The incident apparently happened on Dec. 3, and has been covered in the Philadelphia newspapers, but I’ve only now heard about it (in an AP story, published a few days ago, about a civil rights complaint stemming from this incident and filed with the Justice Department). The attacks were apparently racially motivated, and the students allege that in many of the atacks, “school staffers stood by, encouraged the attackers, or hurled racial slurs.”
Naturally, these are just allegations, and they may well prove unfounded. There seems to be broad agreement that there were 30 Asian students beaten, and apparently at least 11 were hospitalized (though it’s not clear whether all of the hospitalized were victims of the assaults, or whether some might have been attackers themselves). But the allegations about the staff misbehavior seem less certain, based on my quick check of the news stories. Do others know more about this? News accounts suggest that this is being treated — quite rightly — as a big deal in Philadelphia; perhaps this has yielded more facts about the matter, and I’d love to hear them.
johnF says:
I suppose this will be seen as another test of how the Holder Justice Dept. will react to civil rights complaints when the apparent wrongdoers are black.
I did think it was interesting that the superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, has not faired well in the press: “She also stirred tensions when she complained that the cultural crisis was ‘taking up a lot of my time.’”
January 25, 2010, 8:22 pmCrunchy Frog says:
Oh the poor dear. Perhaps her current duties should be lessened considerably so she can devote more time to her knitting (or whatever else she would like to be doing).
January 25, 2010, 8:28 pmohwilleke says:
WTF!
A brawl that big is like two football teams engaging in gladitorial combat with each other, or a full on prison riot, or perhaps a British soccer hooligan incident.
If the involvement of school staffers is as alleged, then Justice does need to get involved.
An incident like that is so far out of the realm of my experience that it is hard to imagine.
January 25, 2010, 8:30 pmvic5 says:
we all know there is no such thing as black racism right!
the oppressed cannot be oppressors – ever
on a more serious note – the principle and suprintendent need to be fired – stat
January 25, 2010, 10:03 pmLindsey Abelard says:
If the school principle and superintendent cannot be bothered to do their job of providing a safe environment for their students, perhaps they should consider resigning so that those more competent can step in and do their job.
It is inexcusable that the adult leadership of this school and school district did nothing to prevent this bullying and violence from occurring. This is an issue that should be taken up with the voters the next time a bond levy issue comes up.
January 25, 2010, 10:28 pmresh says:
I can add that various 14A violation lawsuits have been filed against the school district, and that some retired district judge named James Giles is handling an independent investigation. The investigation is being done at the behest of the school board and superintendent Arlene Ackerman (aka, Queen Arlene…see link)
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/arlene_ackerman_profile_queen_arlene/
The investigation looks like stock cya to me but its report details should surface sooner or later.
Ackerman figures to get canned if truth prevails (truth being her “staff” played possum as the fights erupted) although she’s a democrat, and they rule the turf in Philly with both Mayor Nutter and statewide via Gov. Rendell, who’s also from and whose blood is Philly. They recruited the Queen from DC. Still, this racial altercation isn’t the first in s. Philly. It just ain’t Asian country, sad to say.
Dems the facts, bro.’
Judge Giles, btw, was one of the judges who quit “judging” when he ( and his brethren) couldn’t get a salary hike, back when Roberts was lobbying for the lofty idea, to no avail.
Speaking of which, you should do a thread on lousy pay for the Court(s). I’ll wager a USSC justice makes less than you do…but, then, how many divisions does Scalia have?
January 25, 2010, 10:31 pmJPG says:
From the paper: “…large groups of African American and Asian students attacked at least 30 Asian students, seven of whom required treatment at a hospital.” It this is accurate, there are reasons to believe racism alone cannot explain what happened in december, although it is not clear if the violence was directed at asian immigrants and if the asian agressors were themselves immigrants or “fully integreted” citizens.
For what it is worth, the late historian Ronald Takaki often insisted on the prejudice asian Americans suffered from what he called the myth of the model minority. Acts of racism towards them often being disregarded or considered irrelevant and unimportant in light of their historical success in the process of americanization.
January 25, 2010, 10:32 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Statements that bother me:
Person A does not understand person B, therefore person A beats person B up? I don’t get this.
The adults do have a responsibility to ensure safety for all of the students, but it actually is a question of who beat whom. The ultimate responsibility falls on the people who do the beating, to not do it.
For a person to beat another person b/c he doesn’t understand him, or because he is not prevented, is inexcusable.
January 25, 2010, 10:41 pmptt says:
Not sure how, or even if, it is a factor here, but racism between different Asian ethnicities is alive and well in some parts of the country. As you point out, it could be a case of assimilated versus newly arrived, so we could be looking at racism and nationalism (not exactly strangers to each other).
January 25, 2010, 11:23 pmMatthew Carberry says:
Has anyone investigated the possibility that Dungeons and Dragons was involved somehow?
January 25, 2010, 11:45 pmLou Gots says:
The poor Asian-Americans are learning what European-American Philadelphians have long known: it’s either Catholic school or it’s get out of Dodge.
January 26, 2010, 2:54 am~aardvark says:
Logically, this just means that she’ll be replaced with another Democrat of removed. It does not mean that she won’t get canned. But since when did we start looking at the political affiliation of school supers?
January 26, 2010, 3:36 amInstapundit » Blog Archive » RACIAL VIOLENCE? 30 Asian Students Beaten at South Philadelphia High School…. says:
[...] RACIAL VIOLENCE? 30 Asian Students Beaten at South Philadelphia High School. [...]
January 26, 2010, 7:58 amEric Blair says:
It’s not just the Asian kids being beat here (actually I think they’re all vietnamese in this case) but also black African immigrant kids too. There have been several cases of Ghanian immigrant students being beat up. I guess because they were trying to get an education or something like that. There was also a spate of assaults by black high school students on the subway that one of which resulted in the death of one white commuter last year.
January 26, 2010, 8:17 amJohn C. Randolph says:
There’s no reason for this to be a federal matter. It’s a straight-up assault and battery case.
-jcr
January 26, 2010, 8:18 amTuesday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath says:
[...] A beating, racially motivated? [...]
January 26, 2010, 8:20 amArty says:
And nobody outside Philly’s heard about this? Where’s the national media?
Let me guess. They’re still in the alley passing around a bag of Obama’s shorts taking turns sniffing ’til they can get high enough to write another column.
January 26, 2010, 8:27 amBeantowngurl says:
Maybe it was ACORN thugs. Maybe it was some of Obama’s Black Panther goons, or Al Sharpton’s sicko’s. Nah, I’m sure it was just some harmless LARPing between the Dragons and Cruds. Some modern day Jets and Sharks, you know like West Side Story. Let’s turn it into a Broadway musical!
January 26, 2010, 8:28 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
EV’s post does not mention the race of the attackers, you have to go to the links for that. Thus, I was introduced to the topic in a race-neutral manner and was able, briefly, to have uncertainty. I got to zip in the various possibilities: white students, other Asians, black students, Hispanics. I admit I never thought of the possibility of immigrant Africans, which came up in the comments.
I tried really hard not to know who was doing this, because for my own sake, I want ethnic and racial stereotyping to have no hold on my character.
But I knew all along, no matter how much I fought it before clicking the link.
BTW, how do we know the Supt. is a Democrat? Is political affiliation formally advertised in Philly? I have no idea what the political affiliation of the S of S’s are in my local communities. I would guess many are Democrats, because many folks in education are. But I wouldn’t know it. Maybe that’s a New Hampshire thing.
January 26, 2010, 8:55 amexhelodrvr says:
“Asian” – they need to be a lot more specific. Significant differences between people who come from different regions of “Asia”
January 26, 2010, 8:56 amDusty says:
Not that I don’t believe that excerpt was in the report at one time, but it isn’t any more:
“… when large groups of mostly African American students attacked about 30 Asian students. The assaults sent at least 11 students to hospitals and sparked a boycott by about 50 Asian students.”
Still and all, your point regarding level of assimilation is worth considering, though, Asian is way too broad a term and hides long held regional animosities in that part of the world.
January 26, 2010, 9:01 amDaedalus Mugged says:
Not sure this is obvious, but this wasn’t a case of a big rumble where 30 kids got beaten. This was ongoing for years.
The immigrant (mostly asian) kids had to “Know their place” (ie behind the local blacks) or get a beat down. The vast majority of these incidents were individual kids. This became a legal case because the school was doing nothing about it, and it became a federal case when the local DA wouldn’t do anything about the ongoing and gross violation of civil rights. This is a huge failure of the school district as well as Philly DA’s office.
January 26, 2010, 9:04 amRicardo says:
Evidently, AP has picked up on the story. But if your broader point is why this story isn’t more widely known, the same could be asked of another story of a brutal beating coming out of Pennsylvania. Only this one involves plainclothes police and a 150-pound, 5-foot-6 black honor student who played the viola at school. Link.
I suppose everything has to be partisan these days. Lots of pretty awful things happen at the local level that don’t receive national attention.
January 26, 2010, 9:14 amDusty says:
The first linked report suggests the attacks happened in various locations in one day. The second linked report clearly suggests it happened on one day and, unless I missed a phrase, is silent on one or more locations.
You may be right about the problem being ongoing, for years, but you are wrong in saying the scale of the incident reported here is an accumulation over the years.
January 26, 2010, 9:32 amSnowguy says:
Oddly, we seem to have no trouble filling judicial slots, particularly at the SCOTUS level. Perhaps the pay is sufficient. Compare that to law firms, which always seem to be losing personnel and having to hire new ones…except when they fire massive numbers of their lawyers.
January 26, 2010, 9:39 amsbron says:
Both the multicultural left and libertarians believe that mass immigration to reduce whites to a deferential minority will yield a just society. Incidents like this show that a world without whites will be just as violent and cruel as one without. The solution is assimilation to a common national identity, but no one supports this, especially not the multicultural educational establishment.
January 26, 2010, 9:55 amRicardo says:
January 26, 2010, 10:15 amMichael Ordonez says:
I have been following this story for some time. It was first reported that groups of black and “white” students were doing the attacks. This was later amended to only blacks. Similar incidents have occurred here in Fresno, California involving blacks vs. asians. Here too the first instinct of the school authorities is to label it isolated acts of “boisterousness”. Small comfort to a lone student trying to get home after school, always watching your back, on the lookout for the thugs.
January 26, 2010, 11:04 amsilenceisgolden says:
My Holder can get the Black Panthers to read Miranda Rights to the Asian students before letting them get the a$$es beat.
January 26, 2010, 11:16 amMike K says:
This City Journal article may be of interest although it is about black-on-black after school violence. Of interest is the role of gang turf in the problem.
January 26, 2010, 11:27 amBrian G. says:
I grew up 4 blocks from South Philly High. My older brother and sister went to that place in the late 1980′s. There has always been racial violence there between Blacks and Asians. Always. And racial violence between any other combination of groups you can imagine. Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Irish, Italian, Lebanese, and so on. Some of the worst racial violence I saw in the 80′s were between the Vietnamese and the Cambodians and the Puerto Ricans and Blacks. If don’t know if this is P.C. to say or not, but whites there have been int he minority for a long, long time, as they either go to Goretti-Neumann, Central, or somewhere else. When I was 14, I told my parents where I was going to high school, and that I wasn’t going to Southern (which is what we call it). And I made sure I did not go there.
If you knew the dynamics of South Philly, these incidents would not be news to you.
January 26, 2010, 11:51 amAthena says:
Old news.
January 26, 2010, 12:40 pmtroll_dc2 says:
I have a question for EV: when should we inform you of events that could possibly be of interest and when should we not? I could have sent you the stories about South Philadelphia many weeks ago, but because you rarely have written about stuff that I have informed you about, I did not think that I should waste my time.
January 26, 2010, 12:40 pmPRJ says:
SP High Blacks don’t want the newly arrived Asians to succeed for two reasons: They don’t want to reminded what can be done with hard little work, and they want to have someone to look down on. It’s about entitlement and its as sick as it gets.
January 26, 2010, 12:55 pmresh says:
“Oddly, we seem to have no trouble filling judicial slots, particularly at the SCOTUS level.”
I was referring to lower level judges; the SCOTUS reference and Scalia’s wages was tossed in as levity. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the average pay for a fed.judge @170K?
Compare that to, say, the Chief Communications Director (E. Sample-Oates) for the Philly school reform commission who is paid 180K; I use this comparison since it was this director who defiantly let the press know that Superintendent Ackerman (Sample-Oates’ boss, and who hired her) that, paraphrasing, “too much of Ackerman’s time was being taken up” by this local slugfest.
I can only assume that the superintendent makes more than her comm. director. Btw, wasn’t Ackerman being mentioned as having a role in Obama’s admin.?
January 26, 2010, 1:03 pmLaura Blanchard says:
Interesting set of comments. As someone who lives in South Philly, let me add a couple of data points.
Jim Giles (referenced as “some retired judge” in one of the comments) is a straight-up guy — represented my ex-husband and me in a lawsuit back in the early 70s. I don’t think he’ll bring an agenda to the issue.
Arlene Ackerman has had her troubles with the Philadelphia political establishment, the press, and a lot of other folks. She’s so focused on turning around academic achievement here that she has zero tolerance for anything that deflects her from that — rightly or wrongly. I could wish she were less defensive in this case. See http://www.phillymag.com/articles/arlene_ackerman_profile_queen_arlene/ for a profile of Ackerman, which I believe includes some discussion of the South Phila High case.
There have been some attempts at mediating this issue outside the school district sphere. The pastor of a church around four blocks from me, the Rev. Terrence Griffiths at First African Baptist Church, has hosted some sessions.
My sense, from shopping in the local Asian grocery stores, is that the dominant Asian population in south Philadelphia is Vietnamese, with an admixture of Cambodian, Thai, etc.
January 26, 2010, 1:23 pmYankev says:
No need to; this is obviously the fault of Rush Limbaugh. And the Christian Right.
January 26, 2010, 1:26 pmDaedalus Mugged says:
That is a fair point, I stand corrected. It was ongoing on an individual level for years. It escalated (and got attention) when the immigrants started to organize to ‘fight back’. That led to a larger blowup.
January 26, 2010, 1:45 pmRebeccaH says:
I’m thinking this is an incident of violence between two competing ethnic gangs. The news services will never find out the truth, let alone report it, but it seems unlikely that Asian kids would stand by and be victimized (for however long). Unfortunately, there were probably a lot of innocent kids not belonging to either gang who got caught in the middle.
January 26, 2010, 3:00 pmBill the Cat says:
It’s south Philly, what more do you need to know. If it’s different you beat it down.
I blame Somali pirates.
January 26, 2010, 3:10 pmwGraves says:
The article doesn’t mention anything about arrests or indictments. Assault is a criminal matter. The student’s parents should apply for a Writ of Mandamus forcing the legal authorities to perform their sworn duty to uphold the law.
January 26, 2010, 3:45 pmJPG says:
Thanks to you, and ptt, for bringing this needed clarification. I don’t know why I left this obvious nuance out of my comment.
January 26, 2010, 4:20 pmdennymack says:
While I understand the blame that falls on the staff for not preventing this incident, it is worth examining the decision a staff member would have to make to get involved in a fight:
1. You have always been told, as a teacher, never get involved in a student fight. You are not trained for it. Call a campus supervisor. Try to mediate, but do not interpose your body.
2. You have read about, or even know, teachers who lost their careers for “assaulting” a student, or for taking action that leads to a lawsuit for the district. You are middle aged with a mortgage, and if you lose your job for this kind of incident you are poisoned. You become a middle aged college grad with no useful skills.
3. Any forceful use of hands seems to constitute assault. Perhaps that is not what the law says, but you didn’t go to law school.
4. When it comes to describing “assault” the teacher is always painted as the bully. “40 year old man manhandles 14 year old” cannot be explained away by pointing out that the teacher is 5’8″, 140 lbs and the “child” is 5’11″ , 195 lbs. and violent. There is no excuse for excessive force because you were not supposed to use force in the first place.
5. You have probably seen fights before, probably a few big brawls. They tend not to be stopped by a few well worded appeals to reason.
6. You are not sure what is happening, who is doing what, how it started, etc.
7. Schools that have these kinds of incidents are the same schools where teachers get assaulted. If you get in there, expect to be treated as a participant by the belligerents. (You are gonna get popped.)
Still, most of the folks I have worked with would not stand on the sidelines. Perhaps this is because at the schools I know this incident would qualify as extraordinary, the type of thing that goes beyond cost/benefit analysis. Maybe in Philly it doesn’t.
January 26, 2010, 4:58 pmMichael Ejercito says:
Often it is imported from overseas.
You should look at common attitudes in Japan towards Koreans.
January 26, 2010, 5:41 pmMichael Ejercito says:
This is a local story.
Local crime news rarely get mentioned in the national media unless it is unusual (like the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard).
January 26, 2010, 5:47 pmsportutegirl says:
There is a solution to this problem that actually costs less than what we have now: Vouchers. Let kids who actually want to learn get vouchers to attend the private school of their choice. Philly spends about 20K per student, the Catholic schools charge 4000. Limit the voucher to half of what the school district is paying now per student. Allow the private, voucher receiving schools to kick out kids who bring an attitude. Give parents who choose to homeschool a voucher for 1/4 of what is being spent now, but test all students each year, including the ones still in public school. Save the ones you can and protect them from the ones who don’t want to learn.
January 26, 2010, 7:28 pmKLH says:
Something that big is on YouTube somewhere
January 26, 2010, 8:35 pmMike K says:
That is, of course, a sensible solution but, if you read the article I linked, even that might not prevent some of this. The gangs are attacking kids who get into the wrong neighborhood and a Catholic, or other private school would still have that problem of gang turf.
What ever happened to reform school ?
January 26, 2010, 8:40 pmJenn says:
Just read the article on Ar-lene. She is typical. DC, Detroit, Philly, it’s all the same. Those Asians kids are lucky they weren’t killed-and-eaten.
January 26, 2010, 8:51 pmanoncow says:
Blacks and ‘asians’ against other ‘asians’.
sounds like jihad to me.
January 26, 2010, 8:58 pmchemman says:
I worked as a science teacher in an urban minority high school for 25 years. Every year we got the same lecture do not intervene in fights school security will deal with it. If you intervene and a complaint is filled by one of the involved students we will not back you up and your teaching career will come to an end. This was in a very large southern California district. It is possible that these teachers were under the same constraints.
January 26, 2010, 9:39 pmoldwolves says:
How long will this racist country continue to abuse black people? Why Must these poor men and women suffer all the humility and shame? How long will we…. What? These were black people beating up Asians? Oh, that’s ok. Never mind. Nothing to see folks! Move along!
January 26, 2010, 9:48 pmpst314 says:
“You are not sure what is happening, who is doing what, how it started, etc.”
After spending too many years in public schools, and reading too many reports in the decades since, I think I have a pretty good idea who is to blame. Eric Holder wants a “national conversation on race”? Let’s start with widespread, loud, unashamed (and violent) racial and religious bigotry in the African American community. And let’s next talk about all the liberals and leftists who excuse and defend this evil.
January 26, 2010, 11:58 pmMichael Ejercito says:
That should be done, along with a discussion of interracial rape statistics.
January 27, 2010, 10:22 amsusan says:
As an Asian-American born and raised in Philly, I experienced discrimination in the the Catholic school system. So did my brother who attended Roman Catholic.
I went to Hallahan High School for Girls from 1971-1975, and I was discriminated by the nuns there. As a freshman in my science IPS class, the Franciscan nun told me I should go back to China. The Studies Dept. head, an Immaculata nun, rejected my application for transfer to French class, because she did not think I needed to learn French.
There was also lots of bullying. Since the total Asian American population never exceeded 30 out of a total of 2000 girls, we were picked on.
So Catholic schools are no different.
The rampant racism that exists in Philly just reflects the ignorance of its citizenry.
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May 20, 2010, 11:41 amjaydee says:
The solution is to send the Asian students to civilized suburban schools away from the thugs who seem bent on preventing them from getting an education. Philly has bargain basement ‘leaders’ who are more interested in playing their redundant game of ‘pin the tail on the honky’ than they are in solving problems. Fire all the current ‘administrators’ and replace them with competent people who will not sweep problems under the rug. If it was not for coverage by the news media Ackerman and her bunch would have let these racist attacks continue and would have taken no action at all.
June 11, 2010, 3:07 pm