Editorial: Racism at root of recent Urbana High School coverage

On February 8th, in the aftermath of the fights at Urbana High School four days earlier, the News-Gazette issued an inflammatory article attacking the UHS discipline policy. The Editorial Board, which evidently is sufficiently wise to fully understand the complex causes of violence in the community in just four days, likened the school to a prison and a war zone and called the district’s discipline issues a “plague.”

This is unnecessarily provocative and disrespectful. But beyond matters of respect, the article portrays next to no understanding of UHS policy, and the evocative language may even be reflective of racist sentiments that have haunted the News-Gazette for decades.

The article’s central claim—if it can be called that, given its unfocused meandering—is that Urbana High School’s shift towards restorative justice in discipline caused the violence on February 4th. This is absurd for a variety of reasons.

First, any and all condemnation of restorative justice is slightly undercut by the fact that we live in a country that manages to have a remarkably punitive prison system while still maintaining over a 70% 5-year recidivism rate and having one of the highest crime rates in the developed world. Of course, this is never addressed in the article.

Also, the cause of the fights is known, and they do not originate with any school policy. The recent violence is linked to the shooting of a 14-year-old Urbana student over the summer of 2018. Surely a reputable news organization would have paid attention when this was mentioned several times by several different community members at the February 5th school board meeting. The fact that the Gazette ignores this signals either a lack of journalistic integrity or sheer carelessness.

The article’s premise is also entirely false; while the district advertised a total upheaval of disciplinary norms, substantial changes have failed to materialize thus far. Criticizing the administration for not having gone far enough in its reforms would be legitimate, as there are countless examples of successful programs that stray much further from the punitive model than Urbana has. For instance, the San Quentin state prison’s Victim Offender Education Group has become a model for many other prisons around the country, and BAM, a restorative program in many Chicago schools, has been found to reduce violent crime arrests among participating students by up to 50%.

Why would the Gazette choose to take such a difficult-to-defend position? The answer, or at least a piece of it, lies in a 1991 article in which then-CEO John Hirschfeld proclaimed that former KKK leader David Duke had “touched the pulse of this country.” It’s racism.

Of course, recent examples of racism at the Gazette have been subtler, though no less present. The newspaper has repeatedly opposed retiring the racist caricature Chief Illiniwek from use at sporting events. An article on the constitutionality of a census citizenship question poses undocumented immigrants as relentless delinquents who think nothing of breaking American laws.

The racism entrenched in the News-Gazette is most apparent when looking at their endorsements of candidates for public office. For instance, Rodney Davis, the US Representative for Champaign-Urbana, has raised concerns about Mexican immigrants being diseased. A member of his campaign team also sent an explicitly racist email denigrating his black primary opponent, Erika Harold. The congressman even posed with Steve King, a representative from Iowa who lamented on Twitter that the label “white nationalist” could be considered offensive.

Regardless, Davis got the Gazette’s endorsement.

The same model holds true for former governor Bruce Rauner, who also received an endorsement, despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric and refusal to answer on whether or not David Duke is a racist.

The connection between the Gazette’s racist rhetoric and their false claim that restorative justice leads to violence becomes clear in the context of American history: moves towards punitive methods in the justice system invariably coincide with racist intent and consequences.

The News-Gazette’s call for the school district to put an end to the “chaos” and begin “maintaining order” is part of a long tradition of authoritarian approaches to discipline for black people. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Black Codes that arose in Southern states often contained provisions to arrest African-Americans for being unemployed, or for vaguely-defined “delinquent behavior.” During the tough-on-crime era of the 70s and 80s, the prison population ballooned with low-level drug offenders, decimating black communities across the nation. If the district chooses to adopt a more punitive discipline policy, the effect on our community could be much the same.

And here’s the kicker: the Gazette is aware of the disparities that punitive justice creates. Last year, they published an article detailing the disparity in punishment in Urbana Schools, along with early efforts by the school district to address it.

It’s unclear why the News-Gazette has so consistently doubled down on these harmful positions. But until there is a substantial cultural change for the newspaper, the community has a responsibility to consistently and thoroughly rebuke the paper’s racism.

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Michael Tessene

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