Posted on 08/31/2007 10:24:27 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
HOUSTON (AP) - A school district suspended a police officer as it investigates his distribution of a "Ghetto Handbook" and the three-month lapse before top district officials were informed of it.
The eight-page booklet, subtitled "Wucha dun did now?", was handed out to about 15 Houston Independent School District police officers at a May meeting, district spokesman Terry Abbott said. Officials declined to identify the officer who handed them out, but said he had been ordered to attend diversity training.
A supervisor immediately collected the booklets, Abbott said, but district officials said they didn't learn about the incident until someone complained to the district's Equal Employment Opportunity Office in mid-August.
"This publication was completely reprehensible and HISD condemns it in the strongest possible terms," Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said in a written statement Thursday.
He said he has "mounted a very aggressive investigation."
District Police Chief Charles Wiley had no comment, Abbott said.
The booklet billed itself as a guide to Ebonics, teaching the reader to speak "as if you just came out of the hood." It included definitions such as "foty: a 40-ounce bottle of beer"; "aks: to ask a question"; and "hoodrat: scummy girl."
The booklet names six district officers "and the entire day shift patrol" as contributors. Abbott said a preliminary investigation has cleared those officers of involvement.
Last year, almost 30 percent of the district's 202,000 students were black and almost 60 percent were Hispanic.
Carol Mims Galloway, president of the Houston NAACP chapter, said the officer who created the book should be severely punished or fired.
"It was really a slap in the African-American community's face," said Galloway, who is running for the school board.
"We're paying their salaries with our tax dollars," Galloway said of the district police. "It does reflect on the district."
School board member Larry Marshall said the document was inappropriate, even if it was meant to be a joke.
"These are very racially sensitive times," he said. "It was a huge mistake in judgment."
If anyone finds a copy of this Ghetto Handbook, please ping me.
I need a good laugh.
Where I work you don’t need a handbook:-(
I gonna ax fo a copy.
i wonder what would have happened if black officer’s handed out booklets on how to be white. probably would have been required reading at the local schools.
Huh? Am I reading those numbers correctly? Are there only 10% whites in HISD?
He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
“These are very racially sensitive times.”
Crap, these have been very racially sensitive times for the last 35 years. I think due in part to the internet and the communication it allows “whitey” is starting to wake up and get over white guilt.
If these stupid teachers could teach their students to speak properly, it wouldn’t be an issue.....more than racially sensitive..I think it is “NEA sensitive”...god forbid the public learn the truth about public schools
Sounds like a training aid for uncover work, or helping to build relationships in some neighbor hoods. I must be missing something here, if that's how people talk then why the uproar?
Iz beez ats da Detroyts publik lybary.
>>>>>>>It was really a slap in the African-American community’s face<<<<<<<<
I wonder what part of Africa they were born in.....
I just want a copy.
A handbook for teaching in the ghetto school.
by Sidney Trubowitz
Publisher: Chicago, Quadrangle Books [1968]
Hustla’s Handbook is rapper Mack 10’s eighth studio album.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustla‘s_Handbook
Ghetto dictionary
dediforma.netfirms.com/ghetto_dictionary.html
>> The eight-page booklet, subtitled “Wucha dun did now?”,
OK, the title could’ve been a bit more (snaps fingers) what’s the term, “racially sensitive”...
Other than that, training officers in the kind of language they’re likely to encounter on the street is simply an exercise in police tactics, and there’s nothing improper about it.
The REAL shame here is that inner city blacks themselves find this language proper and acceptable, even desirable.
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