not a television story.It is real and I can think of nothing more urgent to them than to rid theircommunities of violence.Nonetheless, in 1991 one-third of all Black men between 20 and 29 livingin Los Angeles had been jailed at least once in that same year--one-thirdbetween the ages of 20 and 29. [There are] similar patterns in other largecities. Nonwhite males are three and one-half times more likely to bearrested for a felony than a white--three and one-half times more likely.Ninety percent of nonwhite males can expect to be arrested sometime intheir lifetime for a misdemeanor or some more serious offense.Two-thirds are likely to be arrested by the time they're 30. In inner citiesthe rates are much higher. We have to ask ourselves, what kind of asociety is this?Now is it that all of these young men are born criminals? I think not. In1990, and it has not changed, it was estimated that one in every fourAfrican-American men between the ages of 20 and 29 was in prison, injail, on parole, or on probation on any given day--one in every four. Thatis alarming.It does not paint a bright future for us as a society. In the great state ofCalifornia, Black men make up 3 percent of the adult population; theymake up over 40 percent of the prison population. Race matters. They'renot all there for homicides and rape and violent assaults--not all.A young African-American man suffering from asthma and pneumoniawas in jail for 22 days on a $1,500 bond. He had been jailed on violationof probation for not paying $35 in court costs on a 4-month-oldshoplifting charge. While in jail, he lost his job as a truck driver.A 38-year-old African-American electronic engineer, middle class, wasjailed for allowing an unauthorized operator to drive. The woman did nothave a driver's license, and he was arrested. A mentally disordered 59-year-old African-American man was arrested for breach of peace at thegate of a nearby naval base.He tried to enter the base and refused to leave. An 18-year-old African-
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