What have I done?  I may have inadvertently uncovered a major discrimination conspiracy!  On my last post, I wrote about an article that claimed that statistically minorities are stopped by the police in Illinois more often than should occur based upon the percentage of minorities who drive.  I pointed out that there may be problems with drawing valid conclusions based upon statistics.  I used as an example the gender problem in relation to Driving Under the Influence (DUI) where a much higher percentage of males are convicted than females.  Today, it was suggested that I look at section Z of the Peoria Journal Star published on July 6, 2006.  


I did.  The results were shocking.  Felony dispositions in Judge John Huschen’s court room in Woodford County were given. (page Z4)  The following first names were given in the 15 cases listed.  The names were Robert, Billy, James, Jennifer, Kyle, Andrew, Kelly, Joseph, Michael, Robert, William, Ashley, John, Gregory, and Christopher.  Both Billy and Kelly could be names given to either a male or a female.  I assigned both of them to the male group because Billy was an “II” and almost all “II” are male and Kelly was convicted of “unauthorized possession and storage of weapons” which led me to believe he is probably male too.  If both Billy and Kelly are males, 13 of the 15 people convicted of felony crimes are male and only two of the 15 are female.  Since about half of the population is male and half female, it seems obvious that our court system is skewed in favor of convicting males of felonies.  Wouldn’t you agree?


That’s not all.   The paper also listed “arrests for drunken driving and incidents of property crimes in Tazewell County….” (page Z6)  I must stress that those listed have not been convicted of these crimes yet.  They were arrested.  The disposition of the case has not yet occurred.  All those listed were DUIS which in some cases included other related offenses such as speeding.  Again, these are arrests and at this point all are innocent.


The first names in the cases included Darren, Michael, Jennings, William, Joseph, Chad, Joseph, Julia, Seth, Kelly, Jason, Lyle, John, Gregory, Cornello, Dan, James, Donovan, Roberta, Dustin, Angela, Scott, Daniel, Robert, Telly, Christopher, Ted, Andrea, Christina, Lemual, Kirk, Lemual, Allen, Tyson, David, Justin, Seth, Jaden, Lori, Brian, Stephen, Joseph, Rickey, Jerry, Robert, Danny, Allen, Thomas, Cynthia, Dustin, Timothy, Kenneth, Russell, and Charles.  (In some instances, some of these were identified as either a he or a she.)  54 different individuals in all.  Granted that I may not have categorized each one correctly, I determined that 46 of them are male while only 8 females are listed.  Again, with an approximate 50% split between males and females, the percent of males arrested to females arrested seems to be very disproportional.  Wouldn’t you agree?        


That’s not all.  The paper also had an article on the top 10 students from the senior class at Metamora Township High School with pictures of each of the ten. (page Z2)  8 of the 10 top students at Metamora High School are female.  The two male students’ class rank was 5 and 10 respectively.  If the school has a senior class of approximately 50% male students and 50% female students, at least four and possibly five or six of the top ranked students should be male statistically.  What is going on?  It seems that male students are facing discrimination in the classroom.  Wouldn’t you agree?


Obviously, some serious discrimination is occurring and no one is concerned about it.  At least, it doesn’t seem like anyone is concerned about it.  Should the State of Illinois investigate this blatant discrimination or should we demand a federal investigation?  Why is this discrimination being allowed to continue?  Gender discrimination seems to be alive and well in Illinois—at least statistically.