Saturday, January 12, 2008

Hillary, school violence, and the hype machine

Not that this has much to do with anything, but I've heard Hillary speak twice in person, once in Boston with Marian Wright Edelman when Bill was president, and then when she was in Rhode Island almost 10 years ago, helping, as I wrote at the time, to fan fears about school violence:

Hillary Rodham Clinton smiled frequently and sported a tasteful brown pantsuit when she visited Cumberland High School earlier this week, but she might as well have been wearing a fright mask. Basking in an exuberant reception from hundreds of students gathered in the gym, Hillary quickly set to fanning fears about school violence. "Except for war-torn places around our globe, we are among the most violent of any societies," the first lady intoned. Speaking one week after a 13-year-old was charged with shooting and injuring four classmates at a middle school in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, she added, "Thirteen young people die every day from gunshot wounds." By the time Hillary's rap session ended an hour later, it was hard not to conclude that youth violence is pervasive and getting worse.

In fact, despite the Columbine massacre and the relatively new phenomenon of school shootings, the number of homicides by 14-to-17-year-olds has plummeted in the last six years, according to figures from the Clinton administration's own US Justice Department. And schools -- which have actually gotten less dangerous during the same period -- remain a safer environment for kids than the streets and even their own homes, according to the US Education Department. But you're unlikely to hear Hillary or other candidates acknowledge this reality, because it doesn't serve their political interests.
Although American society is violent, our concern about the impact of gunplay varies sharply with the socioeconomic status of the victims. There were relatively few outpourings of concern by politicians -- and little middle-class hand-wringing -- when the crack epidemic of the late '80s and the widespread availability of handguns sparked an unprecedented level of youth violence in predominantly minority neighborhoods in Providence, Boston and other cities. But Columbine, and the resulting wave of copycat threats, served notice to suburban America that our kids might be in danger.
That's why, even at this early point in the campaign season, making at least a token expression of protest about school violence is a staple for candidates on the stump. Context remains the missing ingredient. As a longtime advocate for children, Hillary surely knows better. But what she failed to mention about the 13 kids who die each day from gunshots is that they typically suffer the violence not in schools, but on the streets of America's poorest neighborhoods.
Darrell West, a professor of political science at Brown University, expects rhetoric about school violence to intensify as the 2000 campaigns get going in earnest. "Everyone wants to talk about school violence," he says. "It's a subject that's very much on the minds of voters, but I haven't seen any spirit of bipartisanship to try to grapple with the issues. Politicians are more interested in scoring political points."
The average observer has good reason to be confused about this situation. Violent crime has dropped sharply through the '90s in most cities, and Americans are less likely to die from gunfire than at any time since the '60s, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in November. But the school shootings that started to erupt in recent years indicate deeper problems in our culture and serve as a blunt reminder of how violence can flare unexpectedly. The disproportionate amount of media attention given to these attacks -- once again, without context -- results in an exaggerated sense of menace and anxiety.
The December 6 shooting in Oklahoma, for example, was the most prominently displayed story the next day on the front of the Providence Journal and scores of other newspapers across the country. Prominently played on the Journal's jump page were a box highlighting nine school shootings since 1997 and a story about the teenage boys who, after assaulting one counselor and tying up another, fled a wilderness camp in Utah for troubled youths. Both stories are legitimate, but without any perspective on the extent of teen violence, the implicit message remains: the youth are out of control.
In reality, the frequency of homicides by 14-to-17-year-olds tripled from 1985 to 1993, from 10 per 10,000 people to 30 per 10,000, before dropping to 18 per 10,000 in 1997, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The overall rate of school-related crime for students, ages 12-18, fell from 164 crimes per 1000 students in 1993 to 128 per 1000 in 1996, according to the Department of Education.
It's telling that a random selection of Cumberland High students who spoke with the Phoenix before Hillary's arrival expressed no concerns about danger at school. "Generally, I think they've done a good job of making the kids feel safe," said Jonathan Sun, a 16-year-old senior, in a typical remark.
For her part, though, the first lady-turned-New York senate candidate tried having it both ways, praising young Americans as "the best young people in the world and probably the best we've ever had." But then she happily picked up the thread when a student paraphrased one of his teachers and anxiously asked, "If schools are this bad now, what will it be like in 10 years?"
If the threat of school violence is really as dire as Hillary suggested, one wonders why her Secret Service detail focused their energy in searching the camera bags of print and broadcast photographers, rather than in screening the students from nine communities who were invited to the carefully choreographed event.