Jesse Jackson's New Chaos Theory

I have to say this much for that enduring Jack-in-the-box, the Rev. Jesse Jackson: He never ceases to amaze me with his absurd litany of accusations against mainstream American society and its supposed racism.

Jackson's latest race-baiting tomfoolery manifested itself last month in Springfield, Ill., where Jackson revealed to the world the existence of a conspiracy to throw black students out of school.

What possible motivation, you may ask, could lie behind so mean-spirited a conspiracy?

You may want to tighten your seat belts for this one, because it's the kind of reasoning that could come only from Jackson at his self-indulgent, misguided best.

According to the local newspaper, The Herald & Review, Jackson says that the conspiracy aims at putting more inmates into an ever-increasing number of prisons, thereby giving greater job security to white prison guards and administrators.

I've got to give the good reverend points for creativity, anyway. In a nation prospering under one of the strongest economies in our history, an economy which every day makes it tougher to peddle the concept of a downtrodden, victimized and _ of course _ African-American underclass, it takes real imagination on Jackson's part to keep coming up with the kind of crises his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition needs to sustain itself.

Why, Jackson even has a catchy name for his theory of prison-oriented, society-wide racism: ``the Decatur Syndrome.''

In case you missed it, Decatur, Ill., is the city where Jackson sought to intimidate the school board into reinstating six black high-school students who had been suspended from school after being videotaped brawling viciously in the stands during a football game.

Unable to fathom the possibility that he and his misguided minions could be wrong about the moral character of these six young thugs, Jackson turned for support to such great legal minds as that of Leroy Pernell, dean of the Northern Illinois University Law School in De Kalb.

Schools are actively looking for excuses to discipline black pupils, Pernell insisted.

``There's a myth that these kids are being put out because they are dangerous,'' Pernell said at a Springfield meeting led by Jackson. ``The overriding offense that puts our children in legal jeopardy in the school system is being uppity.''

Now there is a word you don't hear much anymore _ ``uppity.''

It's an incendiary term, harkening back to a time in American history when a black man could be lynched if a white man decided he was being uppity. The good dean knows how to mix quite a verbal Molotov cocktail.

Some children are targeted for discipline, he added, while others ``of a different hue'' escape trouble.

``These children become the fodder in an industrial-prison complex designed to make money for everybody else,'' Pernell concluded.

Well, that's one way to look at it.

Sadly, the objective statistics tell a story that doesn't line up with the feel-good interpretations of African-American leaders of Jackson's ilk.

This is all the more unfortunate in that it is blacks themselves who suffer most from the depredations of the disturbingly large number of amoral, violent black children.

According to the United States Department of Justice, black Americans are disproportionately likely to be the victims of violent crime. In 1998, for example, black Americans were six times more likely to be murdered than were whites.

And they are generally victimized not by white racists but by black sociopaths _ the same statistics showed that blacks were seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide.

In the past, apologists have sought to blame this epidemic of black-on-black crime on poverty and the debilitating effects of white racism. But too many successful black Americans now stand as living evidence that those factors can no longer serve as blanket excuses for social misfits.

Enter Jackson, Pernell and company with a new generation of pathological denial, blaming everything on ``the Decatur Syndrome'' and the ``industrial-prison complex.''

True enough, capturing, convicting and containing the feral elements of the African-American community has indeed blossomed into a growth industry.

But, from where I'm perched, that's an effect, not a cause. No amount of claims of new-look racism will change the cold, hard facts of African-American thuggery and murder. c.2000 Ken Hamblin

(Ken Hamblin is the author, most recently, of ``Plain Talk and Common Sense'' (Simon & Schuster, 1999). He writes a column for the Denver Post and has been a radio talk-show host for 16 years. His program is syndicated by American View Inc., and currently is carried by 120 stations across the country.) EDITOR: Don't forget to visit The New York Times Syndicate Website at http://www.nytimes.com/syndicate for information on Ken Hamblin and other features. -------------------------------------------------

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