If you don't know who the Jena 6 are, you are not alone. The first I heard about the black high school teens being railroaded through the Louisiana criminal justice system was last week when I received an email urging me to wear black Thursday the 20th in their support.
The first Sean Hannity heard about it was last night when Reverend Al was trying to bring it up and Hannity assumed he was talking about Megan Williams, the young black woman who was tortured and sexually assaulted by those crazy hillbillies in West Virginia. Cryptkeeper Colmes tried to explain but as usual Hannity didn't hear a word he said.
The Jena 6 case began last fall when a new black student to the mostly white, rural Louisiana town of Jena sat under the "white tree," so called because it was the place where the white kids at school congregated.
The next day three white boys on the rodeo team hung three nooses from the tree.
The white boys were only given an in-school suspension, their act deemed no more than a "prank."
The day after that several of the school's black high school football stars organized a peaceful silent protest under the tree. The school freaked, called in the police and the next day Reed Walters, the local D.A., addressed the school. There, he is reported to have looked at the black kids in the audience, waved his pen in the air and said, "With a stroke of this pen, I can make your life disappear."
The football season was a good one for Jena and for a few months there was relative quiet in the town. Then on November 30th, a wing of the high school was burned down. Whites thought it was blacks and the blacks assumed it was the whites.
The always excellent Wade Goodwyn of NPR reported what happened next:
"The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.
After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.The following Monday, Dec. 4, a white student named Justin Barker was loudly bragging to friends in the school hallway that Robert Bailey had been whipped by a white man on Friday night. When Barker walked into the courtyard, he was attacked by a group of black students. The first punch knocked Barker out and he was kicked several times in the head. But the injuries turned out to be superficial. Barker was examined by doctors and released; he went out to a social function later that evening.
Six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated assault. But District Attorney Reed Walters increased the charges to attempted second-degree murder."
The first black kid to go to court, Mychal Bell, then 16, was tried as an adult and convicted by an all-white jury. He faced 22 years in prison. After an outcry the charges were reduced; however, tomorrow Mychal Bell is to be sentenced on the lesser charges.
The white kids who attacked Bailey the night before have not been charged with anything.
As always happens in these cases, the blacks say of course there has always been racism in this little town, and the whites say their little town is just like any other small town full of good, churchgoing folk.
What white Southerners still fail to realize is their complicity in some of the most vicious and effective terrorism the world has ever seen. Lynchings were only the most visible and brutal embodiments of a system to terrorize the black minority. A noose is a symbol the way a swastika is a symbol. A noose hanging from a tree in that context is an almost unimaginably vicious act. Those white teens, instead of being ashamed of their terrorist ancestry, reveled in the evil. The adults who are charged with the education of all the students deemed it merely a prank.
The scariest part of this ordeal is that you know these boys are the relatively lucky ones for whom publicity might spare them. How many other black lives are still thrown away at the whim of our broken justice system?
The thing is you have obviously not moved on, there is still racism, there are still deep and stark divide, and until you can learn to move on from this and preach and live like people like Martin Luther King and realise that we are all the same then you will never learn.
There will be killing by guns by disgruntled narrow minded students killing other people because they are alone. Police Officers will still attach minorities because although they are there to "Serve and Protect" racism and biggotry will still ditcate that the whites will get everything and those who speak English, despite Spanish being more widely spoken will get better treatment.
In short it is a second class society where both sides are victims of who they are - whites will still believe they are better than all others and black, hispanic and so on will believe that they are second class citizens so why bother trying to do anything better and no one will improve or overcome social predudice and that is the way it will be with you!!!!
I moved from MN to rural Louisiana 5 years ago, and the detestable racism is blatant, offensive, and seemingly ENDLESS. There are some white people in my circle of friends who reject this sh*t. Friends in inter-racial relationships, a white couple who lead NAACP outside NOLA, a gay couple sharing their home with a dear friend.
I pray for the safety of the six families in Jena, being subjected to the UGLIEST racist PIGS America produces.
So much for the lie that people won't leave their keyboards and take to the STREETS.
Al Sharpton and other organisers....BRAVO!
First, Mr. Ellis has written a convincing and informative article. Based on the details given, it appears that the white boys are the most wrong, and the black boys suffered from injustice. Overall it sounds like a pretty ignorant community.
Second, it is wrong to compare the swastika to a noose. The swastika is an ancient Vedic symbol of auspiciousness and luck. To perpetuate it as a symbol of hatred is also racist, as it has always been an important religious symbol Indian culture. It even appears as one of the markings on the feet of Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Perpetuating the swastika as a symbol of hatred is an offense against Hindu culture and Krishna's devotees all over the world.
All of us, whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Middle Eastern, pure Africans, everyone who descends from a group of people who were NOT originally from here, are all immigrants. Anglos invaded and almost completely wiped the real natives off the map with disease and warfare.
Just imagine if the Indians had never helped the pilgrims make it through their first winter, if they never taught them what was safe to eat, and how to work the land, none of us would be here debating this issue now. Racism created this country, how'd they pay back the Indians for helping them prosper? Oh...um, I remember, they took their land and began the approximately 400-year destruction of what could have been the only real life Shangri-la with peoples of all backgrounds coexisting peacefully setting a real example for the rest of the world to follow.
That said, I am even more disgusted--yes, more--by the usual posse of hate mongers taking advantage of these childrens' plights. Namely the "Reverend" (read Charlatan) Al Sharpton. This I got from the AP regarding the march and protest in Jena today:
"The Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize the march, planned to do his syndicated radio show from Alexandria on Wednesday, then travel about 35 miles to Jena in an attempt to visit Bell, who remains in jail because he is unable to post $90,000 bond."
$90,000? I have personally seen Al walk out of Le Cirque on more than one occasion. If you're having lunch there, $90,000 is chump change. Al could really help this kid by posting his bond and getting him out of jail. Why doesn't he? Why doesn't he at least try to rally people to raise the money to get him out? These are, of course, rhetorical questions. The answer is itself rhetorical and simple: How does getting this kid out of jail help Al Sharpton? Answer: It doesn't.
Whites jumped a black student, broke a beer bottle over his head and the police did nothing. Not even so much as a police report, no one got jail time, or assault or attempted murder charges.
Whites pulled a shotgun on three blacks and the black kids wrestled it away and took off, can't blame them. But they were charged with theft of a gun, nothing for the white that was pointing it in their face.
Whites hang nooses on a tree of a public school, government property, to keep black kids away and no hate crime charges?
How convenient that it's not until the black kids fight back, literally, against a white for his blatant racist statements and continued harassment do the "authorities" step in.
Sad truth, but America's racism was born with Caucasians from the moment they met and/or killed their first Indian because they weren't "civilized". Reservations were suppose to be the, “we’re sorry, this patch of land should make up for everything else we stole” for the first group wronged. Abolishment of owning other humans was the, “oops, we did it again, here have some temporary voting and civil ‘rights’” for the second group. Closing the surveillance camps after Pearl Harbor, “third time’s the charm?” for the Asians imprisoned for having nothing to do with the gratuitous attack.
Racism is unacceptable, regardless of the color of origin. But, gee, I just can’t, for the life of me, figure out where the minority frustrate with Anglos is stemming from.
so why are blacks defending these kids...does the culture lack any decent people to defend and hold in esteem...why are blacks constantly coming to the defense of thugs and criminals?
why not honor and talk about the black kids and the white kids in jena that didn't come to blows after the incident...why not hold them up as examples for everyone to see...the kids that made the effort to get along peacefully...that didn't let racism reduce them to thugs...why not them...why defend the 6 kids who took it upon themselves to attack and beat a white kid???
why always defend thugs and criminals????
I see plenty of whites here defending the white kids -- so does that mean all or most whites support white kids hanging nooses from trees and pulling shotguns on black people?
If you're going to claim to want to be objective in this matter, you should point out that both blacks AND whites are defending "thugs and criminals" of their own shade.
again..why can't jesse and al et al. find better examples to defend...kids who are not thugs and criminals!