McHenry County Blog

At two forums I attended on then-State Rep. Penny Pullen’s behalf I made predictions about the danger black women had of becoming HIV-infected.

One was a debate with a left-wing law professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago and the other was on a pilot of a talk show hosted by Faye Wattleton, who had just resigned as president of Planned Parenthood.

At both events a black woman stood up and shouted angrily.

That was probably in 1991 when I was working for Pullen.

My logic was based on male prisoners being released from prison with being told they were infected with the AIDs virus.

Based on a study by the CDC, one-third of one percent of male inmates each year became HIV-infected while in Illinois prisons. (That transmission rate sounds low, but, if it existed in the general Illinois population, all of the infections through the mid-1990′s would have occurred in one year.)

I couldn’t think of any reason the rate of transmission would be less from sharing tattoo needles, hypodermic needles or getting raped by HIV-positive men elsewhere in the country than it was in Illinois.

There was no serious attempt to stop the spread of HIV in Illinois prisons then and there still isn’t.

Since a disproportionate number of black men were imprisoned and they weren’t tested on the way out—even if they were married—it stood to reason that black women were in danger. Even if an ex-convict would be willing to avoid having intercourse if he knew he was HIV-infected, IDOC saw no reason to let the prisoners know before they were released into the general populaiton.

And, I’m told, that when men get out of prison, it’s sex and drugs they want first.

So, in those two Chicago forums I stated my prediction.

Now comes USA Today, reporting http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/2011-02-05-blacks-aids_N.htm on the Feb 4th Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that shows I was unfortunately correct those 20 year ago.

The evidence:

“The rate of HIV diagnosis among black men is eight times that of whites, and the rate for black women is 19 times that of whites…”

The author talks about prison, but still doesn’t get the point I made above. Here’s what Dr. Kevin Fenton, Director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, days:

“High rates of male imprisonment are another factor, he added. ‘This leads to imbalances in male-to-female ratios in the community, which in turn result in sexual networks which facilitate transmission of HIV.’”

I guess he’s part right, but he’s missing something public health types have ignored for decades—HIV is spread in prisons and they and corrections officials have done virtually nothing to deter that.

Imagine my surprise at the West Chicago school board president strongly criticizing bilingual education.

When I was in first grade (the only first grade class, Miss Callahan’s) in Easton, Maryland, in 1948 two really big girls joined us after school started.

After a while we saw them in the hall mixing with another class. I think it was the second graders in Miss Sullivan’s class across the hall.

Later they went to still a third teacher and then, they disappeared into the upper levels of elementary school at the front of the building.

I learned they were called “displaced persons,” “DP’s” for short.

The point of this little story is that there was no bilingual education in 1948-49 and these two girls presumably did fine.

Fast forward to 1975, I think, when Boris Antonovych, a Republican Ukrainian American in the Illinois House was sponsoring a bilingual education bill. He sat behind me next to Roger Keats. Both had been elected the same year.

We had the bill beaten when Boris prevailed upon his seatmate Roger to switch his vote from “No” to “Yes.”

The bill ended up passing.

I think it was later that I verified my early personal experience by talking to Gil Johnston, a professor at John Marshall Law School.

Before that he had headed legal aid in Hawaii.

Gil told me that the native Hawaiians who went to the native speaking schools generally “didn’t make it.” Those who attended English-speaking schools did.

Now, the Sunday Daily Herald’s lead story is about another immigrant, one from Mexico, who is now president of the West Chicago School Board.

55-year old Tony Reyes told reporter Rupa Shenoy:

“By the end of the first day, he and the rest of the Mexican kids had learned at least one English phrase: ‘Miss, may I be excused?’

“’It came out more like, “Miss bees cues?”

“‘It was like a rhyme,’ Reyes said. ‘If you didn’t learn it, you wet your pants.’”

His success story adds a third point in my belief that English immersion is the way to go.

And, here’s a tid-bit from far down in the long article:

“test scores seem to indicate something is working. As the school’s Latino population increases, standardized test scores have improved.”

And,

“In reading, 21.1 percent of Latinos met AYP goals in 2004. The next year 32.6 percent hit the mark, and in 2006, 43.5 percent did so.”

Any local high school able to show that kind of progress?

How different from the Waukegan experience where a teacher was fired because she couldn’t speak Spanish.

Imagine my surprise at the West Chicago school board president strongly criticizing bilingual education.

When I was in first grade (the only first grade class, Miss Callahan’s) in Easton, Maryland, in 1948 two really big girls joined us after school started.

After a while we saw them in the hall mixing with another class. I think it was the second graders in Miss Sullivan’s class across the hall.

Later they went to still a third teacher and then, they disappeared into the upper levels of elementary school at the front of the building.

I learned they were called “displaced persons,” “DP’s” for short.

The point of this little story is that there was no bilingual education in 1948-49 and these two girls presumably did fine.

Fast forward to 1975, I think, when Boris Antonovych, a Republican Ukrainian American in the Illinois House was sponsoring a bilingual education bill. He sat behind me next to Roger Keats. Both had been elected the same year.

We had the bill beaten when Boris prevailed upon his seatmate Roger to switch his vote from “No” to “Yes.”

The bill ended up passing.

I think it was later that I verified my early personal experience by talking to Gil Johnston, a professor at John Marshall Law School.

Before that he had headed legal aid in Hawaii.

Gil told me that the native Hawaiians who went to the native speaking schools generally “didn’t make it.” Those who attended English-speaking schools did.

Now, the Sunday Daily Herald’s lead story is about another immigrant, one from Mexico, who is now president of the West Chicago School Board.

55-year old Tony Reyes told reporter Rupa Shenoy:

“By the end of the first day, he and the rest of the Mexican kids had learned at least one English phrase: ‘Miss, may I be excused?’

“’It came out more like, “Miss bees cues?”

“‘It was like a rhyme,’ Reyes said. ‘If you didn’t learn it, you wet your pants.’”

His success story adds a third point in my belief that English immersion is the way to go.

And, here’s a tid-bit from far down in the long article:

“test scores seem to indicate something is working. As the school’s Latino population increases, standardized test scores have improved.”

And,

“In reading, 21.1 percent of Latinos met AYP goals in 2004. The next year 32.6 percent hit the mark, and in 2006, 43.5 percent did so.”

Any local high school able to show that kind of progress?

How different from the Waukegan experience where a teacher was fired because she couldn’t speak Spanish.