April 7, 2003, 9:50 A.M.
Trouble in Texas: Back in January I wrote about the Bush administration's support for the Plaintiffs in two significant cases recently heard in the US Supreme Court. The case was brought by a group of white students who filed a lawsuit against the University of Michigan challenging the universities reliance on race as a factor in college admission decisions. A companion suit is pending against the University of Michigan Law School. Both of those cases were heard by the US Supreme Court this past week. The Bush administration weighed in on the side of the Plaintiffs with a brief that argued in favor of race-neutral admission policies.
The suggestion that our society is now so diverse and color blind that we no longer need to even consider race as a factor in college admissions is absurd. Our society is not color blind, nor is our politics. The most recent example comes out of Texas, of all places.
According to Associated Press reports, Tom Coleman was hired as an undercover police officer to work in Tulia, Texas, by the Swisher County sheriff’s department to work as an undercover police officer. Tulia is a town with a population of about 5000. Just under 250 of the town’s residents are black. Coleman was working as a welder at the time he was hired, but had some previous experience as a police officer.
Coleman had in fact previously been employed in Cochran County, Texas. Sheriff Ken Burke, Coleman’s employer in Cochran County, wrote a letter to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education complaining that Coleman had quit his job “in the middle of a shift, without notice, leaving behind debts and a patrol car parked in his driveway.” Apparently Burke also had to garnish Coleman’s pay for back child support and he wrote to the Commission that “Mr. Coleman should not be in law enforcement.” Coleman’s ex-girlfriend filed charges, that she later withdrew, claiming that Coleman had stalked her. She withdrew the charges but said she wanted the complaint on file in the event that he caused trouble later.
With this backdrop, Coleman was hired to investigate drug activity in Tulia. But more than that, he was given a list of county residents, most of them black, that he was to investigate. His investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of 46 suspects, 39 of whom were black. This drug sweep earned Coleman the Texas Narcotic Control Program’s “Outstanding Lawman of the Year” award for 1999. His investigation used no audio or video surveillance, no corroborative evidence and no drugs were ever found, yet his drug busts resulted in 17 guilty pleas and 11 guilty verdicts, despite the fact that some of the accused had never even met their accuser.
According to an April 2, 2003 AP story, a current investigation into Coleman’s activities by the Justice Department and the Texas attorney general has turned up irregularities in the undercover investigation and a retired state appeals court judge conducting the investigation into Coleman’s activities has recommended that the convictions based on his testimony be overturned. The sheriff who hired Coleman testified at one of the trials that more blacks than whites were arrested because “black people do drugs in the streets and the parks and white people do them in their home.” He also admits that he had a list of blacks that he wanted investigated. This undercover investigation and the resulting convictions ware nothing less than institutional racism. To make matters worse, Coleman, who was hired to do his “investigation” even after a suit was filed against him for theft and abuse of power (the case was dismissed after Coleman paid $6,950 in restitution), is currently working as an undercover cop in another town.
In other news, the Justice Department released a report today containing U.S. prison statitics for the past year. The report reveals that "about 12 percent of all black men in the United States aged 20 to 39 were in prison or jail, by far the highest single group. In contrast, 4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.6 percent of white males in that age group were incarcerated." Add this ugly statistic and the Coleman story to the Trent Lott flap and the power of traditional southern politicians, and it is clear that race is still a big issue in this country. The government’s arguments before the Supreme Court last week were an attempt to gloss over and sterilize the racial inequity that still exists in this country. Even Texas isn’t big enough to hide the truth.