Leprechaun (and all), Thanks for your answer and for not taking offense, and mostly for enlightening me on some things I didn't know. I, too, have been called a racist by students when I had to seek discipline for one of them (like every prison, most of our inmates are black), and it hurts like hell. I try to consider the origin of the motivation behind it, which is years of experience of real racism but also a large dose of case workers, most of whom probably mean well, telling my students that whatever they did was none of their responsibility, rather it was caused by society, etc. Unfortunately, some of these people do not mean well. We have lately had a social worker and a teacher recruiting for the Five Percenters (a drug gang posing as a religion that preys on young people in prison and when they get out they have them selling drugs on the street, thinking they are doing God's work).I made a report to my principal about it and was shortly transferred to a less desirable teaching position at an isolated facility. The code of silence exists among our administrators as much as in the worst cop movies on the subject. I too have found sensitive, very creative, and very intelligent kids behind their gangsta exteriors. But I always explain that their actions are their responsibility, and it may take a long time and a lot of work to put it behind them and have a life. Unfortunately again, most of them would rather believe the absolutionists. I know that a lot of communities are fractious and, regardless of their rhetoric, have not the slightest interest in fairness. But we have to rise above this. Teachers and cops and the rest of us have to be better people than this, and capable of being held to a higher standard. A code of silence, wherever it takes root, is a terrible thing that causes much hurt and sometimes irreversible damage and it must be opposed. I know that the Rodney King tape, where 20 cops stood and watched 3 or 4 commit a horrible felony, and then said nothing before the charges came, is an extreme example but it is what people see and remember. Got to make this sort of thing stop!

Your colleague, Chet W.