Panel to discuss concerns regarding race

The City of Bloomington's Commission on the Status of Black Males and the Safe and Civil City Program are jointly holding a town meeting to discuss the topic of "Race, School Discipline, and Criminal Justice" next week.\nThe meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 401 N. Morton Street. The meeting will include presentations by panelists, followed by an opportunity for members of the community to address the panel. \n"We want to provide an opportunity for the community to discuss issues related to the treatment of African-Americans in our community," said Marsha Bradford, director of the Safe and Civil City Program and co-facilitator of the discussion. \nThe Bloomington Safe and Civil City Program's Web site says a major part of its mission is to help erase the unfairness of "tough on crime" laws on minorities in the community.\nBlack males are more likely to be expelled from Monroe County schools and are expelled for more days on average than white students, according to the Bloomington Commission's report, "Summary of Data on Disproportionality in the Expulsion of Black male students in Monroe County Community School Corporation High Schools." \nThe expulsion issue is another reason for the meeting. The community will be given a chance to discuss the severity of the problem and ways in which the systems can better themselves to prevent any type of bias in the school and legal systems.\nMonroe County's racial issues in the judicial system are typical when compared to other counties, said Guy Loftman, panelist and founding member of the Monroe County Racial Justice Task force. Loftman described some of the racial issues the county faces.\n"Some of the problem in our legal system is of prejudice, but there's no way to know how much," he said. "Also, African-Americans have a much higher failure of appearance rate than whites."\nOther panelists include Jose Evans, former executive director of the Indiana Commission on the Social Status of Black Males; Ken Falk, legal director for the Indiana Civil Liberties Union; Gary Plaford, director of Social Services for the Monroe County Community School Corporation; Russ Skiba, IU associate professor in Education; and Judge Viola Taliaferro of the Monroe County Circuit Court.\nAt the meeting, panelists will comment on reports such as the Monroe County Racial Justice Task Force's "Race and Criminal Justice in Monroe County, Indiana: 2003 Report from the Monroe County Racial Justice Task Force," which has received praise from the American Bar Association Justice Kennedy Commission as a "model project implemented by a community that made a commitment to the elimination of racial disparity in its criminal justice system." \nThis report is available online at http://bloomington.in.gov/safe. \nThe meeting will be facilitated by Bradford and William Knox, chair of the Commission on the Status of Black Males.\n-- Contact staff writer Robert Schmitt at rsschmit@indiana.edu.