Working beyond the rap culture

May 10, 2008

Joanne Martin sat across from me yesterday morning at the Great Blacks In Wax Museum. I held my head in my hands, mumbling something no doubt incoherent about what I'd like to do to distributors of rap videos.

Recent columns

• Up to speed on dirt bike troubles?

  May 7, 2008

  From: Gregory P. Kane, Disgruntled Citizen Menaced by Dirt Bike-Riding Scofflaws

• The law: Why not just start to obey it?

  May 3, 2008

  This column has to begin with me making a sincere, heartfelt apology to the members of the Baltimore County Bar Association. I was to speak on the topic "The Rule of Law" at the association's Law Day breakfast Thursday morning, but I didn't make it.

• Baseball steps to plate for Robinson

  April 16, 2008

  Gary Schueller was exactly 24 minutes from burning the midnight oil when he sent me this e-mail at 11:36 p.m. Monday:

• Offensive foot in pastor's mouth

  April 12, 2008

  It took a while for the Order Sons of Italy in America to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wrong - er, uh, excuse me, I mean Jeremiah Wright - but I figured we'd be hearing from them.

• Hopkins, Dunbar losing? Can't be!

  April 9, 2008

  The Johns Hopkins University men's lacrosse team losing five straight games? The Dunbar High School boys basketball team losing nine games, spending most of the season out of the top 20 before finally being ranked No. 15?

• On at least one point, Agnew was correct

  April 5, 2008

  I'll probably hate myself tomorrow morning for doing this -- I guess the rest of you can start right now -- but somebody has to say something good about the late Gov. Spiro Agnew. The man certainly wasn't getting much love at the University of Baltimore yesterday.

• A prayer of thanks for kids like these

  April 2, 2008

  "Pray to Jehovah."

• The truly sad and plain old puzzling

  March 29, 2008

  In a week full of news, two sad stories and one downright weird one stand out.

• Panel on death penalty disparity has its own biases

  March 26, 2008

  On Monday, the House of Delegates passed a bill that would establish a Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. The commission, which will have 19 members, is to issue a report by Dec. 15 of this year on at least seven recommendations.

• At last, rule of law gets equal time

  March 22, 2008

  Former Baltimore police Commissioner Kevin Clark was fired on Nov. 10, 2004, when then-Mayor Martin O'Malley said that domestic violence allegations against Clark, while unsubstantiated, "distracted" the imported New Yorker from effectively doing his job.

• Bus case decision: Whom to believe?

  March 19, 2008

  Unique Curtis' testimony didn't help her five schoolmates, who were all found responsible yesterday for assaulting Sarah Kreager, who was punched, beaten and kicked in the face Dec. 4 and left lying in a gutter with one eye swollen shut and the socket broken in two places.

• 'Wire' joy untainted by finale, spoilers

  March 15, 2008

  I've been watching reruns of the final episode of The Wire all week. Yeah, the show is just that hard to let go.

• N-word mystery in MTA bus assault case

  March 12, 2008

  Danny Williams is black. That's important to this story.

• A hero emerges in bus beating

  March 8, 2008

  Joyce King may well have saved Sarah Kreager's life.

• 40 years later, a question remains

  March 5, 2008

  The Kerner Report turned 40 last Friday. Officially known as the "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders," the 400-plus page document is perhaps best known for its "basic conclusion" on the first page of its 30-page summary:

• 40 years later, still larger than life

  February 20, 2008

  It must be an unwritten axiom: When you meet people who are considered larger than life, you expect them to be physically larger than what they are.

• Kids need parents' help with Miranda

  February 16, 2008

  Yesterday marked Day 12 - exactly one dozen weekdays since the start of the juvenile adjudication hearing in the vicious beating of Sarah Kreager aboard a Maryland Transit Administration bus Dec. 4.

• Reluctant film star on city's streets

  February 13, 2008

  When I wrote that the Baltimore police officers who arrested 7-year-old Gerard Mungo Jr. last year overreacted, I got a lot of testy e-mails from people telling me how wrong I was.

• It's 'little dear' justice in city

  January 5, 2008

  The Nine Little Dears from Robert Poole Middle School accused in the attack on Sarah Kreager and others aboard a Maryland Transit Administration bus in early December were arraigned in juvenile court yesterday.

• Another bus ride, another outcome

  December 26, 2007

  On Tuesday, Dec. 4, Sarah Kreager, a white woman, was brutally beaten, allegedly by nine black teenagers on a Maryland Transit Administration bus in North Baltimore. Kreager's boyfriend, Troy Ennis, was also attacked.

• Her day in court far from satisfying

  December 12, 2007

  For six months, Anna Sowers had the sneaking suspicion that it would come to this.

• Hearing the sounds of silence at Mideast conference

  November 28, 2007

  Excuse me? What was that I didn't hear?

• Neighbors mourn the lives lost in fire

  May 23, 2007

  A big question nagged at the neighbors and onlookers who stared at the charred rowhouse at 1903 Cecil Ave. yesterday morning: Why had so many people been crammed into such a small place?

• Floyd Patterson remains an uncommon boxing champion

  May 13, 2006

  Record books show that former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, who died Thursday in New York, was the first man to win the title twice. Actually, Patterson should have won it three times -- and would have won it three times, if it weren't for a referee in desperate need of cataract surgery.

• 'Ethnomathematics' arrival adds to spin of multiculturalism

  June 29, 2005

  WHEN GOV. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. called multiculturalism "bunk" and "crap" about a year ago, you'd have thought, judging from the reaction of some folks, that he'd just taken out a lifetime membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

• Two cases show how vast our racial divide remains

  May 28, 2005

  HOW DID Marylanders end up with two poignant moments in race relations in just one week?

• In a street fight, you get street justice

  May 14, 2005

  IT IS NOT a crime to hate black people.

• Schiavo case turned conservatism on its head

  April 2, 2005

  NOW THAT Terri Schiavo has gone -- not peacefully, but as a national spectacle -- to her maker, we are left to ponder how conservatives trashed and savaged what was supposedly their own philosophy.

• Mfume might be glad to go, but the NAACP will miss him

  December 1, 2004

  KWEISI MFUME had that "Lyndon Johnson" gleam in his eye.

• 50 years later, gaps separate the races in our schools

  May 12, 2004

  SHANNON JOHNSON was born 32 1/2 years after the Supreme Court proclaimed "separate but equal" education unconstitutional on May 17, 1954.

• Students make sure their voices are heard

  March 10, 2004

  YOU HAD TO figure students at City College wouldn't take it lying down.

• An elected city school board might provide accountability

  February 18, 2004

  ON MONDAY, members of the Parent Community Advisory Board, among others, called for the resignation of the six Baltimore school board members who were around when the system's current money problems began to build.

• Police should follow crooks - not Bundley's paper trail

  July 30, 2003

  DO YOU feel safer yet?

• Fallen Marine's funeral brings home loss that's felt by us all

  April 6, 2003

  MICHAEL Waters-Bey stood only yards from the flag-draped coffin that held the remains of his only son. His son's only son stood beside him.

• Curran elaborates on letter seeking end to death penalty

  February 8, 2003

  MARYLAND Attorney General Joseph Curran was a trial lawyer for 23 years. He knows the mistakes the system can make. Boy, does he know.

• To murder victims' families, executing killers is justice

  February 5, 2003

  FREDERICK ANTHONY Romano remembers the night. More than 15 years later, he remembers it as if it happened within the last week.

• Few speak up for sniper suspects during latest terror

  October 30, 2002

  THE PROBLEM with this country is that people or things are never around when you really need them. Where, for example, are those danged "root-causers" in the wake of the recent sniper terror?

• A day to realize that no one has a monopoly on terrorism

  September 11, 2002

  TODAY IS the date that will live in even more infamy than Dec. 7, 1941. At least Pearl Harbor was a military target.

• Anger over police 'slush fund' a case of misspent outrage

  August 18, 2002

  JUDGING FROM the reaction, you'd think Baltimore police Commissioner Ed Norris had taken his wife on a three-week vacation in Paris, spent bundles on an elaborate shopping spree and paid for it all with the money from that "slush fund" that has residents of Payback City in such high dudgeon.

• With mess men have made, it's time to ordain women

  May 19, 2002

  OPEN LETTER TO Pope John Paul II:

• Timing of death penalty halt reveals governor's true motive

  May 15, 2002

  SO LET'S get this straight: On the evening of June 6, 1991, one Wesley Baker walked up to Jane Frances Tyson as she sat in her car. Tyson had just finished shopping in the Westview Mall. Her grandchildren, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, were with her in the car.

• Congress must help Bush round up all the suspects

  September 30, 2001

  WHAT'S THE difference between being held as a material witness and being detained without trial? Anyone? Anyone?

• America should be proud of Islamic influences

  September 26, 2001

  Gregory Kane

• Terrorist attacks bring out the good, the bad and the ugly in all of us

  September 23, 2001

  "IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times." Thus begins Charles Dickens' classic, A Tale of Two Cities. He could have been describing America since the horrible day of Sept. 11, 2001.

• Standing up for America as criticism continues

  September 22, 2001

  THE AMERICA-bashing in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks continues unabated. Perhaps the most outrageous among them comes from, of all places, Kenya.

• Those cheering for terrorists live in short-sighted hypocrisy

  September 15, 2001

  "WE HAVE a big tent here," WOLB talk-show host and former Maryland state senator Larry Young is fond of saying. All opinions are welcome on his show: liberal, conservative, black nationalist, Pan-Africanist, progressive, socialist.

• College's racial diversity starts with effort at top

  February 18, 2001

  LA JERNE CORNISH stood at the front of her class, rolling the chalk in her hands as she waited for her students to respond to questions.

• Being loyal to Clinton a bad habit for blacks

  February 17, 2001

  CAN BLACK Americans find no fault with the now mercifully departed President Bill Clinton?

• For all that indignation, one outrage met by silence

  February 14, 2001

  THE SMOKE IS clearing. The fallout from everything that's happened the past six to eight weeks seems to be dissipating. Perhaps we can all think a bit more rationally. The events that occurred should have us all pondering: What kind of people are we?

• Cries of double standard trail mayor's Jessamy remarks

  February 11, 2001

  THIS WAS supposed to be the column in which I defended, kind of, Mayor Martin O'Malley against charges that he offended all black women when he delivered his public, profanity-laced tirade against Baltimore State's Attorney Pat Jessamy, who is black and female.

• Speaking of streaks, this one's even longer

  February 10, 2001

  THANK HEAVENS for Warren Schwartz.

• Officer's candor is ugly -- but revealing

  February 7, 2001

  OFFICER PAUL Hoke of the Baltimore County Police Department: a virulent racist, or simply an idiot?