To Judge Means...

to consider or reckon, to form an opinion of somebody or something, especially after thought or consideration

OR

to assess the quality of something or estimate probabilities...

Whatever definition suites a particular situation, one truth that remains constant is that the act of judging is what WE all do on a day-to-day basis. After a comment I received about a previous post of mine, I couldn't help but wonder: Had I taken my judgment on Emily Post and AR's upcoming nuptials too far?

Upon careful consideration, my answer to that question is simply no. My comments are merely my opinions, my thoughts and should someone not like them, well...Das ist mir scheißegal

It is estimated that...

Every year in the United States, approximately 3 million women are assaulted by their partner. In 1998, of the approximately 1.5 million violent crimes committed between intimate partners, over 876,000 of the victims were women...Of the approximately 1,830 murders committed against intimate partners in 1998, 3 out of 4 of the victims were women. That's a sad reality.

A little while after my father's death in '92, the relationship my sister was in turned violent...I remember weekends when she'd leave w/Joe-Blow, in her cutest outfit, hair permed and pretty, face beautiful, only to return Sunday night or Monday morning bruised from head to toe. Sometimes the bruises were minor. Sometimes she'd limp. But for the longest, she never said a word to anyone; not her best friend Tasha, me or our mama. I was 10 or 11 then, so maybe that's why she'd never confided in me. However, age didn't stop me from expressing my concern for my sister one Sunday after she'd spent most of her day in our room, a place she'd made dark and almost cave-like, the place where she'd stay hidden for the next few days as she nursed a newly blackened eye.

"I'm not grown or anything," I whispered in the dark. "But love should never hurt so much that it shows."

For the next 8 years or so, Joe-Blow would continue to show how much her loved my sister with his fists, feet, knives, a chair or whatever he could get his hands on. After about 3 years of the abuse, my sister would then find the guts to take some kind of stand by fighting him back. The first time I'd ever seen her get physical w/Joe-Blow was the summer of '96 when she threw one of mama's new wooden lawn chairs at Joe-Blow, knocked him off our porch into the front yard and pounced on him, her fists flailing in fury over every inch of his 5'10 frame. Needless to say, Joe-Blow went to jail that day (something that would happen many times more) and my sister almost went with him.

Things weren't always bad between the two and sometimes you could tell that they really did love each other. Loved each other so much that in those 8 years they had 3 beautiful children-1 boy & 2 girls-and even tried living together and entertained the idea of marriage. I remember times when we ate together, went to the park or the movies and things seemed normal, even for just a few moments. But things weren't. My sister was a living, breathing and walking victim of domestic violence. Everyone knew it, lots of people even witnessed it and none of us really did anything about it.

Joe-Blow wasn't a Denzel in any respect. From the country, a mechanic by trade, he worked here and there but never held down a steady job. He seemed quite nomadic to me and I often wondered how my sister, a college grad, saw anything appealing about this guy. But she did. In reality, she fell in love with an alcoholic, drug dependent sadomasochist and dead-beat dad; she would put her life and our family's life in danger for a long time and after all that, I'm still asking myself, why? In a sea of Lifetime movies and newscasts on violence against women, how could my sister fall victim to such mess?

My C/BRE came back from her spring break w/news that her quirky friend, T, had gotten her husband put in jail for assault and this morning we talked more about the situation. T's husband, while he's not a mirror image of Joe-Blow, is bad enough, the classic example of man-not-worth-the-skin-he's-printed-on: Selfish, immature, and obviously incapable of self-control since he put his hands on her. Their marriage is such a sham (and certainly worthy of another post in the future) and in my opinion should have never happened in the first place. For the second time, he's put his hands on her, pulling out her hair and kicking and punching her. Oh, and all done in front of their children. She got fed up (a little too late if you ask me) and called the police on him. Ironically, instead of being commended for this, family members and even a neighbor have criticized her actions. The nosey neighbor even had the audacity to say that T had done a disservice to Black men "since they're already enough of them in jail as it is." What bogosity! Imagine feeling bad for someone who clearly deserves to be in jail for assaulting his wife. What if he'd gotten even more violent and ended up killing her? Talking about T's situation made me think of my sister...she overcame the abuse but there are so many women who don't. According to the Bureau of Statistics, in 2001 there were 1,247 fatal domestic violence incidents.

The situation made me think about the impact that the abuse may have had on my nieces and especially my nephew...In homes where domestic violence occurs, children in the home are at a 300% greater risk of being abused. I pray everyday that my nephew will be nothing like his father and I hope that my nieces will never have to go through what their mother experienced.

The Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women, Conducted by the US Department of Justice states that "Women experience more intimate partner violence than do men: 22.1 percent of surveyed women, compared with 7.4 percent of surveyed men, reported they were physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, or date in their lifetime; 1.3 percent of surveyed women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men reported experiencing such violence in the previous 12 months. Approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States."

It's often said that we should never say never but I totally disagree. I mean it when I say that a man will never put his hands on me and live to tell about it. I've witnessed the demise of too many women because some little, insecure boy masquerading as man decided he needed to validate his manhood by enslaving his significant other. A smart little girl of 10 or 11 once said, "I'm not grown or anything but love should never hurt so much that it shows."

Senacle: On No Child Left Behind

So I recently got another job in the "educational sector" (as one of my friends calls it) as a teacher assistant at Sylvan Learning Center. The atmosphere is quite different from Howard-students come in fairly quiet, ready to go over their homework for the evening, elated over the B or A they've gotten on a recent test or even excited about the new lessons they'll be introduced to with their teachers. I move around tables of teachers and students without having to worry about being called a "Snitchin' Ass, Baldheaded Bitch" or any other catchy phrases that I've heard from the 9th graders I tutor throughout the week.

After my first day at Sylvan, I wondered what made these students so much different from those I see at Howard and the biggest difference I thought of immediately was that the children that come to Sylvan WANT to be there. It may have been the last resort for them but they truly want to be there and their parents have encouraged them to their best once they walk through our doors.

On several occassions, I've had the What's-Really-Wrong-With-todays-Kids conversation, exchanging the typical sentiments of many:

The problem is and always will be kids having kids!!!Now that is no excuse for
raising unruly children but it starts in the home and with the parents.
The problem only includes kids having kids...people try to blame stuff
everywhere
but where its supposed to be..the problem with kids begins with
the
parents....ther is a serious lack of moral education among kids and
parents, and
especially among blacks...it's a sad cycle.

In the Senacle: On No Child Left Behind post, we Tennesseans are reminded of the farse of an educational act NCLB and its indequacy to truly offer quality education to those attending public schools. NCLB punishes a school, a district, or a state if they fail to make adequate progress according to the goals they themselves establish causing the incentives to be set at lower expectations instead of higher; It also helps to increase segregation by class and race and push low-performing students out of school altogether (And I'm witnessing this at Howard).

Schools, districts, and states are also potentially set to game the system by manipulating which students are included or excluded from test-taking (to enhance apparent school performance) and by creative reclassification of drop-outs (to reduce unfavorable statistics)

States and school districts should be granted greater freedom to target assistance to schools with the most extensive academic difficulties. After-school programs are neglected. NCLB is designed to set the stage for the eventual privatization of the U.S. public school system: reports about struggling schools sour public opinion and may cause more and more voters to question the viability of public education.

It's sad to think that people just don't care about future of education...I cry silently because to moan aloud means to be ignored.