Black men get prison. White men get museum trips.

After being found guilty of beating two Black teenage girls with a metal baton, a rich White supremacist in Boston got community service and an order to visit the Holocaust memorial in DC and the African Meeting House in Boston.  He'll also have to remove his Nazi tatoos.

In July, the judge issued a split verdict in a bench trial on charges that [Josiah Spaulding III] beat two 17-year-old black girls with a metal baton in a subway station on Nov. 22, 2002. According to prosecutors, he was with a group who shouted racial slurs at the teens on the concourse of the Park Street MBTA station. Spurlock found Spaulding guilty of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, but exonerated him of civil or constitutional rights violations.

The two victims appeared at the sentencing this morning. Maureen Pontes stood next to Stephanie Gemma as she told the court how they were both traumatized by the beatings.

Spaulding addressed the court in a low voice, telling the victims: “I’m very sorry.”

Yeah.  Right.

The Suffolk County DA, Daniel Connelly, called the judge's decision "wise" and "thoughtful."  One wonders if those are code words for: "Appropriate punishment for a White guy since after all the victims were just Black bitches."

Spaulding's father is the president of the Wang Performing Arts Center in Boston.  The Spauldings are a promient and wealthy family; Josiah Sr. founded Spaulding Rehab and at one point headed the state GOP.    The families of Maureen Pontes and Stephanie Gemma are neither wealthy nor prominent.  They are also not White. 

Apparently, it's too much to ask that wealthy White folks be held accountable for their actions.

Via Shannon and Steve Gilliard.

Comments

[Stephanie Adaralegbe]

Your post has been included in this months Erase Racism Carnival at:

http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/09/5th_erase_racism_carnival.html

[The Heretik]

Oy dat, President for life.

[Five Before Midnight]

It would be nice if Black men could be mentally ill or medically incapacitated and treated that way by police officers rather than being viewed instead as being on drugs, most often PCP or crack cocaine. That's another double standard between Black people and White people in the CJS and a form of racial profiling.

Of course it will take a White affluent person who is mentally ill dying in police custody(which will never happen) for our department's crisis mental health intervention program to get off the ground.