HOST:

BONNIE ERBE

PANELISTS:

AMANDA CARPENTER, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

JACLYN FRIEDMAN, DIRECTOR, ACTION AND THE MEDIA

TARA SETMAYER, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR

PATRICIA SOSA, PROGRESSIVE COMMENTATOR

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2009

TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM

MS. ERBE: This week on To the Contrary, ending youth violence. Then, the number of reported rapes hit a 20-year low. Behind the headlines: Matthew Shepard’s mother discusses her son’s legacy.

(Musical break.)

MS. ERBE: Hello, I’m Bonnie Erbe. Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives. Up first, ending youth violence.

(Begin video segment.)

MS. ERBE: This week, the Obama administration responded to a teen melee in Chicago in which 16-year-old honor student Derrion Albert was killed while walking home from school. Cell phone video of Albert’s slaying was posted on YouTube and viewed worldwide. According to the Justice Department, close to 1,500 young were killed in 2008. A new survey finds more than 60 percent of children were exposed to violence in the last year. U.S. Attorney General and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced plans to end youth violence including funding for counseling and mentoring. Officials say parents, schools, law enforcement, and community groups need to help young people steer clear of crime. They believe teen violence isn’t just an inner-city problem.

ERIC HOLDER [Attorney General]: Youth violence is not a Chicago problem anymore than it is a black problem, a white problem, or a Hispanic problem. It is something that affects communities big and small and people of all races and all colors. It is an American problem.

(End video segment.)

MS. ERBE: So Tara Setmayer, is teen violence America’s problem, a race problem, or a class problem?

MS. STEMAYER: After 40 years of debasing our morality in this country it’s no surprise that this would manifest itself this way. It’s an American problem.

MS. SOSA: Well, unfortunately, in the race and class are intertwined, so I think it’s both.

MS. CARPENTER: And I think it comes on to socioeconomics. When there’s not opportunity in a community and people aren’t looking out for the young folks, you’re going to have violence.

MS. FRIEDMAN: The reality is violence and poverty are related, and in America, poverty and race are related which makes this an American problem.

MS. ERBE: Okay. And Jaclyn Friedman, welcome to the panel.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Thank you.

MS. ERBE: But, can you imagine, for example, if you’re going to go into the neighborhoods and try to resolve this – and there was just some horrendous situation in New Hampshire where four white youths invaded a woman’s home, killed her, almost killed her nine-year-old daughter. But can you imagine those youths, those guys responding to mentorship from black counselors or the kids in Chicago responding to mentoring from white male role models? I think we’re so race divided in this country that I actually do think it is up to the local communities to resolve these problems.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Well, I think you’re really assuming that the communities are homogenous, which isn’t the case in a lot of places. But I think you’re right on that it is a community problem, and especially when you’re talking about gang violence, which was at play in this horrible case. The General Accounting Office did a great study that linked poverty and violence. And one of the things that it showed is that the real factor is when a community is poor. If an entire community is poor, the socioeconomic factors are such that they don’t feel like they have other options, and the kids growing up – they’re looking for protection, they’re looking for a place to belong, they’re looking, actually, for economic opportunity in the drug trade and they’re not being given other options.

MS. SETMAYER: Well, I think that there are a lot of factors that contribute to this but for me the biggest factor is the breakdown of the family unit. Socioeconomics plays a role as well especially in our urban areas, but if you go back 50 years in the poor communities in the South where there was still a strong family unit, you did not have this type of violence. And in the black community, in 1970 you had 60 percent of children growing up in a two-parent household. In 2004, it’s 35 percent. Those numbers correlate directly to all these different cases of violence, education, what’s going on in our inner- cities. That, to me, and the acceptance which seems to be – this acceptable gangster culture that’s in urban communities absolutely is directly responsible for what’s going on there now and no one is taking the task for it. They make excuses.

What’s going on in Chicago isn’t new to the people who live there, or Atlanta, or Los Angeles, or any other major urban area where you have all this violence, but yet a gangster culture has now become something that’s popular, crossing racial lines. It’s mainstream. And that is – you look at this and you say, well, what do you expect?

MS. SOSA: I think the moral component is critical – and you’re right, Tara – but I think this is also a reflection of the inequities in this country, the economic inequities in this country, the fact that parents both have to work and sometimes have to work two and three jobs and they cannot supervise their kids, that schools are not well funded to provide the kinds of programs and the after school curriculum that the kids need in order to be engaging a healthy environment. They can’t. The money is not there. So I think it’s not only the individuals and the families, not wanting to do it because they’re not able to do it because they have to survive and it’s a hostile economic environment for the working class.

MS. SETMAYER: So 70 percent illegitimacy in the black community with fathers not being in the home, you don’t think that plays a role in that? If you had two- parent households there wouldn’t be – okay.

MS. SOSA: I’m not disagreeing. No. Absolutely. Tara, that plays a role in it, too, but I think the economic – that’s also a reflection of the inequities and the lack of opportunities and the lack of opportunities for black men.

MS. ERBE: Let me jump in here because how much – the data figure that Tara just raised – 70 percent unwed motherhood and the single motherhood in the black communities – we have a culture that now condones single unwed motherhood. We also have churches that press young teenage pregnant single girls to have babies, whether they are prepared to be mothers or not. How much are those factors – when they get pregnant, I’m saying. How much are those factors involved?

MS. CARPENTER: Well, the breakdown of the traditional family certainly is a factor. But I think one thing that’s been absent from this conversation so far are solutions. You know, we can talk about getting more funding for the communities. People in the communities need to step up. I was down in Savannah, Georgia, talking with a guy working on a totally unrelated story. I found out he’s a member of Angels where they go into the inner-city and they teach parents to say, listen, you can go out to the street and if you see – you know, they’ll report something to the cops. I saw a kid get murdered. Well, why didn’t you call the cops when they are congregating there in the street playing music loud at night? People need to be responsible for their neighborhoods and that is the first, best step we can take to solve this.

MS. FRIEDMAN: You know, it sounds almost like you’re advocating more community organizing. The neighborhood where this happened in Chicago –

MS. CARPENTER: Sure. I’m not against community organizing.

MS. FRIEDMAN: – is where Obama got his start as a community organizer.

MS. CARPENTER: Sure.

MS. FRIEDMAN: And we see, unfortunately, the erosion of programs like that, the defunding of programs like that.

MS. CARPENTER: Well, there’s volunteer programs. I mean, to say that we need federal funding to do this – you know, people don’t need anything to get a community group together and say, listen. Let’s have a neighborhood watch meeting. We should encourage people to do that and not wait for money to do it.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Well, they do if – if both parents are working two, three jobs, you actually do need funding for that and you also need –

MS. ERBE: But, Amanda, particularly you, I want your thoughts. I mean, the churches in this community, the black churches in this community in Chicago, the white churches in New Hampshire – I don’t know if these four guys were born to unwed mothers, single teen mothers or not. But what about a teen girl comes to the church, says I’m pregnant and they say, you go have that baby? They give you a few blankets and a crib and then you raise him in a situation where it’s not a good situation for a child to come into with no father around, no money, et cetera, et cetera. Isn’t that a contribution to this?

MS. CARPENTER: I don’t think that’s nearly as big a contribution as absentee fathers and people who don’t step up once a mother does decide to have that child. I mean, I guess the answer is abortion. I think we should put the pressure on that dad to work and give money to that child rather than making that decision.

MS. SETMAYER: And hold people accountable for this. I mean, you’re excoriated in the black community if you stand up. Look what happened to Bill Cosby when he said, take responsibility for your own lives and your communities. Stop looking to white America and more federal funding. Start with the individual, and that’s what makes a difference.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Well, let’s take a step back before the pregnancy happened. If we had fully funded sex education that taught actual contraception and the actual information that kids need to know to prevent pregnancy, there wouldn’t be teen fathers and mothers at this rate to begin with.

MS. CARPENTER: But we’re all assuming that this crime is because of teen pregnancy. That’s not the case.

MS. ERBE: No. We’re not. We’re assuming that these crimes take place in disjointed, broken up, never existed families – that these are the progeny of really bad situations that are prepared for whatever reason to be parents.

MS. CARPENTER: Sure. And all the factors – (inaudible) – all kinds of things.

MS. SOSA: Well, the guy that – the kid that got killed in Chicago actually was a model kid.

MS. ERBE (?): Yes. An honor student.

MS. SOSA: And it was a model family. So you can try to protect a kid because they were trying to protect him, but he was in a community that was unhealthy. So you definitely need a community approach. But I want to go back that you need to deal with the issues of economic inequities. I think minimum wage is a strategy to fight violence. Healthcare reform is a strategy for fighting violence because you are bringing resources and opportunities to those families.

MS. ERBE: All right. From a spike in violence to a decline in rapes.

Rapes reported nationwide are at a 20-year low, this according to new FBI figures showing close to 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008, down by almost a third since 1992. Researchers credit changes in the criminal justice system and the widespread use of DNA evidence for the decline. Victims’ advocates say prosecution of rape cases is taken more seriously than in the past and there is less victim blaming today, which in turn has made women more likely to report rape crimes to police. Still, criminologists emphasize there’s no way to know just how many rapes go unreported each year.

So, Amanda – is this something to be celebrated or not?

MS. CARPENTER: I’m not sure because from what I see in reading my fashion magazines and all the women’s kind of stuff that I see, I think this is in part because of the acceptability of promiscuity that’s been promoted by the feminist movement. Now, all college girls go out, it’s okay to get drunk, have sex with three or four guys. Well, if you’re putting yourself in that kind of situation, chances are you’re going to be violated. But once you’ve entered that zone, once you’ve blacked out, you can’t say it’s a rape. You know you’re not going anywhere with that. So I think that’s a big factor in this.

MS. SOSA: Well, well, this is an interesting observation. I think it’s absolutely good news. I never thought I could put the word “raped” and “good news” in the sentence but we do have to say these are good news. There’s a confluence of technology, the DNA testing, being able to really pinpoint who the perpetrator is, on the prosecutors feeling confident, and then creating an environment in which women can come forward and report the crime.

MS. ERBE: What do you think? Is there less rape going on because perps are afraid or getting caught, more afraid of getting caught, or is reporting down?

MS. SOSA: It’s hard to tell. I’m going to be on the optimistic side that I do think it’s going down. And I think it’s interesting – Amanda’s observation because women are empowered and they’re getting themselves into situations that may not be the best situations and I wouldn’t, like you, advise them to get into that situation, but to call those rapes – they’re not rapes. They are something else you should not be doing.

MS. ERBE: Jaclyn.

MS. FRIEDMAN: I unfortunately have to disagree with both people who have spoken so far. I think that, first of all, we have to back up and look at this study. This report focuses on a very tiny sliver, which is reported rapes that are specifically forced, violent penis-in-vagina assault. It doesn’t count oral, anal, digital, any other way that a woman can be violated. It doesn’t count men who are raped. It doesn’t count drug enhanced rapes, which are actually on the rise. And if you look – last year the Department of Justice – they do an annual study of this – and their number show total stasis. So I actually think it’s really premature to celebrate. I don’t know that we know what’s going on. What we do know is rape is the single most underreported violent crime there is. The last good study – which is a little old – says about 60 percent.

MS. ERBE: Are reported or not –

MS. FRIEDMAN: Are not reported. So I think that – what I also want to disagree with is, of course, those rapes that happen between a guy and a girl who know each other, who are on a campus or in some other environment, there may be alcohol – those are actually the most common kinds of rapes and they’re the rapes that our culture doesn’t take seriously. So I think our culture has (to have?) some improvement in taking that stranger jumping out of the bushes, violent assault seriously. But the reality is 70 to 80 percent of sexual assaults occur between two people who know each other and that’s a situation that we still do not know how to deal with and we don’t treat women well when they come forward with that kind of accusation.

MS. SETMAYER: And that’s the problem with studies like this because there are so many factors that go into reporting rape, what constitutes rape, and even sentencing with prosecutions of rape there were certain – over the years I think it’s changed a little bit, but there were times where the sentencing was so harsh or not harsh enough and they would say, well, it’s not worth pursuing. We can’t because they know the person. And then the victims, they don’t want to report it because they don’t want to have to go through the whole embarrassment of living through it again. So rape is one of those crimes that it’s so personal, it’s difficult, it’s an emotional issue that I think that it’s tough to take a small sliver, like you said, study like this and say, well, it’s down. We should celebrate it. That’s great.

But I think Amanda made a great point about the promiscuity and the acceptance of promiscuity and that places women oftentimes in situations where they feel guilty about it later on and then they don’t report it.

MS. ERBE: But quite frankly, I don’t see what that really has to do with rape. I mean, a woman who’s promiscuous, as you would put it, or you know, modern as a lot of women on college campuses would say, it’s not going to be –

MS. SETMAYER: Well, because she could be under the influence. If she’s under the influence, doesn’t know what she’s doing, the guy is like, hey, and then he – that is not – the way we think of rape in a traditional sense it’s not tying you up and forcing yourself on someone. But if you’re not in control of the situation, the guy takes advantage of you, it’s rape.

MS. SOSA: But we also – the thing is when we use the term “raped,” and I think it’s totally inappropriate, the behavior, the engagement of behavior. I’m not talking the word “raped” here. But we need to teach our young women to take more control. And the problem sometimes when we use those terms, we’re like taking away control from them and saying, no, you’re the victim. No. You’re not totally the victim in the sense that you got drunk and you put yourself in that situation. So we’re going to criminalize that and then take away responsibility from your behavior, and I think that’s not appropriate.

MS. FRIEDMAN: We really need to be careful not to blame women for being raped under any circumstance. If a woman says no to sex at any point, no matter how much she’s drunk, no matter what she’s wearing, no matter what situation she’s put herself in, if she says no and he proceeds, that is rape. And we need to really back up and we need to talk about creating a standard where in any sexual encounter what we expect from both partners of any gender is that they will seek enthusiastic consent, that whether or not someone is passed out and not objecting or half-passed out – that’s not enough. I mean, honestly, if that’s the only way you can get someone to sleep with you, that’s sad for you but it’s also rape.

MS. ERBE: All right. The meaning –

MS. SETMAYER (?): There’s no way to know.

MS. ERBE: We have to transition the topics now. I’m sorry. The meaning of Matthew – 11 years ago this week Matthew Shepard’s tragic death shocked the nation and impacted the rights movement. To the Contrary sat down with , Matthew’s mother. She explains how she turned her personal tragedy into public activism.

(Begin video segment.)

JUDY SHEPARD: I don’t really regard myself as an activist. I’m a mom. I’m a mom who lost her son to hate, something totally irrational. I just want to fix it.

MS. ERBE: In October, 1998, Matthew Shepard was beaten, tied to a fence, and left for dead in a small town. His death turned this college student into a gay rights martyr. But in her new book, Judy Shepard tries to give the public a deeper understanding of who her son was before he became a national symbol.

MS. SHEPARD: It was interesting because the public knows him as Matthew. He was never Matthew to his family and friends: he always Matt or Mattie or Mateo, but never Matthew. So it was time – in this book, I will take the opportunity to introduce our Matt to the public’s Matthew. I’m not sure the public image ever takes in consideration that Matt was a real person, that he was a 21-year-old college student who did everything 21-year-old college students do – they drink too much, they smoke too much, and they don’t study enough. He was just like that. He had issues with depression. He had hard times in his life and good times, and he just never gave up.

MS. ERBE: Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have laws against hate crimes including those based on sexual orientation. But only crimes based on race, ethnicity, or religion constitute federal crimes. Judy Shepard hopes the Matthew Shepard Act will change that by expanding the law to include gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and people with disabilities. Opponents of the act say crime is crime regardless of motive, but Shepard doesn’t agree.

MS. SHEPARD: Crimes committed just on hate are far more heinous and they are wider – the effect is wider spread. It affects the whole community, not just the victim and the victim’s family. It’s a different thing altogether. It’s a different motive. It’s a different feeling. It’s a different environment, a different atmosphere. When there’s a cross burning on someone’s yard, it’s not meant to bother the people who own the property. It’s meant to terrorize the African-American community because we understand that as a symbol of hate. That’s true whether it’s religion or ethnicity or sexual orientation.

MS. ERBE: Shepard hopes the bill will be signed into law by President Obama. Until then, she continues to advocate for gay rights including gay marriage. And she hopes her book will encourage parents to love their children regardless of their sexual orientation.

MS. SHEPARD: I’ve always been confused by parents who disown their children when they come out. Their children are no different now than they were five seconds earlier. I want parents to understand that. From my point of view, you need to love your children no matter what and you need to support them and be there for them, gay or straight no matter what. I know that the parents of the two boys who murdered my son still love their sons. They didn’t disown them because of the heinous act that they committed. So in my head I’m thinking, does that mean that being gay is worse than being a murderer in some people’s minds? I want them to understand that kids are your kids no matter what. You need to love and support them. And you never know when you’re never going to have them again.

(End video segment.)

MS. ERBE: Jaclyn, has much progress been made on the gay rights front since Matthew Shepard’s death?

MS. FRIEDMAN: Oh, absolutely. When Matthew Shepard was murdered, three states had hate crimes protections for categories of sexual orientation and now 31 one of them do. And actually, just yesterday, the House passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which will make sexual-orientation and gender-identity-biased crimes a federally protected . And what’s important about that –

MS. ERBE: How’s that going to help in prosecution of murderers, hate crimes, whatever?

MS. FRIEDMAN: Well, it does a number of things. One is it no longer requires that somebody be participating in a federal activity or beyond federal grounds when the crime is committed. And it also frees up federal funds to give to the local communities to help to investigate and prosecute those crimes. When Matthew Shepard was killed, it nearly bankrupted the local government prosecuting that crime.

And what’s really key about this is that hate crimes are crimes that are meant not just to harm the direct victim, but to terrorize an entire community. They are acts of domestic terrorism. And it’s really heartening that we’re finally this year, I think, going to get this legislation passed to start protecting the communities that have been targets of this violence for so long. Just last year, there were over 1,500 acts of hate crimes against gay and lesbian and bisexual people in this country alone. We don’t know the numbers on transgender and we don’t know this maybe because until this legislation has passed, the Matthew Shepard Act, the government hasn’t even been tracking those numbers.

MS. SETMAYER: So the last time I checked, was already a crime on the books. I don’t understand why we need to have hate crime laws that elevate specific groups – (inaudible) – protect that status.

MS. ERBE: Well, she just explained. Wait a second. She just explained that it makes it a federal versus a state crime.

MS. SETMAYER: It doesn’t need to be a federal crime. Why does it need to be a federal crime? States already have laws against murder, assault, property crime. Why do we need to federalize specific groups?

MS. ERBE: Wait. One at a time. Go ahead.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Because these are not crimes against individuals. They are crimes against individuals in that they harm individuals, but they are meant to terrorize entire communities of Americans. And they’re acts of domestic terrorism and we need to treat them as such.

MS. SETMAYER: How do you know if I – just because I decide to murder Patricia because she’s Hispanic, that makes that my act of murder against her any worse than if two white people killed each other? It’s ridiculous. It’s still murder.

MS. FRIEDMAN: What it does is it’s sends a message to the Hispanic community that they should be afraid because they are targets for murder because of the color of their skin and their racial identity.

MS. SETMAYER (?): It’s identity policy.

MS. FRIEDMAN: And that’s anti-American.

MS. CARPENTER: Yes. Well, one of the good things about our laws is that they’re fair, they’re applied equally. And when you make a law that punishes someone more strict because they happen to murder one class of persons versus a different class of persons, the law is no longer fair and applied equally.

MS. SOSA: No. No. No. No. That’s not true. That’s not true because you have – in order to be a hate crime, you have to be sending a message greater than just killing that individual.

MS. CARPENTER: But how do you know what a person’s thoughts are?

MS. SOSA: So that is – and then, that’s what the Congress have agreed. And we wanted the Congress to pass a law. Actually the Congress have extended it to sexual orientation; obviously it’s gender and religion are covered by the federal law. So it is a very different type of crime. And we have as a country decided that there are some crimes that are federal crimes and there are some crimes that are state crimes. And I think that what we’re seeing is a political, a consensus building in this country that sexual orientation should be part of the federal law in terms of hate crimes.

MS. SETMAYER: If that were the case, if that were the case, then, why did and the Democrats attach this bill onto a Defense Appropriations bill? Because they back people into a corner? This has no business being on a Defense Appropriations bill. It should have been brought up on its own merits.

MS. FRIEDMAN: Look, I can’t talk to political strategy but I can tell you that –

MS. SETMAYER: Because they slipped it in.

MS. FRIEDMAN: – but I can tell you that everybody at this table supports the Violence Against Women Act. That is an act which puts federal money into preventing violence against a class of people. It happens to be a class of people that everyone at this table believes needs to be protected. That is an American philosophy and it’s absolutely American to believe that any class of Americans should not have to live in fear just because of who they are going about their lives.

MS. ERBE: Last word, Amanda.

MS. CARPENTER: Even if we disagree about what this law does, it’s not going to bring the people that were murdered back. I think the focus of passing this single piece of legislation probably hurts the gay rights movement because you’re not spreading awareness about maybe what mothers can do to be more accepting of their children once they come out. I think it’s a bad focus.

MS. ERBE: Actually, I’ve just been given more time. So your response to that.

MS. SOSA: Yes. Yes. I actually am very impressed with the courage of Matthew Shepard’s mother and how compassionate she’s speaking about this issue and how she’s dedicated the memory of her son to really bring awareness about the issues of a bias because of sexual orientation.

MS. ERBE: And very briefly, Tara. How does it hurt you if there’s a federal – if gays and lesbians are included in a federal law against hate crimes?

MS. SETMAYER: Well, first of all because, again, I think that a hate crime is inherently redundant. A violent crime is inherently hateful. And I don’t like federal overreach into this. It’s a thought police type of thing. And murder is murder. Let the states decide if that’s what they want to do.

MS. ERBE: All right. We’ll end on that note. That’s it for this edition of To the Contrary. Next week, poverty in America. Please join us on the web for “To the Contrary Extra.” And whether your views are in agreement or to the contrary, please join us next time.

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