So, the story of racial conflict in Jena, Louisiana (pronounced JEE-nuh) broke open this past week as a huge number of protesters marched in the town.
The roots of the conflict--aside from America's long, troubled history of race relations--appear to be a dispute over an old oak tree on the local high school grounds. Traditionally, white students thought of the tree as theirs to hang out under. Well, it's Louisiana, so it almost goes without saying that if white students hang out there and it's a tradition, black students aren't welcome. Apparently, the tree was called the "white tree".
Well, the current trouble begins, according to news reports, when the black kids appealed to the high school principle that they wanted to be able to gather under the tree, too. He may be the only one in this story worthy of praise, he simply told the kids to go ahead. I say he "may" be due for praise; it's hard to know if he should have anticipated the trouble this would cause. So, a black kid sat under the tree. The next morning, a clutch of replica nooses are dangling from the tree.
You don't exactly have to know a lot about these things to guess that racial tensions in the school skyrocketed from what was not doubt the usual simmer to a full, rolling boil. The school destroyed the tree, but that wasn't a cure. Eventually, harsh language and ugly exchanges occured. This culminated in an ugly confrontation on school grounds. A white boy was severely beaten and six black students were arrested and charged, some with attempted second-degree murder. Witnesses report the assault had no immediate provocation, that the boy was blindsided by the assailants.
None of this is good news, but then the national groups got involved. they are calling the six defendants the "Jena Six" as if this is a civil rights story. It was about civil rights and all that when it was about the tree and the nooses, no doubt. It stopped being about civil rights when an unconscious boy was rushed to the hospital. Now it's about justice and violence.
These boys are presumed innocent, but no matter who beat that young man, nobody is saying he deserved it, or even that he put up those nooses. Maybe he did put up the nooses, but that still doesn't mean the beating was justified or lawful. Perhaps the young man is guilty of some form of intimidation. It's still legal to call people names although I imagine nooses are a form of threat and illegal as such (Sep 27 note: the Jena DA and US Attorney in Louisiana have determined that the nooses weren't illegal. It's worth noting that the US Attorney is black).
Here are my complaints: Why are the national groups protesting the criminal charges? Only one child was put in the hospital, despite reports of other scuffles. This isn't a bloody nose, this was a horrific beating. How would Martin Luther King view this? That we should protest criminal charges when it's clear there was a brutal beating? But I have more: Why second-degree murder? This was an ugly thing, but murder? What evidence of intent? Why adult charges for the minors? What about the reported beating of a black boy at a party? Why no charges for his assailants?
Lastly, why protest the charges for the student who was not a minor at the time of the assault. According to published reports, this is not his first criminal offense and he led the attack. How can this young man be allowed to go free when he is committing the exact same crimes that used to be the exclusive domain of Louisiana's whites? I guess that is a form of racial progress in the South, that racially-motivated violence is excused because the victim "deserved it". No matter what color the attacker and victim are…
Leave me out of this one, please. Let me know when all violent offenses are prosecuted without protest.
CDs listened to today:
- Liz Phair: Whip-Smart
- Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d'Oiseaux, disk 3 (Hakan Austbo, piano)
- The Sea And Cake: The Fawn
