White men taking sledgehammers to the door of the jailhouse in Marion, Ind., intending to murder three African-American prisoners. The sheriff orders his men not to interfere.
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White men hearing testimony tying two white defendants conclusively to the kidnap, torture and murder of a black boy in Money, Miss. The jury takes less than an hour to set them free.
White men with badges arresting three civil rights workers for an alleged traffic violation in Neshoba County, Miss. Forty-four days later, the workers' bodies are dug out of an earthen dam.
There are other examples -- literally thousands -- but let three suffice to make the point. Which is that African Americans have frequently found the justice system to be about anything but justice. From the day slavery ended, that system has often been its surrogate, a tool used specifically for the suppression and control of black people.
There was no artifice about it. This conspiracy of beat cops and county sheriffs and DAs and judges and senators and attorney generals operated openly and with impunity.
Everyone knew there were simply different rules, different enforcement, and different punishment for blacks.
Maybe your impulse is to seal all that off in a mental box called history, interesting, lamentable, but hardly relevant. In which case, what will you say about Jena?
Meaning, of course, the tiny Louisiana town now infamous for a series of events that began a year ago when a black high school student asked the principal if it was OK for him to sit under a shade tree white kids claimed as theirs. The principal told him yes. But the next day, nooses were found hanging in the tree.
The principal wanted the white kids who did it expelled, but the superintendent overruled him, briefly suspending them instead. Expulsion, he felt, was excessive for this 'prank.'
There followed weeks of racial brawls and even an arson fire. A black student, Robert Bailey, was hit in the head with a beer bottle by a white kid who was later charged with simple battery and released on probation.
After a white student, Justin Barker, supposedly taunted Bailey about it, six black kids allegedly jumped him, kicking and stomping. Barker was knocked out and had a black eye. He was treated and released at the hospital and felt well enough to go out that same night.
Yet the DA called it attempted murder.
Yes, charges against five of the six were eventually reduced. Yes, an appeals court just overturned the aggravated battery conviction of the only student whose case has been adjudicated.
But it is hard to be sanguine. This unjust justice is hardly unique. Consider Genarlow Wilson, 17, sentenced to 10 years for a voluntary act of oral sex with a 15-year-old. And Marcus Dixon, 18, who drew 10 for having sex with an underage white girl. And Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a white teacher's aide and got seven years from a judge who had earlier given probation to a white girl who burned down her family's house. A 2000 study cosponsored by the Justice Department codifies the obvious: People of color receive starkly unequal treatment in the 'justice' system.
Where blacks are concerned, it seems, that system often still exists not to enforce law and protect order, but to intimidate and compel. But at least they care enough about appearances these days to lie.
'Race? This has nothing to do with race. Oh, no.' Prosecutors justifying the unjustifiable. Utterly convinced of their own blamelessness.
One might ask why it is that black justice so seldom looks like real justice, even today.
The answer is that history does not fit in a box. And once upon a time is now. "
"Much as with the original O.J. trial, the uproar over the arrest of six black students in Jena, La., has white people shaking our heads.
"The facts of the case are not in dispute: Six black students beat a white student unconscious. The blacks were identified, charged and arrested. On the face of it, the only issue was whether the charge should be one of attempted murder or of assault.
It may also have been a hate crime against the white student, but, as usual, the news media only report on such things when the black person is the victim.
Somehow, the story has been turned around. Somehow we are led to believe that the attackers are the victims in this small Southern town. It's Emmitt Till all over again, but wasn't Emmitt Till the one who was attacked and murdered, not the attacker?
Are blacks now to be absolved of crimes simply because they are black?
By the way, the white student's name is Justin Barker. He is doing fine, if anyone cares about the real victim here."
Thank you Abe Krieger, you spoke for the rest of white A-merry-ca with your essay.
27 comments:
Field, great post. Thanks for making it plain in black and white.
Peace
one mo' 'gin Mr. Field-Negro:
"As it turns out, a bond hearing revealed that Mychal Bell has a history of juvenile scrapes with the law, one of which involved him punching out a 17-year-old girl."
http://blackandright.mensnewsdaily.com/2007/09/24/a-jena-six-why-revealed/
Field, what if this Negroe had punched out one of your 17-year-old female relatives, would you then be for some prosecutorial overeach then?
Or, would there be some Field-Negro overreach?
___________________________________
Genarlow Wilson:
Field, you have said a mouthful.
I take it then that you would not have a problem with a female member of your clan being videoed performing male fellatio on Mr. Genarlow Wilson?
Genarlow Wilson was callous and had complete disregard for his sexual partners, from one girls vagina into another girls mouth.
That is plain olde nastidy and a STD vector.
Just how many females did he have some form of sex with that night. Additionally, after he used them, his rapz used them too and versa vise.
He should go to jail for being vulgar, if nothing else.
Keep these disease spreading, baby mama making Negroes off of the streets.
Adults should not be tagging eachother if they cannot finacially handle the consequences of their actions.
Don't tax me to pay for some lame-brain's AZT.
I do not want to pay for baby mamas baby nor for her anti-bacterial regime.
`
nsangoma,
You seem to be one of those people who can force a square peg in a round hole and proud of it.
Hathor same query:
"As it turns out, a bond hearing revealed that Mychal Bell has a history of juvenile scrapes with the law, one of which involved him punching out a 17-year-old girl."
http://blackandright.mensnewsdaily.com/2007/09/24/a-jena-six-why-revealed/
Hathor, what if this Negroe had punched out one of your 17-year-old female relatives, would you then be for some prosecutorial overeach then?
Or, would there be some Hathor overreach?
The white folke in Jee-na said to Mychal Bell, as long as you are whipping up on black people, running this football and taking us to the state championship, no problem.
But the minute you touch one of us, Negroe your @ss is gr@ss.
Now, what the good black folk of Jee-na should have been saying to Mychal Bell is, as long as you are whipping your meat, running this football and taking us to the state championships, no problem.
But the minute you touch one of our daughter-babies or drive over one of our children, your gr@ss is @ss.
It is not white Jee-na's fault that black Jee-na does not value themselves or their scion.
`
Shaquanda Cotton and her brother have different last names.
Creola, who dey daddy?
Creola, where dey daddy be at?
Oh, that's right Shaquanda pushed the teacher's aide a'cause she needed her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medicine.
Field yall gotz plenty of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medicine in Philadelphia?
If so, if not, bring Shaquanda to your hood and let her push around the school administrators at your local public school.
Why should the good black people of Paris TX be burdened with this Negroe when you obviously lub her so.
`
nsangoma, you are starting to scare me.
Really, huh? I'm sounding like my Mama, but I have to say...nsangoma, you're gonna make yourself sick.
-Acanthus
Jena 6 Gene sis
Coincidence?
What do the prophets say?
If I continue the paranoid thought.... Genesis 6 is the chapter on Noah (read Global warming) wherein God punishes man for his wickedness. Specifically Chapter 6, verse 6 :
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
I am not much of a church man, but that made me a little numb when I looked it up.
"A 2000 study cosponsored by the Justice Department codifies the obvious: People of color receive starkly unequal treatment in the 'justice' system."
Field, please be careful, I believe you were told in the Instapundit Bum Rush post, that using empirical data was a "right-wing" activity! Have you sold out?? LOL!!!
Nsangoma: Are you kidding me?? You REALLY think that Genarlow Wilson should go to JAIL for being a careless MALE TEENAGER as it relates to sex?? If I only had a nickel for every teenager who had sex carelessly, I wouldn't be at WORK right now, trying to hurry up and respond to this post, so I can go and do my job!!!
I don't know, but the last time I checked (and I have been a girl my ENTIRE life) if I DON'T WANT A BOY/MAN TO SHOW A VIDEO OF ME HAVING SEX WITH HIM, THEN EITHER I DON'T HAVE SEX WITH HIM OR I DON'T ALLOW HIM TO VIDEO!!!
I think that the same train of thought applies to him being ALLOWED to move "from one girls vagina into another girls mouth." That too, I believe, is a choice that the young lady had as well. She admitted the sex was CONSENTUAL - in other words THEY BOTH agreed!
She got just as much respect as she demanded . . .
Okay, let's just say that Mychal Bell deserves everything he is going through (hypothetically); I hear Field (and all the rest of us saying) let's just treat the little white kids the same way you treat this boy.
BTW - Shaquanda is welcomed in my school . . . We'll treat her like she got our last name . . . LOL!!!
Also, do read the federal law as it relates to children with disabilities . . knowing the truth will help you not sound so ignorant.
@NSangoma -
Pretty rare that I see someone who actually appears to be a textbook Conservative in the fields. I'd suggest that you research your topics better, though.
To answer your questions:
1) If someone attacked one of my female relatives, and they weren't in a relationship with the attacker, I'd offer that female training to reduce the likelihood of that occurring again. So few people have formal training in combat that even a marginal level of training can make a huge difference. If they were in a relationship, I'd try to convince her to get out of it, and help her do so.
2) I try not to impose my personal moral code on others. You seem not to have such an inhibition. However, I'll note that it's pretty trivial to make a network argument that safe, effective treatment and eduction for and about STDs helps the average network member enough that it's worth every members' chipping in for education about and treatment of STDs. Even if one restricts oneself to Conservative-preferred arguments, reducing the spread and impact of STDs (or even disease in general) dramatically improves the condition of many markets, including the labor market and the consumer goods and services markets.
3) So you apparently support separate and unequal justice. I do not. I'm pretty safe in suggesting that none of the site regulars support such a proposition.
4) I think that education is a network issue in which we all have an interest, so I'd prefer that it be federally funded.
I will have to note that I'm a bit suspicious that you're trolling for comments.
Thanks for the post Field!
and
NSangoma@ I refuse to believe that you believe what you wrote. You do yourself an injustice when you respond without factual information and the most minimal of analytical skills.
You have essentially announced that equal treatment under the law is of no interest to you. When ever I see instances like those referenced in this post I research, question and then I recognize that this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum and that I could be in the same position as any of those people mentioned. You don't see that? Surely you dont believe that bad things only happen to bad people?
When you ask "why dont you take Shaquanda or Mychel" to your house, school or whatever you just prove to others that your thought processes are small scale where the larger community is concerned.
We shouldn't have to take one individual here and another individual there, collectively we should be able to exist and thrive in an America that would not exist were it not for US and a system that makes examples of us.
forgive the tangent Field.
Reading the comments to the past few posts reinforces my belief that segregation is not a bad thing.
I don't know how I feel exactly about this case because the "facts" continue to sift and change. The kid Bell seems to have a history of violence. He may have been overcharged. The others certainly were overcharged. The white kid was being robbed but had time to pull out a shotgun and it was taken from him and the takers were charged with theft because the white kid was defending himself? What!? Where am I, Disneyland? Is there anything about this set of "facts" that's makes any sense at all?
The white kid was beaten half death but went out to a social event that evening? Spent two hours in the hospital? Was that two hours being treated or an hour and 45 minutes sitting in emergency waiting for a doctor and 15 minutes getting treated? Yes, I saw his face. He was beat down. But attempted murder by tennis shoe?
It seems if the adults had acted responsibly in the first darn place when the noose incident occurred, we wouldn't be here now. When is a noose hanging from a tree not a racially charged symbol? How is it that this Bell kid is now on his third violent act? Does he HAVE parents?
Given the opportunity, adults will always fail kids. The parents of all these kids (white and black), the school district, the DA, all of these incompetents created this mess by making one bad decision after another and now they're crying because they're being portrayed unfairly in the press. What part of incompetent don't we understand?
The part of the story below that kills me is that one kid was convicted by an all-white jury. Blacks were called to serve but didn't show up. If true, WTF?
**********************************
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOl6L858y0iDf4k_28ojhYLcuLGg
Locals Dispute Growing Story of Jena 6
By TODD LEWAN – 1 day ago
JENA, La. (AP) — It's got all the elements of a Delta blues ballad from the days of Jim Crow: hangman's nooses dangling from a shade tree; a mysterious fire in the night; swift deliberations by a condemning, all-white jury.
And drawn by this story, which evokes the worst of a nightmarish past, they came by the thousands this past week to Jena, La. — to demand justice, to show strength, to beat back the forces of racism as did their parents and grandparents.
But there are many in Jena who say the tale of the "Jena Six" — the black teenagers who were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy for attacking a white classmate at Jena High School last December — is not as simple as all that.
Black and white, they say that in its repeated retelling — enhanced by omissions and alterations of fact — the story has taken on a life of its own. It has transformed a school-yard stomping into an international cause celebre, and those accused of participating in it into what one major Southern daily came to describe as "latter-day Scottsboro Boys."
And they say that while their town's race relations are not unblemished, this is not the cauldron of bigotry that has been depicted.
To Ben Reid, 61, who set down roots in Jena in 1957 and lived here throughout the civil rights era, "this whole thing ain't no downright, racial affair."
Reid, who is black, presently serves on the LaSalle Parish council. He reads the papers. He hears the talk outside of church on Sundays about how the Jena Six business is dividing his hometown down racial lines.
He doesn't buy it.
"You have good people here and bad people here, on both sides. This thing has been blown out of proportion. What we ought to do is sit down and talk this thing out, 'cause once all is said and done and you media folks leave, we're the ones who're going to have to live here."
Clearly, something bad occurred in Jena, population 2,971, an old sawmill town in LaSalle Parish that, once upon a time, was Ku Klux Klan country. And, as most white and black residents readily agree, there is no good reason for embracing what unfolded here.
But what happened, exactly?
The story goes that a year ago, a black student asked at an assembly if he could sit in the shade of a live oak, which, the story goes, was labeled "the white tree" because only white students hung out there. The next day, three nooses dangled from the oak — code for "KKK" — the handiwork of three white students, who were suspended for just three days.
Much of that is disputed. What happened next is not: Two months later, an arsonist torched a wing of Jena High School. (The case remains unsolved.) Two fights between blacks and whites roiled the town that weekend, culminating in a school-yard brawl on Dec. 4 that led the district attorney to charge the Jena Six with attempted murder. The lethal weapon he cited to justify the charge: the boys' sneakers.
In July, the first to be tried, Mychal Bell, was convicted after two hours of deliberations by an all-white jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it.
(It was widely reported that Bell, now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property. In any event, his conviction was overturned because an appeals court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult.)
There is, however, a more nuanced rendition of events — one that can be found in court testimony, in interviews with teachers, officials and students at Jena High, and in public statements from a U.S. attorney who reviewed the case for possible federal intervention.
Consider:
_The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.
_Two nooses — not three — were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students "were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them," according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.
_There was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.
_The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days — they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.
_The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.
About 225 miles and a world apart from racially mixed New Orleans, Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh) is a throwback.
Here, one refers to elders as "Sir," and "Ma'am." Children still pull catfish from creeks; couples court at Jena Giants football games; families rope goats and calves at weekend rodeos.
In a place where per capita income is $13,761, there aren't any swank, French restaurants, but rather, family eateries such as the Burger Barn, Ginny's and Maw & Paw's. Most of Jena's 14-odd churches stage Easter egg hunts. On summer afternoons, sweet tea and lemonade on a neighbor's front porch are obligatory.
And there are endearing figures, like the designated town sweeper who mountain bikes around town with a wagon full of rakes, brooms, dustpans and cleaning fluids, stopping only to sweep shopowners' parking lots or to distribute complimentary bubble gum to grade schoolers.
Not all vestiges of the past are beloved, or quaint, of course.
There are no black lawyers, no black doctors and one black employee in the town's half-dozen banks. (The employee is male, an accountant who works out of public view.)
Economics play a role in this; with the closure of the sawmills in the '50s, the town now relies heavily on the exploitation of oil and natural gas, offshore. There are relatively few good-paying jobs in what is gradually becoming a retirement community, and some point out that African Americans with higher educations tend to leave the parish.
"To a certain extent, that's true," says Anthony Jackson, one of Jena High's two black teachers. "But I know some people who tried to stay here and couldn't get good jobs. There was, for instance, a gentleman who graduated as a certified biology teacher, but he left because he didn't want to deal with what's going on here."
Cleveland Riser, 75, who began working in Jena as a teacher and then rose to become an assistant superintendent of schools in LaSalle Parish, says blacks have long had trouble getting ahead in Jena.
"In my experience, the opportunity for advancing in my profession was denied, in my opinion, because I was black — not because I was unprepared professionally, or because of my performance."
Here and across the "crossroads" of Louisiana, there are Klan supporters, to be sure; David Duke, the former KKK Grand Wizard, carried LaSalle Parish in his 1991 run for state governor. And Jacqueline Hatcher, a 59-year-old African American, remembers when, as a ninth grader in 1962, she saw a large cross burning out front of the all-black Good Pine High School.
"We heard the Klan was meeting in the woods because there was going to be desegregation in the schools and they didn't want that," says Hatcher. Still, no one recalls seeing any public lynchings or whites in robes and masks for a half century.
"If I could take you back to 60 years ago, and then fast forward to today, you'd have to say we've come a long way," says Billy Wayne Fowler, a white school-board member who is one of the few leaders with the school administration or local law enforcement who still talks to reporters.
Most townsfolk, he says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much the same way — that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white, got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark.
The boys who hung the nooses "probably should have been expelled," Fowler says, and the murder charges brought against the black teenagers were "too harsh, too severe."
Tommy Farris, 27, an oil driller, and his wife, Nikki, 29, a registered nurse, concur — to a point. "Those boys should have expelled," says Nikki, who is white. "It was no innocent prank. I think those boys knew what they were starting by hanging those nooses from a tree."
Tommy, who is black, agrees. But free the Jena Six?
"That's not going to happen," he says, adding that he thinks the black teenagers are being given a fair chance to defend themselves against the charges.
Johnny Wilkinson, 44, a platform officer on an oil rig, and his wife, Karen, a 47-year-old director of nurses at the local hospital, are, like many couples in town, wrestling with that question of fairness.
The noose hanging was wrong, say the Wilkinsons, who are white, and the boys who did it should have been more severely punished.
Still, "They knocked that boy out cold and were stomping on him," Johnny says. "They might have killed him. I believe punishment would have been measured the same way if it had been the opposite way around and six whites had attacked a black kid."
(The teenager who was beaten, Justin Barker, 17, was knocked out but walked out of a hospital after two hours of treatment for a concussion and an eye that was swollen shut. He attended a school ring ceremony later that night.)
Adds Karen: "A sentence of 15 years is fair, but I do think they should be eligible for parole. Who are we to say they can't be members of society?"
But to Braxter Hatcher, 62, a janitor at Jena High for 18 years, such punishment would be excessive, and would only serve to reinforce suspicions in the black community that the worst kind of "Deep South justice" still exists here.
"They haven't always been fair in the courthouse with us," says Hatcher, who is black. "If you're black, they go overboard sometimes. I think this was just a fight between boys. I don't think it was attempted murder."
A number of other blacks — and whites — have raised similar questions about the Jena Six episode, particularly the manner in which authorities handled a series of racially charged incidents leading up to it.
Why, they ask, wasn't the noose incident ever reported to police? (A report might have triggered a hate-crime investigation, although federal authorities rarely go after juveniles in such cases.) And when whites and blacks tangled several times before the Jena Six episode, why did authorities charge the whites with misdemeanors — or not at all — while charging blacks with felonies?
Reed Walters, the LaSalle Parish district attorney who is prosecuting the cases of the Jena Six, insisted the case "is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."
Huey Crockett, 50, lives with his wife, Carla, 45, in a heavily wooded, predominantly black district just beyond Jena's limits, an area known as "The Country." The Crocketts, who are black, have complained to police that Bell and other youngsters were causing trouble in their neighborhood — scratching cars with keys, breaking the windows of parked cars, spraying property with paint.
The authorities, Crockett says, were always slow to respond.
"But as soon as he had a run-in with a white boy, they came down on him like a hammer. That's not right. If I call the police for an incident here, it may take them an hour, an hour and half to get out here. But they'll be right out in an instant if a white person calls them."
What also rankles African Americans in Jena, says Riser, the former school superintendent, is that whites charged with the same crimes as blacks receive more lenient punishment. "What this boils down to is: Why is there a double standard?"
On a road into town, a brick portal welcomes visitors to Jena, touting it as "A Nice Place to Call Home." But when the national spotlight goes away, will it be that nice place?
A week ago, Eddie Thompson, a white pastor at the Sanctuary Family Worship Center, would have said no. But on Wednesday, as thousands of demonstrators prepared to pour into tiny Jena, religious leaders held a unified church service, attended by blacks and whites.
"We prayed for one another, prayed for all of the boys involved in this," Thompson says. "We're not used to the glare, but something positive is going on here. I believe that we're maybe listening to our neighbors better, when we didn't listen before."
Last week I had seen an interview of Cleveland Riser, he gave a very interesting history of events and the DA involvement in the school district and his effect not only on the case but in other matters. The AP reporter should have spent more time with him.
This is the link to that interview.
Democravy Now:Voices from Jena...
nsangoma,
You do not have to create my life. I think I am pretty good at it after 62 years.
A couple things. The DA's comments to those students in assembly was highly inappropriate. Here you have an extremely charged situation and this nitwit wades in and makes threats. Gas, on fire, yeah, that.
Finally, the real world is not in black and white, and I'm not talking race. There are no perfect victims or perfect perpetrators. Get over that nonsense. I'm glad to read that people here believe Bell should get his butt kicked, because he should. Only three violent acts to his credit? Puuleez.
But how these other youths were handled was disgraceful. The adults failed these students, all of them. They had an opportunity to turn this into a learning experience for the high school community, and opportunity to help these kids grow and they blew it. That's just incompetence.
WCS, thanks for that insight. That was a great comment. Not sure if I am as unsure as you are about the motives behind the DA, or the racial issues that sorround that town, but I love your honesty.
62? Damn hathor. If that's your picture in your comments section; well then it's true what they say: "black don't crack' :) You look great!
i have been off the blogs lately, field, but I surely am glad to see that you are still going strong.
i appreciate you, brotha.
Thanks dc_speaks, nice to see you back fam!
Thanks FN,
the light was just right.
I repeat, white have a mental disorder. It's called cognitive dissonance. They have to see it a certain way or else they will go even crazier. We on the other hand, have been forced to see things their way for centuries. When we assert ourselves, even if it's foolish, they accuse US of such dissonance. The funny thing is that usually we know when we're bullshitting or talking out our necks just to make a point. White people cannot. Period. This whole debate has proven it...
Field
Great Post! Thanks!
"You go [to the jail] to find justice, that's what you find-JUST US."-Richard Pryor
Christopher Chambers, I'm a white guy and see this exactly how it is. Don't lump us all into one group. Just because a large chunk of us are blind doesn't mean we all are.
@west coast story-
A fairly short time after the last wave of religious "riots" in India, there was a study done to try to determine why there were "riots" in some places and not in others. They found a large negative correspondence between riots and the number of religiously integrated professional associations in that town. In other words, places with mostly integrated professional associations tended to have no "riots", whereas places with mostly segregated professional associations tended to "riot".
Because of this, I suspect that in general, people of any politically weaker group tend to do better the better integrated they are with the politically stronger group. I think that segregation tends to blind the politically stronger group from the problems of the politically weaker group (and vice-versa). Integration isn't a cure-all (look at the pathetically slow status of the advance of Womens' rights, for instance), but I think that it does help overall.
(Note that I have the term "riot" in quotes because that's the term mostly used in western media. In reality many of these so-called riots were genocides)
You keep blabering and talking shiiit behind your computer screen. Do something. Is that city still housing those kids in jail??????????
What was done then?
all i can do is shake my head. whew.
I'm 40 years old, I grew up going to completely integrated schools in the deep south. Therefore, I am familiar with situations of racial tensions that are very common in the public schools of the south.
First, I believe the consideration of one's race has no place at all in seeking justice, with the exception of hate crimes specifically perpetrated because of race.
In this situation, if race is not considered, then you have one person who was attacked from behind by a group of 6 people. This means without a doubt that the attackers had premeditated their attack which is demonstrated by their surprise attack with greatly overwhelming numbers. It is my understanding that the victim was quickly rendered unconscious and the attack continued whereby the attackers kicked the unconscious victim repeatedly.
There is no question this was a very malicious premeditated attack with intent and capability to do great bodily harm, to include death. I personally know of a person who was knocked unconscious and then kicked until he died, so "a shoe" is a deadly weapon when used in this circumstance.
So, with race out of the picture there is an attempted murder to seek justice for.
Has there been justice for this attempted murder?
Oh, but you say race must be considered. Ok, then this was clearly a hate crime where these 6 blacks attacked and tried to kill this one white, so the much heavier penalties associated with hate crimes must be levied.
To suggest the incident with fake nuces being hung out of a tree somehow justify this attack is the very same thing as saying that because Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exercised his right to free speech it was justifiable to murder him! That’s crazy right? Well that’s this case in reverse.
We all know how it works, there will be no justice here or anywhere Al or Jessie chose to spin the truth. They have done more in their life time to increase racial hatred than any other people I can think of. You can not seek equality and justice by perpetrating the exact opposite.
Ever since those race riots in California after that drug-head had his run-in with the police, things have been skewed dangerously allowing inequality and injustice to go unchallenged. OJ's free, Mayer of DC was a drug-head, the Duke Lacrosse team was wrongly prosecuted, and now this victim is laid on the alter of vanity that stands at the feet of these so called "civil rights leaders" who only seek the spotlight for their own glory. My question is this: How is it that so many black people care so little for truth? With the turnout at the Jena march it suggests there is a huge disparity in understanding that exists between the black population and the rest of America.
America needs to wake up and say enough, the 60's are over, let's get on with life, racial favor for any reason is over. A person stands on their own merit, and answers for their own actions.
I know that there is some pathology within me, some denial of my whiteness, that compels me to say this, but there ARE white folks who don't believe as the white writer you quoted here does. I am struggling with how best to confront white folks who don't understand (or want to understand) where the anger over nooses comes from.
Secondly, in regard to another post of yours, although I am "nobody" in the blogosphere (I have a very small readership), I have been blogging about the Jena Six since I first heard about it. And that WASN'T on that Thursday; it was at least several months before.
I think I've said this before, but I really enjoy reading your blog. thanks.
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