A Lecture from Rep. Waters

Rep. Ron Waters takes to the pages of the Daily Times to condemn white on black "hate crimes."

The wave of hate crimes and racially motivated incidents throughout Pennsylvania in recent months has left me shocked and saddened.

With the state and nation becoming more and more diverse, we should be celebrating our differences, the richness of cultures that makes our society better. But some people are reacting to this diversity with anger, threats and acts of violence.

What’s even more disturbing is many acts are being committed by young people.

Please! What Waters describes is hardly a "wave," it is the tiniest of ripples, if that.

He cites a handful of unattractive racial incidents and calls on all Pennsylvanians to condemn them. Fine! Hate crimes are bad. People shouldn't do them.

Now how does Rep. Waters feel about the real problem of black-on-black crime that is seeing hundreds of young black men killed each year, thousands of black citizens robbed or shot or assaulted each year and thousands of young black men incarcerated each year?

Waters quotes James Carville's old line about Pennsylvania being Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, as if more rural Pennsylvanians were a real and growing threat to black people. We all know how scared and clingy they are to their
guns and religion.

It is especially galling to be lectured by Waters, whose history as a law-abiding citizen is not exactly pristine.

From a Pottstown Mercury story last year on State reps with criminal raps in their past...

Rep. Ronald Waters, D-Philadelphia, received a five- to 23-month sentence in 1981 after he was found guilty by a jury of possession with intent to deliver drugs. Court records show a police search of a Chester apartment turned up more than three ounces of methamphetamine, a drug-cutting substance, ammunition, cash, cocaine residue and two handguns with obliterated serial marks.

An informant had told police about drug sales at the apartment, police said in court records. A judge ruling on the legality of the search wrote that police said Waters told them he had no connection with the apartment, but investigators found his mail and prescription drugs inside and said he had a key that fit the lock.

In a sentencing transcript, Waters asserted his innocence and said he would appeal.

"I was at the wrong place at the wrong time," he told the judge. "I have always had a good reputation in west Philadelphia and it is just not my nature and I happened to be there." The judge chastised him for his lack of cooperation with Chester police.

Fine, he was a much younger man at the time, but 31 is old enough to know better. At the very least he should realize that real problems that African Americans face in this state are not from a few insensitive white kids.

If this is the best the head of the Black Caucus can come up with to "celebrate" Black History Month, God help his constituents.