Jena: The Ignored Story of Legal Lynching
For many African-Americans today, the main battle field against terrorism is not Iraq or Afghanistan but Jena, a small town in the state of Louisiana.
This rural town about 40-miles northeast of Alexandria, La is where a group of six black teens are enduring criminal prosecutions for a school yard fight that many see as a legal lynching.
The prosecutor in Jena is pressing serious felony charges for this fight that produced no serious injury on the specious claim that the Jena 6 used deadly weapons in that fight: their tennis shoes…used to allegedly kick the white victim.
This is the same prosecutor who refused to pursue comparable felony charges against white teens who smashed a black teen in the head with a beer bottle while ejecting him from a ‘whites-only’ party and a young white man who pointed a shotgun at black teens.
The reason why African-Americans react to the Jena injustice as domestic terrorism is rightly rooted in America’s history of racism…that scourge that still infects American society and is still widely ignored.
For most Americans, the face of terrorism is a foreign Islamofascist.
However, for African-Americans - long before 9/11 - the face of racism enforcing domestic terrorism was a fellow citizen wearing blue suits or black robes as well as white KKK sheets.
The series of incidents in Jena culminating in the charges against those six teens, for example, began last fall when lynch nooses were hung from the only tree in the yard at the town’s high school.
Nooses dangled after black students dared share the shade under traditionally reserved ‘whites-only’ gathering spot.
Top Jena school district officials overruled the principal’s recommendation to expel the white students responsible to hanging the nooses dismissing their inflammatory action as an adolescent prank.
For blacks, lynching is not a matter easily dismissed.
A 1919 NAACP report on lynching listed Louisiana as ranking fourth behind Georgia, Mississippi and Texas in the number of officially recorded incidents of this type of racist terrorism.
Thousands often attended lynching, once known as America’s ‘blood sport.’ Beyond mob-justice against alleged criminals, lynching was a device for social control, ethnic cleansing and economic theft.
In July 1934 a prosecutor in Bastrop, La - about 60-miles north of Jena - refused to investigative the lynching of a black man in that town’s public square. This prosecutor told a mob numbering 3,000 that he “sympathized with its attitude” moments before the hanging of this suspected criminal, according to an account in a New York newspaper.
The sympathy shown to whites by that prosecutor in Bastrop is eerily similar to sympathies displayed by the white prosecutor in Jena whose impermissible race based charging practices violate any legal discretion given prosecutors for lodging charges.
In June 2005, when the US Senate approved a resolution apologizing for that body’s failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation, Senators refusing to support that apology included Senators from Georgia, Mississippi and Texas…the top three lynch states in that 1919 NAACP report.
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu initiated that anti-lynching resolution. Landrieu recently called for a US Justice Department investigation into the Jena incidents which now garner national attention.
Many across America take comfort in the claim that racism today is a minor matter due to the civil rights success of the 1960s. This comfort is a consequence of one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of institutional racism: Weapons of Mass Deception.
One misinformed comfort from WMD fallout is that the US Supreme Court has a century old tradition of correcting race based excesses.
The outrage of lynching, for example, received a critical legal underpinning by the Supreme Court ruling arising from the 1873 massacre at the courthouse in Colfax, La. A white mob murdered over 100 blacks during a voting rights dispute.
That massacre produced charges against ninety-six people. The nine guilty verdicts resulted from convictions for conspiring to prevent blacks from exercising rights protected by the US Constitution - not murder.
The US Supreme Court tossed those convictions, proclaiming federal civil rights law only barred unconstitutional acts by state governments, not actions by individuals…even though some defendants were government employees: police.
Further, the court falsely claimed racial hostility did not motivate that mob.
Currently, conservative Supreme Court justices use the phrase “the constitution is color blind” when maliciously voiding civil rights measures.
These justices pervert the context of that phrase coined by the lone justice criticizing the Court’s infamous 1896 separate-but-equal racial segregation ruling in a case from New Orleans.
In fairness to fact, race based prosecutions are not limited to Jena.
Last year, prosecutors in Philadelphia secured a conviction against a noted black community activist falsely charged with attacking police while giving community service to a white major league baseball player who ironically attacked a policeman in a drunken rage hours before police beat the activist.
Many of the activists calling attention to Jena assail racial prosecutions places as far flung as Benton Harbor, Michigan and San Francisco, Ca.
Race prejudice infects the US justice system from the prosecutor in Jena to Supreme Court justices, making a mockery of the term homeland security for millions of non-white American citizens.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech - lauded by conservatives and liberals alike - urged America to lift itself from the “quick sands of racial injustice.”
Linn Washington Jr. is a Philadelphia based journalist who is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program. Washington is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune, America’s oldest African-American owned newspaper.
I was talking with a friend of mine today about what’s next after Jena. We agreed that the Jena 6 are symbols — and that if people of any background are to mobilize for social and political change in America, we only tend to rally around symbols.
In other words, we can’t get people up in arms about the Military Commissions Act. But if there were someone who was snatched up on it, there’s your symbol.
Of course, we’d never know who that person was, because there’s no due process. They can just come and lock you up, without telling anybody. Clever little buggers, aren’t they?
Racism is terrorism….hmmm, I think you have something here.
And Lynn, you say “…that scourge[racism]that still infects American society and is still widely ignored,” it should be, widely practiced.
Three nooses on a tree is terrorism, but of course, since it was directed at some African American youngsters, it doesn’t count. You can only be a terrorist if you’re muslim, at least here in the USA.
Pretty much ClearAsMud. The superintendent claims he didn’t know what it was supposed to mean. If you are over the age of 30 in this country, you damn sure know what those nooses meant hanging in the “white” tree. This would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. What is sad is the principle who tried to have the white students expelled but was overruled by the superintendent ended up resigning over the whole fiasco. Typical Americana, the only one with any morales, scruples or balls has to resign…
Where are all the people who claim they should be the leader this country? Why are they silent about the Jena 6?
What’s this “Whites Only” tree about? Maybe the black kid just wanted to get out of the hot sun and sit in the shade of the tree. I’m surprised the school allowed such a policy regarding the tree.
It was in very poor taste for the nooses to be hung from the tree. Haven’t the parents of the students who did that taught them any manners or respect for others?
Michael Bell needs to be released from jail immediately. It’s beyond comprehension that they have had him in jail for almost one year now, and he has had to miss school during that time — over a schoolyard fight with a white student. What did the white student do to provoke the fight, by the way?
Kristina - “balls” is not a synonym for “courage.”
I love Chris Rock’s line:
“Hell, I’m not afraid of Al Qaeda, I’m afraid of Al Cracker”
There is a double standard of justice, I agree, but distorting the facts to bolster your argument weakens it. This was not a schoolyard fight, it was an attack of six on one, a vicious assault. one on one is a fight
I understand the white kid that got beat up went to a school function later that night. Its not like he was hospitalised.
But the prosecution is going after attempted second degree murder, and wanted to put him in prison for 15 years.
I’m not saying that the six kids who jumped the white kid are innocent, but it was not second degree murder. Its way out of proportion– it is clearly not JUSTICE that the prosecution is seeking in Jena– it is intimidation.
And I want to add that I lived in northeast Lousyana for years and I’ve been in the Alexandria area many times. I am not surprised at all by the events that transpired there.
Sir,
In paragraph five, you say that…. “America’s history of racism…. that scourge that still infects American society and is still widely ignored”.
Don’t Shelby Steele, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Uncle Thomas Sowell and other Uncle Toms claim that American racism no longer exists? These morons (so called black conservatives) earn large sums promoting this ridiculous idea!! Black Amercians have ALWAYS experienced fascism in America. Whites are only now (with the “War of Terror”) beginning to feel the impact of American fascism. How many people know that Hitler, who is considered the epitome of evil, learned much from American history … especially the genocide carried out against the indigenous Indian populations?
What I can’t understand is the state of Louisiana isn’t up in arms about this. Like many other states in the deep south they are always trying to tell us Northern folk how they are just as advanced, intelligent etc. A WHITE ONLY TREE IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL!!! What kind of an crap hole county/state would let this exist in 2007! The fact that the entire state isn’t up in arms about the incident AND about a friggin whites only tree shows just how backward and dumb those crackers are!
Unfortunately our whole justice system is institutionally biased and has been since slavery. If you really want to sicken yourself read up on the chain gang practices and pig laws in the later 1800s that basically imprisoned African American and “leased” and even, get this, sublet, these prisoners out to companies for profit. They didn’t even know/care where the prisoners were- just that they were in chains. Up to one in five died in certain years as the people running the gangs didn’t even have an (sorry to even say this) “economic interest” in keeping them alive/healthy as a slave owner would- they were just replaced. No rights, no protection- just hell on Earth.
I think a contingent of Celebrities — black and white — should come together (yes, including you Opera), head to Jena and plant a new tree of knowledge and justice. Then I think the AG (Attorney General) of Louisiana should be “motivated” to investigate the Judge and the DA who railroaded these black children. Oh, and the Public Defender too. They are the real criminals in this situation.
clarity, a “whites only ” tree isn’t bad, where we live there are whole towns my husband and I have been told to avoid (he’s black I’m white).
LeeAnnG
‘Kristina - “balls” is not a synonym for “courage.”’
Yes it is. It might be a vernacular with which you are not familar, but having the “balls” to do or say something is the same as having the “courage” to do or say something.
The basic root cause for the ills pervading in the American society, such as racism, and the unrestrained pain, suffering and destruction caused by the US around the world such as in Iraq, is due to the “American fundamentalism” that is pervasive of all walks of life in the US. “The city-on-a-hill” is a phrase that is fodder for political speeches by the presidential candidates every four years. It was John Winthrop, who first used this phrase in defining the new settlement as “the city on a hill”. This has become part of American self-understanding. This cuts across the spectrum - right wing/left wing, liberals/conservatives: “America is a ‘city-on-a-hill”, that means America is exceptional. One of the pillars of this mindset is bipolarity: good and evil, where America is on the side of good and the “other” is evil. There is no room for pluralism; there is no room for a different skin color; there is no room for a different way of life. Thus, there is no room for tolerance for anything “different”. One of the first manifestations of this mindset can be seen among the European Christian zealots in Massachusetts, where the religious coercion began to mark their relationships with the native Americans they met there. They felt empowered to offer the ancient choice of conversion or death to the people they called the “Indians”.
A second pillar is an absolute allergy to self-criticism and doubt. The fundamentalist mindset doesn’t survive once you admit doubt or self-criticism. When asked for an example of a mistake he had made, Bush responded that he could not think of one. It is this lack of self-criticism and doubt that has provided a breeding ground for the oppression of the minority communities in the US. This mindset has also blinded the American public from seeing the suffering and pain of the minorities, which is being caused by the American public institutions.
Unless the public comes out of this self-delusion and accept that the US is like any other country with its own strengths and weaknesses (of course, certainly not “a city-on-a-hill”), then only there will be checks and balances within the society. Or else the minority communities continue to be treated as “pagans” and suffer at the hands of government sponsored socio-economic apartheid.
Racial and economic justice in the US of A?
We have come a long way towards both, but the more things change the more they stay the same.
We have come a long way and have a longer way yet to go.
We may not get there in a generation, but we will get there.
I understand the outrage…but why is anyone surprised that this would happen in the USA? OR for that matter, Louisiana?
If you’re outraged, it may signal some latent belief that racism in your country has subsided or even been eradicated. The difference between the Jena 6 case and the many, many, many other instances of racism embedded in the AMerikkkan justice shitstem is that it’s circumstances (the nooses, antiquated DA and judge, etc) remind us of the pre-Civil Rights Era. But the underlying racism shouldn’t surprise you at all! Yours has always been a country that promotes racism and white supremacy.
I’d like to know one thing. Did the local
district attorney, in denying that the Jena Six case was about racism, declare that the nooses up in the tree were basketball hoops?
It s going to get worse instead of better, literacy is on the wain with the transactional mentality inherent in the “american philosophy” of “the business of america is business”. Property rights loom a lot larger in the constitution and the law than human rights, after all wasn’t the black people classed as property one time. Once property always property. Racism never died because it is entrenched/embedded in the systems of governments. Try getting on a voters list if you are black. Americas virtues are being minimized to make way for an overwhelming display of its unchecked vices.
Paulitics! Is that you, Perjerla?
Clarity: “What kind of an crap hole county/state would let this exist in 2007! The fact that the entire state isn’t up in arms about the incident AND about a friggin whites only tree shows just how backward and dumb those crackers are!”
That’s the Lousyana I’ve known for years (about 20+ years– thankfully I no longer live there). Basically, once you get to Alexandria or any further north in Lousyana, the racism get worse. I hate to say this, but I’m not at all surprised about this happening in Jena, LA.
Amy Goodman is a stalwart crusader against racism, and from where I sit, she is largely responsible for bringing the “Jena 6″ to light.
She allowed a school board member to speak his mind in defense of the prosecution of the school yard dust-up, and she allowed a former superintendant of the formerly segregated black school to speak his mind.
The former superintendant of the segregated school, a poised and judicious individual of considerable personal courage, summarized the crux of the matter by saying it was not the business of the DA to intrude on school business and he should not have done so.
Had the DA kept his racist nose to his own business, there would have been no “Jena 6″, there would have been suspensions and disciplinary actions and Mychal Bell could have gone on to an NFL career.
But, alas, there is racism in this country, and we can thank Amy and Juan and Democracy Now for confronting it head on and coming to the aid of these boys.
I’ve got to say, Amyland is a fine place if you want racial harmony, but it’s not such a good place if you want democracy, now! Amy if fighting the battle for racial justice and for the rights of those poisoned by the WTC pollution, but she is losing the battle for democracy because she will not deal with the war itself, the assault on our Constituion by our own government.
We can all enjoy racial harmony in the new fascist system. That will be the one bright spot.
The text above the box here says “Join the discussion” - but there is no discussion, not much of one. Unfortunately people tend to want to say their piece, engage in this collective monologue and then move on, that tends to be how it works for the most part. Similarly, there is no America, not the one people are supposed to believe in. As someone else already pointed out (possibly under another article) there is just no involvement. We’ve become complacent, sitting at home watching our reality shows, eating our fast food take-out and posting our comments here. If we can’t even be bothered to take indirect, symbolic action, how will things ever change? Even if it does I seriously doubt our expression of outrage on sites like this contributed much to it.
No civil rights for GITMO detainees.
No civil rights for Blacks.
No civil rights for muslims.
No civil rights for Native Americans.
Soon coming at your local police station, no civil rights for anyone.
Kristina40,
If that Superintendent did not know what those nooses meant, either he is dumber than shit, or he got his degree (I suspect he has either an MA or PhD) as a toy prize in a Crackerjack box! What an idiot!
For an extremely comprehensive list of relevent events,preliminary observations, and potential responses written by Alan Bean, Friends of Justice, please go to my blog at: myspace.com/MamaAmishllama
One of the disturbing facts that seems not to be stressed enough is that Reed Walters, the very DA who is prosecuting these kids, also acted as the school district’s lawyer at the appeal for the expulsion of the boys from school. Talk about conflict of interest and unethical actions! Blatant injustices such as this never cease to amaze me…sometimes makes me feel ashamed to be white.
Kristina40 September 20th, 2007 1:57 pm wrote:
“What is sad is the principle who tried to have the white students expelled but was overruled by the superintendent ended up resigning over the whole fiasco. Typical Americana, the only one with any morales, scruples or balls has to resign…”
I must take issue with you on your use of the conjunction “or” in the above quote.
Might it not be more appropriate and accurate to use the word “and” in connection with the quote?
And you overlooked another word: ethical.
Mainspark
Thanks Mainspark, I’m often in a hurry when I post. You are correct.
We can all see such behaviour in others, but miss it in ourselves. This is making me wonder ‘what is happening here in the UK that parallels this?’
Pattern-chaser
“Who cares, wins”
This is an interesting case. Amy Goodman and WBAI in general had been reporting it from just about the time it first happened–i.e., a year ago. No major network or corporate media outlet would go near the story. This left the kid, Mikael Bell, in jail for a year or so, since the only people who knew about it were the WBAI listeners–and, of course, they don’t count in the great media picture. Once CNN grabbed the story, the issue grew into a national obsession, replete with file footage of the dogs and firehoses, political implications, interviews with civil-rights leaders, pressure on the candidates, etc. The story is a clear indication of the irresponsibility of the mass-media and their brain deadness when it comes to important issues. Why didn’t they pick it up? Who knows? Brittney shaved her head at the same time? Larry Craig was doing his toe-tapping imitation of Fred Astaire?
I agree that there isn’t much discussion going on here, other than folks objecting to vernacular with a possible sexist connotation, and lessons in the use of conjunctions and synomyms.
In my humble opinion, the most trenchant comment so far is the following:
“I think a contingent of Celebrities — black and white — should come together (yes, including you Opera), head to Jena and plant a new tree of knowledge and justice. Then I think the AG (Attorney General) of Louisiana should be “motivated” to investigate the Judge and the DA who railroaded these black children. Oh, and the Public Defender too. They are the real criminals in this situation.”
It should not be forgotten that Sen. Mary Landrieu has been at the forefront; lynching is alive and well today, especially in Texas–surely haven’t forgotten
the black man chained to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged for miles. It almost makes Louisiana’s nooses in trees sound humane.
This (no doubt elected) Prosecuting Attorney is clearly courting votes from his white constituency, just as the D.A. in Durham, North Carolina who prosecuted the DUKE lacrosse players was pandering to the black voters and local “townies” who are resentful of rich students from outside the area and academics on the faculty. The Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Louisiana should disbar this rogue Grand Inquisitor, and he should be sued for millions by the six African American students and their parents.
Justice, what justice? All law enforcement activity’s have become far to militant. Wait until Back Water returns home. Your looking at the next generation of law enforcement. By the way, where were all the white folks? Why weren’t they marching to condemn this injustice against those 6 young men? After all, the town is 70% white? This is not about racism, this is about America and the loss of civil liberties. White or Black!
LOL imagineusa, it’s that 70% that are perpetuating the injustice, why would they march to stop it?
The question isn’t whether or not the black kids who kicked and beat the white kid are innocent. If they beat him, they should be punished. The question is equal justice under the law. If white kids are beating black kids and getting away with it, or are getting slaps on the wrist, then black kids should not be getting charged with attempted murder for the same kind of thing. It doesn’t matter if it was one on one or six on one.
Thank you brother Linn for an excellent piece, and for pointing out that racism in prosecutions is not limited to Jena, Louisiana or even to the South. We certainly have it in Pennsylvania, where most of the people on our Death Row are people of color, as are most of the people in our jails, even though most of the crimes are committed by whites.
By the way, every time I drive on the NJ Turnpike, beteen NYC and Philadelphia and see someone stopped by NJ State Troopers on the side of the road, it’s a person of color. Racial profiling in traffic law enforcement is alive and well in the Garden State.
Dave Lindorff
www.thiscantbehappening.net
genicon September 20th, 2007 2:49 pm:
I see you conveniently left out the fact that there was a 3 against 1 (white to black) incident prior, A gun wielded against a group of black in which the gun was wrestled away and the victims were charged, the fact that the white kid attacked was racially taunting and bragging about the black kid who was beat up. So yeah, it’s all the black kids fault. The white kids were perfect angels.
wishfullthinker September 21st, 2007 9:54 am:
If the black kids have to go to prison and lose their privileges then so should the white kids who started the whole mess. For the same length of time. THAT would be justice.
Once again, the MSM’s coverage has been appaling.
What did come up that the MSM has not mentioned anywhere, as far as I can tell, is that this has been an issue that had been building for some time. Apparently, a bunch of white boys beat up a black kid at a party not long ago, and the group of them recieved slaps on the hand and were sent on their merry way. Another part of the untold story is that at the school, one of the white boys brought a rifle with him which was snatched away by a black kid who i believe is one of the Jena 6 upon which the black kid was charged with ‘theft of a weapon’
Luckily we have Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! folks to help set part of the record straight.
Earlier this week she aired a series of interviews. One was with a member of the Jena school board.He was very obviously of the ‘good old boy’ persuasion and his comments were appaling. he stated that the nooses were just a bit of joking between the white boys and the black boys.
-Im sure that during the first half of the last century, the white kids thought the black bodies hanging from the trees were fun too.
He also said that the white folks in Jena were not racist and that the Klan has not ever been active in Jena. He also made typical racist statements like “The black kids can use the public pool without any problems from the whites”-to me thats akin to saying ’some of my best friends are black’. Anyway, he presented the typical white mindset that can still refer to vocal blacks as ‘uppity’ and I think that if this interview was more widely seen it would give more clarity into what the day to day situation in small-town ‘Dixie’ is like for anyone but the whites.
Forgot to mention this fact:
The District Attorney for Jena is ALSO
the School’s lawyer
Of course racism is wrong, but many forget it cuts both ways–the hatred that is. Over the years blacks have had it by far the worst, no argument there. But to return fire with fire is to beget more of the same. Take Israel and Palestine as an example. Many blacks want to “lynch” the students who hung nooses from a tree in the schoolyard. In our fury it’s easy to forget fairness and forgiveness. And we have inciters on both sides of the fence. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson come to mind, and it’s obvious they are exploiting these incidents for their own self-promotion. Haters will always hate. The trick is to not to allow ourselves to be drawn into their depraved vortex.
It’s too bad the first reaction to the Jena nonsense is to blather on about racism, rather than stupidity. Obviously none of the local black leaders, if there are any, had the sense to suggest to the black students that the white students were just using the idea of a “white tree” to bait them. If it had been my ugly destiny to find myself in that reason-forsaken place, I would have urged the black students to see how pitiful an expression of impotence the very idea of the white tree was.
My bet is that none of the school’s students can really read or write; it was just plain stupid of any of the black students to think it a good idea to mount a protest of any sort by sitting under “the white tree,” rather than simply saying to themselves that they’d steep themselves in their studies and get the hell out of Jena as soon as possible.
But since nobody distinguishes racist bigotry and its largely moronic expression from racist policies, the black folk of Jena find themselves easy marks–all a bigot need do is to make a few provocative gestures to get the blacks, negroes, and niggers het up, raising a hue and cry about nooses, as if about a real threat of lynching. I don’t think hanging the nooses was a prank; but I don’t imagine any Jena whites would have formed a mob to lynch black high school students, either.
The entire situation could have been diffused quite early on if the good people of Jena, black and white, weren’t so idiotically close-minded. I’m not asserting that no racists live in Jena (I can’t know that), and I can have nothing at all to say about any real griefs which the black folk there have suffered. I’m only pointing out that, if black folk there really want to do something about racism, they might consider an oblique approach, rather than allowing their tempers to get the best of them, since that’s when, if I may speak bluntly, a lot of young black folk start acting like niggers–that is, compensating for their powerlessness by all sorts of reckless posturing, swaggering about, acting as though mere physical prowess and abandoned savagery were an expression of righteous indignation and an indication of power and strength and dignity.
The jackass white students probably have benefited from the racist favoritism of the authorities, but the time to protest would have been after the incident when the black students tried to crash an all-white party.
Of course, that was stupid, too. What the hell did that nigger think he was going to accomplish by crashing a party? Did he think his act was “political”? When I was growing up (in Chicago), if you were a member of one gang, you knew better than to walk on the side of the street that belonged to the territory of another gang–to do so would have been just asking for trouble.
I don’t sympathize with those white students, but I’m inclined to think that, given the tensions of the time, if the black interlopers imagined any other outcome, then their parents, brothers, friends, and supporters should have given them another beating just for being so stupid.
It’s stupid to think you can fight stupidity by more stupidity. After the misguided champions of the Jena 6 deliver them from the vicious charges of attempted murder, maybe they can then attempt to get the stupid niggers to stop acting like stupid niggers, and instead act like they know what they’re up against.
“…this fight that produced no serious injury.” I think this article is essentially true and highlights a very serious and lingering problem in America…but I think it’s unnecessary and un-objective to say the fight produced no serious injury. Although the white student was released from the hospital the same day and did attend a school function that night, he was kicked and beaten by the 6 african-American students, badly bruised, and knocked unconscious. I submit that’s at least as bad as being hit over the head with a beer bottle which the article compares it to. As outraged citizens I think it undermines our credibility and therefore our cause (ending racism) if we misrepresent the facts. It’s also unnecessary as the truth is more than sufficient to make our case that the Jena 6 are not being treated fairly.
Based on the facts of the case, me and my friends would have been arrested for “attempted murder” every other day from third grade on, not counting the days we were the ones being beaten.
Of course, now we live in a society where playing footsie in a bathroom is grounds for destroying a man’s life, where the FBI fears “militant librarians,” and where “driving while black” is still as dangerous as “driving while Muslim,” or taking pictures of a building while wearing a headscarf. Or flying on an airplane en route to your job with the US Navy.
Blackearth, perhaps you have entirely missed the point. There should be NO their side of the street and our side of the street in Chicago OR Jena. Avoidance is not an effective problem solving method, nor is throwing the n word around in every other sentence. It just makes you look stupid at best. You already stated you have never been to Jena and don’t know what black people in that town have had to endure. I DO live in a shitty southern town with similiar attitudes to Jena and were I black I’d have long ago stomped a mudhole in one of these crackers asses. Hell, I’m white and there’s been many a day I had to fight the urge to do just that and I really can’t promise it won’t happen eventually. These people are way past ignorant down here. They think it is their RIGHT to behave this way by virtue of being born with their white skin. This isn’t a joke or a game to them, it’s their birth right, and the south’s gonna rise again…Well as soon as they figure out how to brush their teeth and read anyway…
Bus and rice should be working on
democracy in and for the united states and keeping their noses out of other countries affairs.
You know, sinnerjizm, you are very right.
“…he presented the typical white mindset that can still refer to vocal blacks as ‘uppity’ and I think that if this interview was more widely seen it would give more clarity into what the day to day situation in small-town ‘Dixie’ is like for anyone but the whites.”
Sadly, it’s not just in Dixie as Washington indicates.
I am glad the term “people of color” was used. This is primariily a black (African American) issue on the surface but it is by no means isolated to the African American population.
In New England, where I lived for many years, prior to, during, and after the Civil Rights Act of nineteen-sixty-whatever it has always been a hot-button issue, just like in the southern states. The prejudism just went underground until an opportune time to rear its ugly head. Remember the bussing riots in the 1970’s in Boston?
Like in Bruce Hornsby’s “That’s the Way It Is.”
My skin is not pearly white and my father was even darker skinned. My birth cert. indicates that I was deemed “white” at birth, however. They only saw my predominently German mother and called it good.
I am rarely perceived as “white” on initial contact with most Americans. Even black skinned people think I’m at least half African American. needless to say, I don’t take on the appearance of the northwestern europeans, therefore, I must be something else… an OTHER!!!
Fact is, I’m so “everything” looking that I make a game of people’s biases by making them guess. They NEVER get it. there are so many differnt ethnicities that NONE of us can make any claim to any superiority. The idea of race is BS anyway. Anthropologists, (what do they do anyway?) insist that there is but one race: homo sapiens sapiens. Anything else is a variety, like vernaculars are varieties of English.
The color of my skin has been the damper on all of my social interactions for over fifty years and occasionally, I get really upset about it. It isn’t so much an issue in most cases in the past ten years but it is still there, very thinly veiled.
Having experienced the “N word” as the substitution for my name during much of my childhood and teen years, I can see where the white folks in Jena don’t see much harm done to someone they still consider sub-human when ugly actions are focussed on thses others. To such folks there is not the same sophitication of emotion and feelings in these others so you can just do stuff and it won’t hurt them… so why are they complainin’?
And someone, many posts ago, mentioned the ignorance required by a community for such a situation to go on for any length of time or to happen at all. Perhaps it’s less ignorance than you might imagine. I would suggest that it might be a calculated form of behavior for another purpose, though I think that ignorance would be the first line for argument.
And for all of you Americans who had no idea this was such an issue that you thought was all settled back in the 1960’s… welcome to America, home of the double standard; hypocrissy spoken here.
I do agree that racism in the U.S. is still very “instutionalized,” as far as the governments and court systems go. Especially, considering those of the state of Louisiana. It just horrifies me that the prosector is favoring one group of individuals over another, as well as that he is getting away with it. I just do not seem to understand how it is possible for something that is clearly so wrong to continue to go on. It seems as if the national government should step in to do something about this. I am not “up” on government or the court systems in general, or what cases in a state jurisdiction could eventually serve as national jurisdiction, but I just do not know what makes it legal for a state system to openly discriminate against a particular group of people.
I suppose we have to go back to the time after the crumbling of the Articles of Confederation. The biggest debate was between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. The Federaists, who were for a strong, centralized government, and the Anti-Federalists, who were for state-level power. The Anti-Federalists were so against a uniformed government because they feared this type of government would abuse its power. However, in the end, the two sides were able to reach a compromise. The Framers erected a constitution for a republic form of government. Within this republic, the Framers issued this constitution with a bill of rights, to ensure the liberties and freedoms of the citizens. I realize that under the form of federalism we have today, both the states and national government share power. In doing so, the national government cannot abuse individual states, or its citizens. However, does the national government not have some check on the state governments to ensure that they do not treat certain of their citizens unfairly? I may be thinking of this entirely wrong, but, it seems as if the form of federalism that was established to prevent the national government from abusing states and their citizens, has in turn given states the ability to abuse their own citizens.
It certainly is an outrage to me that nothing is being done about the way the prosecutor has clearly denied charges against the Caucasian students, but has issued charges against the African American students. The students who hung the nooses should obviously be punished for what they did. More importantly though, those Caucasian students who assaulted the African American student at the party should have been charged with a crime, just as these six African American students were charged for assaulting the Caucasian student. By this not being done, a double standard is certainly being presented. So again I ponder on if there is something that the national government can do since this case is being handled so unfairly by the state of Louisiana.
what those kids did is wrong. 6-1 is bad no matter what the colour of your skin. but this is way over the top by the prosecuter. these kids should have been held accountable, all of them, including the whites, for they were every bit as wrong as the black kids. but to be jailed for all this time? this is outragious. some intense counselling for all those involved, and a short expulsion from school, seems to me to be much more appropriate. that this shit is still going on in america, leaves me shaking my head. there should be some basic human rights discussions in every school in america. up here in canada, i have friends from just about every ethnic group. they are all beautiul, and i value each and every one. diversity is wonderful. i have learned about different cultures, and realise that we are all the same inside. if you take the time to accept people for who they are inside, and not what they look like, you will be much richer as a human being. i have said enough. peace to you all. terry
Kristina40,
Thanks for your comments. I’m inclined to say that you haven’t taken MY point–you’re certainly exaggerating in asserting that I use the “N-word” in every other sentence; but then maybe I’m at fault for having hoped that you’d see just what I mean about distractions.
Think about it this way: what was the genius of the Civil Rights Movement? It consisted in several things.
First, a protest against the systematic ways in which white racist policies estranged black people from the fundamental means to meet the basic needs of their human condition as such–the need to own property, use personal energies to the fullest for work, use public goods of all sorts (schools, hospitals, roads, courts, etc.), and to pursue one’s own good without interference from others. In other words, those who clamored for their civil rights were clamoring for a dignity in the same terms, according to the same ideals, as one can find them expressed in Locke’s Second Treatise on Government.
Second, the leaders of the movement did not agitate and protest indiscriminately; they made strategic use of the possibility of raising a public outcry about injustice. They did that by taking up causes in which the black victims were above all moral reproach. You’ll remember that before Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat, a young black woman had done the same thing–but she was unmarried and pregnant; even though she had suffered the same injustice as all other black people, and had had the courage to refuse to submit, her condition would have allowed white racists to cloud the issues.
And the whole point of non-violent protest was to keep all participants perfectly above moral reproach, so that no ordinary citizens or agents of the law could make tactical use of stains and taints in an individual’s past.
And you should remember, after all, that class differences alienate black people from each other just as they do among whites. Black folk use “the N-word” on many different types of occasion–and one occasion is as a name for black people who conduct themselves in ways utterly unbecoming to a people who, needing to answer racist denigrations of their dignity and intelligence, have a best answer in comporting themselves at all times with utmost care.
An anecdote. When I was seven years old, I, my little sister, and my little brother were standing next to my father as he was about to open the door to our apartment building, when suddenly a butcher knife slashed past his head and lodged into the door with a thwack. He leaped back in surprise, and without even turning around, he dropped his shoulders, shook his head, saying: “Umph, umph, umph! Every time niggers see a black man trying to do something for himself, they try to kill him!” The word “nigger” means: “stupidly and perversely self-destructive black people.”
Now, I ask you: AM I counselling “avoidance”? Certainly not. DID any of the Jena 6, or anyone else, find themselves alienated from the means necessary for them to make themselves answerable to the needs of the human condition? I don’t think so. Did they make sure, in their protests, that they conducted themselves in a manner above all moral reproach, so that racists and bigots would not have the least pretext to deflect attention from their own depraved attitudes and acts? Not at all.
You know, in reading over the comments, I find it difficult to determine just what happened when, who did what, and so on. The story is a mess precisely because the young black students acted recklessly, doing things which allowed bigoted white students to deflect attention away from their own evil.
It was a reckless act for a black student or students to try to crash a white party; they compromised the situation by a provocative act that had nothing whatever to do with their need to acquire the means to be human beings–to perfect their aptitudes, faculties, and abilities, to choose and pursue a livelihood, to own property, and so on.
I cannot for the life of me understand just what they wanted to do at a party which, as far as I can tell, white students had advertised as all-white. I can certainly see the bigotry in the decision to have an all-white party, but so long as they held it in a private house, they do not seem to me to have broken any laws, or to have harmed black people in any way.
As far as the incident at the party goes, I can imagine the men who pulled the gun could have claimed that they were only attempting to ward off trespassers. Weren’t those young black men, or wasn’t that young black man, trespassing? Even bigots and racists have the right to be secure in their homes against trespassers; they have the right to make use of a reasonable show of force to thwart the trespasser’s or the trespassers’ attempt to violate their privacy.
I don’t know how the black students managed to wrest the gun away from the one who was wielding it, but they were in the wrong, period. They were not only trespassing, but they certainly used force against private citizens to take the gun away. It’s amazing that the man holding the gun didn’t shoot. So if I’ve got the story straight, and those young white men, bigots though they be, were in essence responding to trespassers, then they did nothing wrong, and indeed, in not shooting, handled themselves with more self-discipline than their assailants. Those young black men were in the legal and moral wrong.
They were not only in the legal and moral wrong; they were acting stupidly and perversely. The dubious matter of the white tree can in no way count as a legitimate motive for trespassing.
Now, you may still think it ill-advised of me to show my contempt for these young men by calling them “stupid niggers,” and you may think my use of that epithet to show me to be lacking in compassion, but you can’t accuse me of stupidity, and you misread me in imagining that I’m even proposing any sort of “solution.” I’m arguing against the reckless way people have invoked the CRM; the Jena 6 are not symbols of any effort to secure civil rights–they are six pathetically misguided young men who, lacking all understanding of the true dignity of the question of civil rights, arrogated to themselves an honor they sullied by their vile acts.
I cannot see, either, how it makes sense to respond to one student who taunts you by ganging up on him and beating him. The fact that his injuries were so minor that he later went to a party, or whatever it was, is immaterial.
You do think, after all, that the man who threw that butcher knife at my father was guilty of a murderous assault, don’t you? An assault being “a swing and a miss,” as opposed to battery, “a swing and a hit.” Those young black men were certainly guilty of battery under the law; the provocation doesn’t matter because they weren’t defending themselves. By their ill-considered use of violence, they accomplished nothing more than to muddle still further the moral issues.
I just cannot find it in my heart to be sorry for them. The DA has not shown any wisdom, given the highly charged atmosphere, in charging them with second-degree attempted murder, because his decision appears to be a reflection of bigotry. Nevertheless, as others have pointed out, if six white boys had beaten and kicked a young black man for, let us say, going out with a white woman, we’d be screaming for the maximal penal charges–even if the young black man had been released that night, relatively unharmed.
The whole thing is an embarrassment for anyone inclined to see any dignity at all, let alone the high dignity of those who sustained the CRM, in what the Jena Six have done. They have done nothing but made themselves an object lesson in how NOT to go about agitating for one’s rights.
Do you see?
It seems as if racial tension will never subside completly in our country. It’s now 2007 and people should be treated equally regardless of the color of their skin.
The Jenna 6 incident reflects how society is still discriminating again African-Americans today. I’m am not saying that what the group of teenagers did was right, but I feel that the justice system in our country has overlooked a lot of the events leading to the incident and the charges brought against these boys.
The hanging of a noose from a school tree, that is usually surrounded by whites, after a black person sat under it can be seen as to the equivelant of hanging a sign saying, “You better not do that again or we will kill you”. Yet the school administration dismissed this as a prank. I’m sorry, but I don’t think that a death threat is considered a practical joke. But because these students were white, they were let go with minimal repercusions.
The Jena six should have to face some punishment for their crime, but life in prison? Give me a break. Fist fights happen every single day in schools. That doesn’t mean that everyone should be charged with capital punishment. And if this situation was reversed, and 6 whites beat up a black, it can almost be guarenteed that the incident would have never gotten nearly as large as it is now.
Racism is real. There is no doubt that this article details several examples of brutal violence involving race. However, it is important to remember that racism can go from Caucasians to African Americans and vice versa. At times it seems we get caught up in the idea that because racism has such a heavy stigma of being Caucasian on African American, it must only ever be that way. I’m not saying that the nooses being hung in the tree wasn’t wrong or in very poor taste,but it was merely a visual representation, a threat. It draws the attention away from the fight which actually took place amongst six African Americans and one Caucasian. Both are examples of the ever present racial conflict in our country, but in the end it is also our duty as American people to analyze such events for what they truly are-a symbolic threat and a violent act-and to remove the racial element. Racism will always exist until we realize that the only part of American society which is authentically anti-racial, is racism itself.
Why have the Judge and Prosecuter not been lynched by now? Don’t you think that pay back is a workable idea? One good lynching of these white supremists with the same prosecution by the courts as in the black cases. Would strike terror into these pieces of crap. Many areas in the south have BLACK Majority voters, who does the counting and why?