THIS IS WHAT WHITE PRIVILEGE LOOKS LIKE

THIS IS WHAT WHITE PRIVILEGE LOOKS LIKE
By Local Yocal
 
(Warning: Editor's note: This article contains wanton bias and should be considered an editorial, not a factual piece of journalism.)
CHAMPAIGN- Nothing says white privilege quite like the drunken bachaanal that is our UnOfficial St. Patrick's Day drinking celebrations at the University of Illinois. During this annual event the state laws of Illinois are suspended, the drug war goes on hiatus, and general public safety is jeopardized. In the face of a powerful constituency, the cash cow known as college students, (who can flex their arrogant political muscle to binge drink if they damn well want to); our government annually chooses to sit politely on the sidelines, hoping no one spoils the college brochure by dying or getting brutally raped in what is now a two-day drinking race.
 
The images hoisted in this week's media are a testament to the obvious reality of white (or maybe it's class) privilege in Champaign County. Looking at Saturday's March 6 News-Gazette front page photograph of kids enjoying the sunshine on top of a large house, readers are asked to imagine a group of young black folks thumping some beats out the window like that. 
 
Were it to happen in Champaign County, within the hour, Champaign Police would have the place surrounded with a well-armed S.W.A.T. team (including a guest appearance from the armored-machine-gun-assault vehicle the CPD quietly slipped into the budget 10 years ago).
In such an imaginary situation, the State's Attorney would likely justify this type of racially biased prosecution with lectures to the public that the law is the law and she has a duty to uphold it. Reminders would be issued of how unsafe it is for young black women to be drunk around sexual predating black males; and fire and safety codes would be hauled out for our education. All to justify the swift and certain criminal prosecution of a group of young, college-age partiers, race black.
 
UnOfficial St. Patrick's Day exposes the fact that in Champaign County, we are not all equal under the law. Police sell and guilt us into believing they are putting their lives on the line for us, the community, everyday. What is really happening out there is Police are making choices on who they will level the law upon. Black people in Champaign can look on with envy how the white college kids can get away with it, while knowing blacks would be hung if they ever tried to ever to take over the streets with unbridled carousing.
It's painful to watch the City and University of Illinois officials allow the destruction of our reputation as an enlightened, college town on the prairie, erode into what appears to be an alarmingly racist community with a drinking problem.
 
Every year the students win the argument over whether to have UnOfficial for they have cashed in a constitutional right found in Capitalism's inner core: free markets require the government to allow their citizenry the purchasing choice to be stupid. It is with this spirit, smart college students pose for photographs, defiantly flaunting their pink slips created by the City of Champaign, as in the March 4, 2010 front page photo of The Daily Illini. The students make mockery of their Notices to Appear they are called, which means basically a monetary fine issued by a police officer in the hundreds of dollars for violating of a City of Champaign ordinance. 
         
The affluent students from the North stick their chins out, and in their wealth, they are able to tell City Hall, "Here's your green pieces of paper, I'm going to get wasted anyway." This political dissent has effectively rendered the Police on their heels as the rise in legal violations they see around them grows up to their necks. Not a bullet needed to stop aggressive policing, such is the power of white privilege.   

Alcohol drinking by young people is here to stay. The City tries to prevent a disaster but are helpless before popular demand. Nowadays, most 15-20 year olds have gotten drunk on alcohol, and a large percentage of those drunken people have enjoyed the experience. Put your power-point presentations away, we are way past any abstinence educational programs now. 

Nonetheless, it remains disturbing how the 130 churches look on without protest, and the inmates at the Champaign County jail are forced to watch how carefully selective our law enforcement community chooses to flex its might. UnOfficial exposes the unofficial flip side to a discriminatory criminal justice system. UnOfficial is the moment when the government steps back from what it could do.
 
"Why?" asks the man who sits in the county jail for illegally transferring open alcohol and charged with a felony DUI. Remembering the reason we crack down on drug dealers in the first place: "they might sell to the children!" you have to wonder why campus bar owners aren't dragged into state court on Class X felonies as habitual offenders. 
 
Over 60% of the drug cases in Champaign County are against blacks, who make up only 15% of the Champaign County population, when over 90% of users of illegal drugs are caucasions. Meanwhile, guilt-ridden multi-millionaire bar owners rake in the cash by the thousands every night selling the blessed alcohol.

Bar owner and founder of UnOfficial in 1996, Scott Cochrane said in the March 6, 2010 News-Gazette, with Joe Namath certainty, "I guarantee it [UnOfficial] brings in several hundred thousands in one day." Ironic a town that hosts a two-day drinking festival is unable to maintain adequate funding for its drug and alcohol treatment centers.
 
The liquor distributors know half their customers are kids. Every week during the previous months before UnOfficial, campus bars received dozens of citations for underage drinking. Local bar owners understand that without the 18-19-20 year-old business, you make almost half the money you can earn if instead you sell booze illegally to the underagers.
 
Not one high school student in Champaign County has trouble accessing alcohol. Project 18's annual surveys through the Regional Planning Commission, reveal high school students easily get alcohol in Champaign-Urbana. Everybody knows you can get into the bars if you want to. The local liquor barons are happy rich keeping it that way. The City Fathers reluctantly cooperate, in the good name of expanding business and tax revenue.

     

Now imagine a black bar owner being allowed to get away with that. Not happening in Champaign County. Comedian Chris Rock once remarked in a recent routine, "Only the white man is allowed to make a profit off another's misery." 

Tis true the kids can sometimes act out negatively while high on the stuff. Cochrane acknowledged there is destruction that comes along with UnOfficial. "I never understood why kids drinking (engage in) destruction," Cochrane wondered. Cochrane observed he's the victim of the same monster he created, "I don't know why they tear up my bathrooms," Scott Cochrane said to the press.
 
As bar owners know, drunk college kids do a whole lot more than tear up a bathroom. They fistfight, they have unprotected sex (sometimes by force), they vandalize stuff for fun, they drive their cars drunk, and they poisen themselves drinking so much, so fast. 
 
This year's bad statistics for UnOfficial are being called "...a certain level of success..." by veteran Champaign Police Officer of All Liquor, Scott Friedlien. Friedlien is a genuinely kind-hearted man who doesn't mean to lie. Friedlien was inspired to do something about college binge drinking in 1997 after the tragic death of Robert Irsey, age 18, who literally cracked his skull open falling off a fire escape intoxicated. 
 
Friedlien's comments should be considered tempered by the City's wild grab for the money UnOfficial weekend business creates. But imagine any black-owned business being allowed to cause 28 people to go to the hospital in a single day. Not happening in Champaign County.  

Also amazing is the way women at the U of I tolerate the sexual brutality leveled by their drunken male classmates. Taught to dress illogically, the beautiful girls of the university willingly dress like cheap prostitutes no matter how cold the weather, and avail themselves in the taverns for a nightly fix of acceptance. In return, women at the U of I risk a real possibilty of being cornered by selfish boys who won't take no for an answer, with little legal support coming from the police or Champaign County State's Attorney's office. 
 
In Champaign County, white middle class sex offenders are consistently given a free pass and are usually penalized with mere probation, no jail time. The sexual violence white men are allowed to do keeps U of I women in danger. Not one U of I student has ever been sentenced to the penetentiary for sexual assault. For white suburban sex offenders, Catagory I is alive and well at the courthouse. 

Likewise, fistfighting is given a free stay-out-of-jail card, as numerous U of I students get their cases "fixed" in between semesters. Unlike the black Jamar Smith, who was run out of town for being an excellent customer-uh, that is, alcoholic; fighting fraternities and star athletes enjoy immunity from prosecution hardly even noticed, so expected it has become. Nor do they worry that the Dean of their college will summon them for expulsion from the university. 
 
"We don't want to ruin their futures over one little youthful indiscretion," goes the angst-ridden excuses. Black teenagers can only wish their cases were treated so gingerly. Instead, young blacks in Champaign County are often accused of joining violent gangs, the stuff of ignorant stereotype; and prosecuted for the slightest infractions.
 
Without shame or consciousness, Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney describes congregations of young blacks in the public way as a "problem" on Tracy Parsons' Straight Talk radio show on WBCP last May. So embarassing has our Mississippi Courthouse become, we are unable to attract any talent from the U of I Law School to work in Champaign County.

Authorities will defend themselves by claiming they have implemented a "zero tolerance" policy over the campus area during UnOfficial. What authorities won't tell you is zero tolerance in the white community is conducted much differently than how zero tolerance is conducted in the black community.
 
When members of the white community are put under zero tolerance, the white community is notified in advance they have been placed under such a policy. Blacks in Champaign County discover about zero tolerance after the handcuffs are on.
 
The policy is well-defined for the white community. The black community is subjected to a variety of police tactics that involve deception and trickery. Ultimately, zero tolerance for whites represents a visible police presence with lots of monetary fines. Zero tolerance for blacks is a secret phenomenon that puts them in jail and has their cars impounded.

Part of The Dance of White Denial begins with the "American" idealized claim that there exists equal protection and equal application of the law. In Champaign County, such a claim falls to the wayside every time UnOfficial rears its ugly head.
 
Take a trip to the courthouse and see for yourself how our application of the law has reduced our court system to a hypocritical Negro Deportation Center designed to keep a few rural whites employed. Now imagine police catching U of I students red-handed in the act of some forcible felony, say a drunken burglary of a friend's apartment; and ask yourself, would the police dare to point their pistols at the wealthy white students and shout, "Stop or I'll shoot you!"?  Thanks to UnOfficial, we are reminded of the power of white privilege, the water the fish take for granted everyday.