Jacksonville FL - Racial Disparaties Deep Rooted From Birth

'Depressing' racial split shown to start at birth

Inequalities that begin at birth stack the deck against some of Jacksonville's children and worsen the problem of violent crime in the community, according to a new report.

The comprehensive study, authored by the Jacksonville Children's Commission and coupled with two other projects, has reignited the debate over the story of race in the city. And it presents dozens of statistics that paint a sobering picture of ongoing racial and ethnic disparities among children from birth to young adulthood. Among them:

- One in three black children live in poverty, compared with fewer than one in 10 white children.

- More than 13 percent of black infants are born with a low birth weight, compared with 7 percent of white babies.

- Black students are suspended from school at a rate more than twice that of white students.

The statistics presented in the report were so stark that they stunned into silence a group of pediatricians at a meeting, said Anne Egan, the commission's chairwoman and a pediatrician herself.

"The truth about our children took those who care for them by surprise," she said.

The findings illustrate why the city must get involved in the lives of at-risk children, Mayor John Peyton said at the report's release Monday.

Peyton bluntly confronted the idea that the city shouldn't get in the business of raising kids - a mindset he called prevalent in Jacksonville.

"We're in the business whether we like it or not," he said. "When we lose kids, then we spend $27,000 [a year] incarcerating them."

To turn our back on kids is a mistake, Peyton said - children don't choose the environment they are born into. He pledged to try to keep funding levels stable for children's programs aimed at reducing crime in the city, despite hard economic times.

Peyton also touted the Jacksonville Journey, a $31 million anti-crime initiative that includes social programs, as an important commitment to children - although the Journey came under fire last year from critics who said it gave too much money to law enforcement at the expense of education.

The Journey is providing extra money to the Children's Commission for after-school programs and other initiatives to prevent children and teens from getting in trouble.

Journey co-chairwoman Betty Holzendorf called the report "depressing."