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Louisiana Lynching and The Jena Six
It's the sort of story that should be front-page news and fodder for a national discussion: Six black adolescents railroaded by an all-white justice system in a small Louisiana town where terrorizing blacks is still in a day's entertainment. Instead, between the follies in Iraq, the crack-pottery in the White House and the latest starlet sightings in rehab or in prison or in the buff, the story has barely made the major news organizations' agenda. There's been some good reporting in the Washington Post and its affiliates, a few rare mentions on ABC and NBC news programs, and longer reports on NPR and Britain's BBC. That's about it. The New York Times, CNN, CBS and Time have yet to devote a word to it even as the usual civil rights showboats - Al Sharpton, the Nation of Islam - have tried to give the story bigger play. Meanwhile, the lives of six young black men are being ruined as the old stereotype of the young black male as presumptive threat regains currency.
Jena is a mostly white town in central Louisiana, population about 3,000. Jena High School ("Student Learning Is Our Top Priority") serves the town and surrounding communities. It has about 500 students. There was a tree on campus whose shade supposedly belonged to whites only. Last fall during an assembly, a black student asked an administrator whether he could sit under the tree. To some whites in the assembly, the question never should have been asked. The question alone defied the autocratic understanding that commands the power structure of certain environments.
To more civilized people in the assembly, the question never should have been asked because the days when people could command anything by the color of their skin should have been gone, at least regarding something as immaterial as the shade of a tree. That the question had to be asked - and that the administrator dignified it with a straight answer ("You can sit anywhere you like") rather than detect in it the chasm that enabled it - is indication of how much some places as familiar as the local high school can still be no more enlightened than a madrassa in Karachi.
Several black students soon joined white students under the tree. The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, hung from the tree, an obvious reference to that old pastime of good ol' Southern towns - lynching. Just as the administration had been blind to the meaning of the question in the assembly, so it was to the meaning of the nooses. It took it as a harmless prank and suspended three offenders for a few days. Blacks didn't see the nooses as a prank but as a provocation brass-knuckled in not-so-distant history. Tensions immediately rose. The administration made things worse when it invited Reed Walters, the district attorney, and several police officers, to threaten students at will, which he did: "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy," Walters told the assembly (as quoted in Newsweek), with a focus on black students: "With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear." Just like old times.
Walters made good on his threat, selectively. When Robert Bailey, a black student who tried to attend a mostly white party, was beaten, his white assailant was charged with simple battery, no jail time. A few days later at school, Justin Barker, a friend of the noose-hangers, supposedly taunted Baker, then was assaulted from the back, knocked to the ground and kicked by a group of six black students, several of whom dispute that kicking took place. According to a Washington Post account, Barker was taken to the hospital, treated for a concussion and a swollen eye, and released. Within hours he was at a class-ring ceremony. For the assault, Reed Walters charged the young black men, now known as the "Jenna Six" - Bailey, Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theodore Shaw and Jesse Beard - with attempted murder. None had a prior record.
Bell was convicted in July by an all-white jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it. He faces 22 years in prison. The others are awaiting trial. Their case isn't unusual for the severity of the charges against them. They're young and they're black, which means they qualify for that other unspoken rule of America's shaded justice system: charges and punishment to the hilt. Several recent similar cases abound across the country: Georgia's Genarlow Wilson, sentenced to 10 years in prison for consensual sex with a 15 year old when he was 17; Georgia's Marcus Dixon, 19, also a 10-year prison sentence for having sex with an underage white girl; Texas' Shaquanda Cotton, 16, serving up to seven years for shoving a white teacher's aid. All those convictions were overturned on appeal. But the individuals' records remain. Even Bunnell recently had its own rash of young black men harassed and needlessly arrested by the local police department, on charges that didn't make it past the State Attorney's smell test. Prison and jail demographics, including Florida's, further testify to the travesty.
Back at Jena High School, the tree should have been the symbolic heart of any attempt at bridging racist hatreds. Let the tree shade on, minus the repugnance-a living memorial of what can be and what mustn't be. Instead, the administration a few weeks ago cut down the tree, as if the problem could be sawed off and burned. That's no solution, especially as the fate of the "Jena Six" still hangs by that tree's spectral limbs.
Pierre Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net or through his personal Web site at www.pierretristam.com .
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24 Comments so far
Show AllWe should invade their states, bomb their holy places, and convert them to Christianity.
Oh wait they already ARE Christians. My bad.
Was this phrase, "no more enlightened than a madrassa in Karachi," really necessary? In the current climate of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hysteria brought on by the bogus "war on terror" we really don't need to be slinging insults at other victims of the US's racist power structure.
nickhart,
yeah, I didn't like that remark either. "Madrassa' just means school. But Mr. Tristam is a MSM journalist and so you are going to hear that stuff.
This is just one of a bunch of compelling stories that I get informed about only because I am fortunate to be in recieving range of Democracy Now broadcasts. Wher the hell are the journalists?
Meanwhile, my local paper decides the most important story is the diabates epidemic and the death of an old tavern keeper.
But about the Jena case, the idea that the school administration's solution to the problem (and the racism-denial behind it) was cutting the tree down is positively bizarre! Forget Candide, this is out of Alice in Wonderland.
LOL, Dechterfreund.
Let's not shoot a bumbling messenger, people.
At least Mr. Tristam is trying.
There is a whole world of bigots out there who would rather not put this story on their precious real estate.
One wonders why not.
Perhaps someone should document the southern atmosphere and those who suscribe to it.
Is that anthropological or Social?
It will expose a rabid, racist environment in which minorities are accidental.
What most upsetting is people are no longer shocked that something like this could take place.
This is surely something from the 1950's someone said when I told them the story.
It's shocking that no one of power is going to step in an regulate this situation.
But I guess if you can sue for $50mil because someone lost your pants you can get a way with anything in this country.
Our justice system is a joke.
~Future~
"Is that anthropological or Social?"
The recent reaction to the study showingthat leftists read more than right-wingers, and northerners more than people in the South, speaks very much to the victim-mentality still instilled there as a means of justifying all the repression of black, latinos, gays, etc. Very much the way Germans cultivated victim status over the 30 Years'War-Napoleonic wars & of course WWI.
"What most upsetting is people are no longer shocked that something like this could take place.
This is surely something from the 1950's someone said when I told them the story. "
If it were the 1950s, they would already be dead. That is some progress, but the 'colorblind' model has substituted the process of turning black men into non-persons through generally unsupervised police & court processes (what was the name of that town in Texas that Bob Herbert drew attention to -- the one where the sheriff charged almost all the town's black population with drug smuggling & selling?).
dichterfreund
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.14E.herbert.justice.htm
Justice goes into Hiding
by Bob Herbert
The answer to your question is the city in Texas was Tulia.
dichterfreund :) Lets hope this movie does well in the box office:
http://movies.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1338002.php/John_Singleton_to_direct_Lionsgates_legal_drama_Tulia
Aug 2,2007
John Singleton to direct Lionsgate's legal drama 'Tulia'
John Singleton has signed up to direct Lionsgate's legal drama 'Tulia.'
Variety reports the movie will star Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton.
In the summer of 1999, in the tiny west Texas town of Tulia, thirty-nine people, almost all of them black, were arrested and charged with dealing powdered cocaine.
The operation, a federally-funded investigation performed in cooperation with the local authorities, was based on the work of one notoriously unreliable undercover officer, Tom Coleman. Despite the flimsiness of the evidence against them, virtually all of the defendants were convicted and given sentences as high as ninety-nine years.
Tulia is the story of this town, the bust, the trials, and the heroic legal battle that ultimately led to the reversal of the convictions in the summer of 2003.
Karen Croner wrote the script and production is expected to start shortly.
I think we need to stop painting Southerners with such a broad brush. Ethnic intimidation happens everywhere in the US and the world at large. The South has its underbelly as does The North, The East, The West, The Northeast, The Heartland, etc.
Right now, while we're slandering white Southerners and making them out to be a bunch of monsters, a right-winger in a studio is doing the same with inner-city blacks. We're all being taught to hate one another. Firebombs are getting tossed from all sides.
There are times I throw my hands in the air as I stated in another thread about this case. Honestly, I can't blame people at times for hating one another. Hate creates hate.
Yeah Al Sharpton and the cult-like NOI are trying to publicize the story more. Are their track records regarding tolerance spotless? I remember a few months back when right-wing bigots were complaining that the Newsom/Christian case was being shut out of the media.
How can we "bridge racist hatreds" as Tristram stated when people keep burning the bridge? If those black kids in Jena or Jena's entire black population end up hating whites for the rest of their lives, as much as that hate would disturb me, and as much as I'd want to avoid them, I can't say I would blame them. I could say the same about the white person assaulted by a black person or one who lost a loved one to a black person. I could say the same about the Iraqi whose house was bombed by American troops or the Israeli who suffered at the hands of a Palestinian. I could go on and on.
There are times I would just love to annihilate people such as those white kids in Jena that Tristram is talking about. Part of me wants to go down there and dare them to lynch me. I've even dealt with those types in my backyard, the "enlightened" North. It's scary. Not only because of what they might to do me, but also of what I might be capable of.
I get just as angry at blacks who hurt people of their own race and others. We had a case just the other day in my city where a black guy attacked three white college kids, raping one female. He got caught, but nonetheless, I want to choke him out also.
I watched a CNN special (yeah, yeah I know. I don't know why I watched it either) recently about Islamic extremism. They were in Ireland at some sort of "town hall meeting" regarding Muslim and non-Muslim relations. This guy in a turban started going on and on about jihad and how people had better convert...or else.
I wanted to knock him out too. "Brandish your sword at me you SOB," I thought to myself.
I wanted to stomp on one of our resident conservative hacks Fred Honsberger for referring to me and other unemployed people at the time as "perennial losers" once.
I hate all the people who hate much of the time. I not only hate them for hating and wanting to hurt innocent people, the ones who always seem to get it in the race/class/gender wars, but I also hate them for preventing solidarity between working and poor people from happening. I hate the injustice, not only because it is injustice, but again, it keeps that divisive fires burning. It feeds resentment and unrest. It benefits the elites.
The elites want very much for those kids, white and black in Jena, to despise each other. The white kids waving nooses around are no more than "white trash" to those in power. As easy as it is for me and others to hate them, they're being exploited also.
And I'm ashamed of myself for wanting to destroy all bastards. Well, except for those at the very top.
Something about non-violence makes my heart grow heavy and my throat ache. But violence, directed at the guilty, the decrepit, the morally repugnant, speeds my blood and makes my back tingle.
Is it our culture? As many of you know, I am a comics fan. The latter happened to me as I watched Spider-Man avenge the hit on his Aunt May courtesy of the Kingpin. It was a savagely beautiful drawn showdown. Part of my liked how Spider-Man, sans mask, left The Kingpin a broken, bloodied man.
I watched WWE RAW last night (I know, I know) and got swept up in the angle involving the father of good-guy champion John Cena being viciously kicked in the head by heel Randy Orton. I want to see what happens next. I want to see Orton get his.
Part of me likes the idea of the avenger.
I see so much anger on the left. And it's a good anger. But there are times I fear that anger and non-violence cannot co-exist.
I mean, if I were at a rally or protest, and a cop started beating on someone who was merely laying on the sidewalk. I don't know if I wouldn't punch him in the testes, which would obviously create more problems.
oops double post.
iwarrior offers emotional honesty and some important observations.
As for anger & acting on it in the face of provocation -- this is a serious issue that is often treated to glibly. If we don't understand our anger, we're not likely to be able to control it. Partly for that reason, it's valuable to attend nonviolence training sessions before taking part in civil disobedience or any protest that has an expected potential for high tension. Being nonviolent doesn't mean not being angry -- it means being both restrained and standing up for principle at the same time.
Even Gandhi said that violent resistance to injustice is preferable to inaction -- he saw those who resist violently as having the will (& often courage) to seek justice, but didn't think their actions could effectively build justice. Gandhi & King both also emphasized self knowledge --most people carry around accumulated anger, and very real anger at immediate situations can be complicated by old emotional wounds -- for example, my own anger at government authority figures (often quite justified) is sometimes tangled up with anger at my own family members. The more I can sort out the difference, the easier it is for me to think clearly about what actions are effective & principled.
As for the issue of racism & slandering white Southerners -- that needs to be addressed. The white Southerners I know are not only anti-racist, they're probably more aware of racial issues than most white folks in my part of the country. I live in what may be the most progressive state in the Midwest --Minnesota. However, official studies have shown that the gap between the percentage of people of color in our state & the percentage of people of color in our prisons is greater here than anywhere in the country! This in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican for President since 1972.
And yes, part of that is about class -- in our state, the percent of African Americans who are comfortably middle class is much smaller than in most states, including some in the South. So the high incarceration rate for Black folks here is partly about the high rate of incareceration for poor folks. But then there's the question of why so fes Black folks in this progressive state have made it into the middle class, and you get back to racism, whether direct or subtle.
Persons who have explored nonviolence in depth have typically reached a high level of awareness of racial, class, gender & other types of oppression. Gandhi himself began his activism fighting the imposition of ID passbooks on Indians living in South Africa, and later was not only an anticolonial leader, but an activist in labor struggles and campaigns against caste discrimination. In a more contemporary example in the U.S., Barbara Deming worked against nuclear weapons, but the group she protested with was jailed because (in the south of the 1960s), it was illegal to have a biracial protest. So she became intimately involved with antiracism. Over time, she came to see her own oppression as a woman & lesbian was also related issues of war & racsim. As the saying goes, "Everything is related," & a perspective rooted in nonviolence is one of the powerful ways to understand & act on that relatedness.
"So the high incarceration rate for Black folks here is partly about the high rate of incareceration for poor folks."
No it's about breaking the law. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!
"But then there's the question of why so fes Black folks in this progressive state have made it into the middle class, and you get back to racism, whether direct or subtle."
No it's about the high number of single parent families in the black community and their cultural lack of value of education. At least as they say "they be keepin' it real"!
Real world . . .
I can't believe you just typed that dumb $#!+.
Okay, disclosure: Black man born and raised in small town Mississippi, not only an alum of the legendary Ole Miss (James Meredith, 62 riot), but also a part of its history as the first black editor of the Daily Mississippian, the student newspaper.
Anyway, the core problem not just in the South, but in America is that our country has never dealt with the very successful, but very ugly foundation of its rise to power: SLAVERY. It's the big pink elephant in the room, with pictures of pink elephants hanging on walls covered with pink elephant wallpaper.
This is the part where most white folks, progressive or conservative, start to tune out, thinking that because they're not black, the legacy of slavery doesn't affect them. But slavery in America represents a fundamental fault line in American democracy, upon which the whole damn thing will eventually come crashing down.
Simply put: It is a fundamental flaw of integrity for the Framers to write so passionately about the "unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" then to go home to slaves, who were systematically alienated from those unalienable rights.
For those of you counting at home, it's the equivalent of the U.S. saying we're going to Iraq to "liberate" them, and then killing, jailing and, in some cases, torturing innocents. It's bullshit. And everybody in the world knows it, which is why so many people of color around the world might say: "We've seen your idea of freedom. We want nothing to do with it!"
To understand the full scope of the pink elephant, I highly recommend you NetFlix, rent or purchase "Slavery and the Making of America," a PBS documentary series from a few years ago. Gather friends. Show it to your kids (it's on PBS for God's sakes). I can almost guarantee it will be difficult to stomach. But it's good for you, and good for democracy.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/
As for the Jena 6, the kids are being legally lynched. Lynching was an American Pasttime as recently as the 1950s. People would go get a black person and torture them publicly. Schools would let white kids out to go "have a good time." It was like tailgating at a game, only with someone's father or son twisting in the wind.
As for the pink elephant, America will keep ignoring it until it can't anymore. Forget reparations -- the U.S. government can't even bring itself to APOLOGIZE for slavery. How sick is that?
The reason democracy is failing in America is simple: It wasn't a true democracy to start out with.
L3E, well put. If I hear one more white person say "they just need to get over it, it happened four hundred years ago" I think I'll puke. My husband and I moved from St. Louis to Panama City Fl (the redneck riviera) a few years ago and the racism here is AWFUL. I work in a small lounge and after my first two weeks of hearing the N word flung about constantly I finally went to my boss and told her it was really bothering me. She told me to "take it with a grain of salt and consider the source" WTF? So I just have to listen to it I guess? I've since taken to warning people I will not tolerate the word when I am working and if they feel the need to be that ignorant please just stay out when they see my vehicle. Most of these fools were floored when they found out my husband is black. Then the rumors started that he was a drug dealer and that's why we had a Mercedes. The Mercedes was mine and I owned it before I met him but that didn't stop them...I had one customer tell me I "was sinning against the book" for laying with a black man" LMAO...These people are just about as backwards as a human being can get and still remember to breath in and out...
KRISTINA: They tell me I am a "devil worshipper" because I am an astrologer. The study of the cosmic correspondence has NOTHING to do with their illusory god, Satan. These people ARE backward. That's why I keep a low profile. I would love to discuss policies with them, but it's true that it would be like a college professort speaking to a first grade student. They have no background in history, their ideas of psychology is formulated on bible fundamentalist rant; and if they have a capacity to reason, it's so tainted by their faith based long-programmed toxic agenda it interests me about as much as banging my head against the wall.
I was invited to hear country music at a local club and a member of the band was INTO me. His partner used the N word and I never said a thing. I sat silently in the audience of about 100 white people and when the band took a break, he apologized to me... seems the SILENCE hit him harder than words. I told him there was enough hate and divisiveness in our world, he didn't have to connect with his audience by fomenting that kind of shit. I believe this TRUTH got to him. It's strange the way fate puts us in the path of those with whom we might make a difference. Let them then educate their own ilk!
Siouxrose, I've found that giving people the silent treatment or just groaning when people make a racist remark can be effective as well.
L3ESmith-You're absolutely right. It's why I favor reparations. While I think a lot of the black community's problems are socio-economic, and come partly from within that community, I also think that the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow play a huge role as well.
I remember Bill Clinton wanting to "apologize" for slavery. As if that alone would suffice.
Reparations imo, hopefully anyway, would go a long way towards healing racial wounds in this country. If America started making restitution with and investing in its own people, I am confident that the hate within would slowly wither away.
The poster "real world" isn't saying anything that many black leaders haven't been saying. I hear Chris Moore, one of the few liberal radio hosts in our city, who is also black, say these things all the time. I hear black people who make up many of his callers say the same types of things on his show.
Yes, absolutely, young black men need to stop killing one another. Young black women need to stop having kids out of wedlock. But the socio-economic problems need to be addressed also. The plight of black Americans needs to be fought from outside the community as well as within it. That's why I am uncomfortable with Bill Cosby excoriating the black community in recent years, because that's all he seems to do. Of course the community needs to get its act together. All Americans need to. But our gov't has to do right by its own people at the same time.
I apologize for being cynical eariler. I've stated my support for socialist reform before and how I think it will exorcise America's demons. But I fear that those things won't happen unless there is unity between all working and poor people, from black people in projects to whites in trailer parks. It's why I am so angered and saddened when I read about things like the Jena incident or when people in general spew divisive B.S. here or elsewhere.
As much as I have and continue to despise certain individuals, and as much as I wrestle with that as Bruce Banner does with his Hulk in the funnybooks, I cannot ever bring myself to hate entire populations. I know that there are tumors in every group.
I don't even want to hate The South as a whole. There are a lot of good people down there, and there are a lot of things to like about Southern culture and food and suvvern rawk. Morris Dees and the Southern Povery Law Center.
Btw, Dennis Kuchinich didn't flinch or shy away from the subject of reparations when the question came up during the Youtube debates. He said flat out that he supports the idea. People need to know that.
Siouxrose says...
"I would love to discuss policies with them, but it's true that it would be like a college professort speaking to a first grade student. They have no background in history, their ideas of psychology is formulated on bible fundamentalist rant; and if they have a capacity to reason, it's so tainted by their faith based long-programmed toxic agenda it interests me about as much as banging my head against the wall."
But are all of those people like that? I have run into people like that up here also (Pittsburgh), and I have found that one way to get through to them is to make them realize how they're being cheated.
THIS RACISM IS ALL OVER THE USA.
NO ONE SHOULD BE SURPRISE.
ESPECIALLY, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
WE MUST CONTINUE TO FIGHT INJUSTICE, INEQUALITY, AND LACK OF FREEDOM.
GOOGLE THE NET AND LEARN YOUR HUMAN, CIVIL, AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.
THERE WILL BE A MARCH, ON SEPTEMBER 20,2007.
BE THERE AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
IF YOU CANNOT, SPREAD THE WORD.
I SHALL RETURN.
This racism must be stopped at once.
This shows that the USA is not a free society.
There will be a march, on September 20,2007.
Please spread the message.
The fight is not over.
I must say, L3ESmith, that was well spoken. I'm 25 and I grew up in the 80's partially sheltered from racism, except for when we played against an all white school. This scares me because if it can happen there, then it can happen here! I live in Ohio predominantly in an all white area. I'm glad that there are forums like this where everyone can express themselves and really see others in this nation that feel how I do :) May God continue to bless all of us...we're sure gonna need it!
I have oh so many responses to what has gone before, but perhaps the most valuable reaction would be a reminder of something MLK once said:
"Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."
It's a hard reality to live ~ I still struggle daily with the anger I feel in response to ignorance and bigotry, It's HARD! .... but peaceful resistance to injustice is the only reasonable response. Support the Southern Poverty Law Center or organizations like it. Don't give up the good fight.
Some great points have been made about old-fashioned racism. But I did want to point out, as I have lived in Louisiana all of my life, that it is not always like that. Especially not where I live. I am from Baton Rouge, the state's capital, and if anything, racism is the other way around. I try to get food from McDonald's or Burger King and we (the white folks) get treated horribly. Do we say anything? No. We deal with it. Whites are officially in the minority here and have been for years now. The crime rate is through the roof, even worse in New Orleans. Shootings and murders constantly.I try really hard not to hate, though I can no longer bear to watch the evening news. And for the record, the so-called "white-trash" get on my nerves just as much. I think most people around here just hate crime. Period. I do not dislike someone because of their skin color. And the point of my post is to point out that 1950's racism is not like that EVERYWHERE in the South. We in the South, particularly Louisiana, get portrayed as some backwards, narrow-minded, swamp-living, banjo-playing rednecks and that is really not the case. Louisiana would be a lovely place to live, if we can clean up the crime and shape up the schools. And like what was said before, racism and hate is all over the world, not just exclusive to the South. Just wanted to get that message out there.
well, i think we have to look at the root of why the black population is supposedly "plagued" by violence and racism that it proclaims is constantly and enduringly provoked by the white man. In my opinion, it all comes down to the genetic buildup of the african. They are, by nature, a violent, tribal species with no inherent value of the meaning of the word "family". This is evidenced by their eager willingness to hunt and capture their own people with the prospect of trading their "goods" to the whites for RUM and GOLD. Hence the creation of the slavery market. As anyone knows, there cannot be a market for anything unless you have two forces: supply and demand. And the africans surely filled the supply end of the formula. So before too many self-righteous white people start hopping on the "REPARATIONS TO THE DESCENDENTS OF THE SLAVE TRADE" bandwagon, take a few minutes to see and you will realize the african had much more to do with the involvement of his species being in slavery THAN THE WHITE MAN EVER DID.
The above drivel from a redneck bumpkin shows the scope of the problem we are dealing with in 2007, and why a white boy needs to get beat up every now and again.
And for the non-violence champions...please bear in mind that tremendous violence was necessary to eridicate slavery from this continent. Getting anything remotely resembling equal treatment will require another massive social upheaval. If history teaches us anything, it ain't gonna be pretty. Sorry 'bout dat!