Judge Marvin Arrington is in the news once again. He said that parade of black men and women, criminals and mothers of criminals, he saw every day frustrated him. He had asked all the whites to leave his courtroom so that he could admonish the black defendants who were in his courtroom that particular day. While I believed that his heart was in the right place because I, too, share his frustrations with people of African descent who grace the justice system with their presence on a regular basis at the expense of completing ruining their lives. What he did to address it, some observers say, was classic Arrington. Others say it was arrogance. Personally, I think he was right, but it should have been done in front of everyone in the courtroom.
“Black people, please, turn your life around.”Isn’t that a statement that we have been hearing for a long time. Look at the crime statistics in Chicago, for example, most of the inner city crimes being committed are by young black men. Bill Cosby was literally ridiculed when he tried to criticize some African-American families for not raising their kids right, slammed black youth for wearing their clothes backward and berated them for failing to master the queen’s English. Their positions are so similar that the judge and the comedian agreed to combine forces for a presentation at Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta recently.
Arrington should know exactly what he is talking about. On the street when he was young, he is one of them, starting out as a poor kid from Grady Homes.”I was an inner-city thug,” Arrington said. “Wouldn’t listen to anybody. Teachers turned me around.”Arrington said he grew up hustling and fighting his way through childhood. He hung out at the pool hall, shot dice on the corner like everybody else. “I could’ve easily went the other way,” he said. ” That’s how I know these kids can do better, but it’s up to us to help them.”
He said that were it not for the people in his life, coaches, teachers and sometimes complete strangers, he said, his life might have turned out differently. He might have gotten in trouble with the law, too. Arrington spent his energy on the football field and basketball and tennis courts. When he wasn’t playing sports, he worked, rising at 4:30 a.m. to throw the Atlanta Constitution, hopping cars after school at the old Split T drive-in. On Sundays, he was in Bible school at Lindsey Street Baptist Church. He always had people, he said, who regularly told him to straighten up, to take his schoolwork seriously, to be somebody. Arrington grew up to be somebody. He married and raised two children, became active in a prosperous law firm, wielded political clout and commanded respect from the Atlanta business community.
The judge is like a lot of African-Americans and maybe some whites who feel real pain at seeing some of our young black men throwing their lives away and settling for a life of crime. They are going to waste and ruining other lives in the process. Not everyone is cut out to be a judge, but everyone has a purpose in life and must seek that purpose. You cannot tell me that every black man who grew up in the inner cities are being destined for a life in the hood and a life of crime? No, people have to want more from life and strive to get it. It seems as though many of our young people are so trigger-happy and angry at the world. The government didn’t put a gun in your hands and tell you to shoot the first person you meet on the street to get money.
Filed under: Bill Cosby, Blacks, Crime, Marvin Arrington
Black Political Thought 