News > Politics > Racial Protests Overwhelm Small Louisiana Town

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THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 20 2007 1:31 PM

Racial Protests Overwhelm Small Louisiana Town

Submitted by Subrosa

Edited by Subrosa

Tags: Jena six

Ill be the first to admit that Im not much of a journalist. They have me here at Suicidegirls.com to write somewhat-witty-but-certainly-long-winded political or legalesque stuff so people have something to read before they go post on someone elses thread. Its OK. Im comfortable with that. I gave up my dream of being a reputable newsman years ago. I gave it up mainly because the reputable aspect of that particular fantasy didnt really appeal to me. So naturally, I became a lawyer instead.

However, its times like this when I wish that dream was a dream deferred rather than a dream denied. Because there are times when I wish I could be that newsman I wanted to be, down on the front lines covering the story that moves me to action. I wish I were there to write about that particular story that seems so incredibly wrong and so incredibly human at the same time. There are times, like now, when I wish I would have become a journalist so I could cover things like the Jena Six story first-hand. It is so unbelievable that a story like that could take place in the year 2007 that frankly I have a hard time wrapping my head around it without having seen it myself. However, its happening. And its infuriating.

Months after declining to charge three white high school students who were briefly suspended for hanging nooses in a tree, local prosecutors charged five of the six with attempted second-degree murder in the beating of a white student. The sixth defendant's case is sealed because he is charged as a juvenile.

Critics allege the cases show authorities in this predominantly white town are disproportionately harsh toward blacks. District Attorney Reed Walters, breaking a long public silence Wednesday at a news conference, denied racism was involved.

Walters said the suffering of the beating victim, Justin Barker, has been largely ignored. Barker was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function that night.

A six-on-one beating rendering the victim unconscious is certainly worthy of serious discipline. But attempted murder for a schoolyard fight seems a tad extreme, especially when the kid was out and about at a social event within a few hours. Regardless of the severity of the charges, they dont necessarily show racial bias in and of themselves. Perhaps there was legitimate intent to kill or reckless disregard for human life (the general definitions of second-degree murder) apparent from the facts of the case. Perhaps.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps theres quite a bit more to the story than one would glean from a first glance at the AP story. Unfortunately there does seem to be, and the story gets weirder, more frustrating and more damning the more you read into it.

As with anything this politically-charged, the factual accounts vary and its difficult to sort through rhetoric from observation. The Washington Post reported this in June:

Black residents said the tying of the nooses was evidence that race relations have not improved that much. They said the superintendent's decision to hand only a three-day suspension to the white students who tied the nooses, overriding the principal's decision to expel them, sparked the anger that led to the disturbance.

The chain of events began at the start of school last September. At an assembly that kicked off classes, a black freshman asked the white principal if black students could sit under "the white tree" -- a shade tree where only white students regularly sat. The answer was, "You can sit anywhere you want."

But when black students showed up in the broiling hot yard, they found three nooses hanging from the tree's branches. After a number of scuffles, the district attorney came to the school and gathered students for a tough talk.

"I can make your life go away with the stroke of a pen," they recalled him saying. Black students said he looked directly at them. Walters denied it.

Another account of the school assembly from the father of one of the accused (and appearing in a decidedly less reputable source than the Post) goes into greater detail:

"Now remember, with everything that goes on at Jena High School, everybody's separated. The only time when Black and white kids are together is in the classroom and when they playing sports together. During lunch time, Blacks sit on one side, whites sit on the other side of the cafeteria. During canteen time, Blacks sit on one side of the campus, whites sit on the other side of the campus.

"At any activity done in the auditorium-anything-Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he's looking directly at the Black students-remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side-he's looking directly at the Black students. He told them to keep their mouths shut about the boys hanging their nooses up. If he hears anything else about it, he can make their lives go away with the stroke of his pen."

Its a similar account to the one in the mainstream press, even down to the stroke of his pen line. I can certainly imagine that black students sitting at a self-segregated assembly where the District Attorney is called in to tell students to knock off the racial tensions would feel singled-out. However, its a third-hand account from someone directly affected by the situation so it is hard to find this entirely persuasive. Still, it does give one pause because the situations seem so familiar and so plausible. Racism exists. We know this. Self-segregation happens. We know that. So to put them together isnt much of a stretch.

Following the assembly, racial tensions simmered before a chain of events and non-events led to the brawl in question. Returning to the Posts piece:

The incident was never reported to police, said U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington. A report might have triggered a hate-crime investigation, although federal authorities rarely go after juveniles for such crimes. Washington added that if the students had been expelled, tensions might have been eased and the violence avoided.

To me, its this paragraph that makes the alarm bells go off. This is a D.A. that is so thorough that hes willing to go after 16 year old schoolyard brawlers for attempted murder but he doesnt think enough to report a lynching threat to the police? Walter said he didnt charge the three students found responsible for the nooses with a crime because he couldnt find one on the books in Louisiana to charge them with. Assuming thats true, are we to assume he had never heard of federal hate-crime legislation? Not buying it. He might not have been able to charge those kids under federal law himself, but as gung-ho as he appears to be about law and order one would think hed make the effort to try and kick that one up to the feds. I guess he had better things to do or something.

In the weeks that followed, the fighting continued. In one scuffle, Robert Bailey, one of the six teenagers now facing trial, said a white man broke a beer bottle over his head after jumping him at a party, but there was no immediate investigation. Months later, Justin Sloan, who is white, was charged with simple battery and given probation for that attack.

Bailey was involved in a second incident when he and friends spotted one of his attackers at a gas station. As Bailey and his friends approached, they said, the white teenager ran to his truck and brandished an unloaded shotgun at them. Bailey helped wrest the weapon away, refused to give it back and was charged with stealing the gun.

Days later came the school fight that led to the prosecutions. Sheriff Carl Smith said the crimes justified the charges.

I find it similarly unbelievable that Mr. Sloan was only charged with simple battery for his attack on Bailey. Ive seen people charged with assault with a deadly weapon for attacking someone with a bottle. Granted, jurisdictions differ but the crimes dont seem very far apart.

Undaunted by criticism of his actions and the apparent unequal treatment given these assailants, the District Attorney pressed on with his seemingly excessive charges, convicting Mychal Bell, one of the six, of aggravated assault and conspiracy. Those convictions carried a maximum sentence of 22 years in prison before they were subsequently overturned because Bell was too young to be tried as an adult. Facing increased pressure from civil rights groups, prosecutors have begun to lessen some of the charges faced by the other five. Bell remains in jail while the D.A. figures out what to do with him next.

Bells overturned convictions didnt stop thousands of protesters from descending upon Jena this Thursday, September 20th, and thousands more from protesting in solidarity at satellite actions around the country.

Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of this little Louisiana town Thursday in support of six black teenagers initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.

The crowd broke into chants of "Free the Jena Six" as the Rev. Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said the scene was reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people."

Any time you have racial tensions overflowing in the South (or most anywhere, really) youre going to evoke memories of the civil rights movement, the manifest inequality that spawned it, and the atrocious injustice of slavery that preceded even that. In that sense, the last quote in the above paragraph is the important one, the one that elucidates why this story has touched such a nationwide nerve. Because while many in America believe that Jim Crow have been laid to rest, those that are paying attention know that hes alive and well and working in our criminal justice system. Beyond the Jena Six are stories like Genarlow Wilson. Beyond that, there is the appallingly racially uneven way that the death penalty is applied. And on and on. Few address it because they choose to fall back on the apparent equality in the way laws are written, but that doesnt mean they are equally applied. All evidence seems to point to the contrary, in fact.

I dont know what happened in Jena, Louisiana the day that white kid was assaulted by six black teens. I cant say for certain that they dont deserve to be charged with attempted murder. I can say I seriously doubt they do and that I strongly suspect racial bias. However, I know that the justice system is racially biased. While Im aghast at what this prosecutor has put the Jena six through, I am very encouraged by the response it has received. Reverend Sharpton in a speech at the rally in Jena said that he hoped these protests for the Jena Six would help spark a new civil rights movement aimed at correcting racial injustice in sentencing. That remains to be seen, but the overwhelming response to this situation speaks to a deep undercurrent of resentment and anger about the way the criminal justice system treats people of color. After all, no one else from around the country really knows what happened either, but you can only see a pattern repeat itself so many times before you begin to believe it is intentional. This situation is just another heavy straw on the camels back.

Will it ever break?

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Comments

graphicsman77

Pasadena, MD

June 2007

SEP 21, 2007 06:37 AM

Following the assembly, racial tensions simmered before a chain of events and non-events led to the brawl in question. Returning to the Post's piece:

The incident was never reported to police, said U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington. A report might have triggered a hate-crime investigation, although federal authorities rarely go after juveniles for such crimes. Washington added that if the students had been expelled, tensions might have been eased and the violence avoided.

To me, it's this paragraph that makes the alarm bells go off. This is a D.A. that is so thorough that he's willing to go after 16 year old schoolyard brawlers for attempted murder but he doesn't think enough to report a lynching threat to the police? Walter said he didn't charge the three students found responsible for the nooses with a crime because he couldn't find one on the books in Louisiana to charge them with. Assuming that's true, are we to assume he had never heard of federal hate-crime legislation? Not buying it. He might not have been able to charge those kids under federal law himself, but as gung-ho as he appears to be about law and order one would think he'd make the effort to try and kick that one up to the feds. I guess he had better things to do or something.

D.A. wouldn't have been the one reporting the hate crime to the police. That would be someone who witnessed, or discovered the nooses who would have to do that. Like, a student, parent or school official. The D.A. merely prosecutes the cases that have ALREADY been reported to police.

Attempted murder has been dropped, so that's a non-issue anyway. But here's the question. Why did the 6 black students beat up the white student? He wasn't involved in the fighting, or the hanging of the nooses. Maybe it's because blacks are just as racist as whites. You only need to look at Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to see it.

Do I agree with hanging nooses in trees? No. That's just plain stupid. BUT you cannot force people to like other people. The more you try, the more you will breed even more hate.

I cannot support the actions of any of the students. I think that they'b be better served with the suspensions and some counseling than expulsion. And I do think that the students who attacked the white student should get some severe punishment for putting someone in the hospital. We cannot make it okay to use violence because someone is stupid enough to say/do something idiotic (like hang nooses in trees). What if someone had simply taken the nooses and made a public display of burning them? Might that not have sent a message that juvenile expressions of racism are as ineffective as they are tolerable? I'm sure that a ton of white students would have turned out for the display, making the point all the more powerful. Instead, however, they get Jesse Jacksona and Al Sharpton to hijack the legal process....thus removing any shred of credibility to the incident...and immediately dividing people for whom there might otherwise have been a unified cause.

zarth

Seattle, WA

December 2004

SEP 21, 2007 08:48 AM

Archaneus said:

Zarth said:
Racism isn't natural. Suspicion and negative attitudes about people outside your group (however that's defined) is. But racism as such is a social development that evolved during the European colonization of the New World, as an ideological support of a rigidly-defined caste system. That's the legacy we're dealing with currently, both in the Americas and in Europe. It's not atavistic at all, really, but it's so deeply ingrained in our culture that we experience it that way.

I have to respectfully disagree. I'm a history major with a focus on pre-modern history and I can say for a certainty that racism is indeed something experienced and displayed well throughout history. I've heard respected history professors lecture on the subject and there really is a large body of irrefutable evidence to show that racism has existed for as long as humanity has been in contact with other races.

Yeah, one of my degrees is in history, too. And your professors are conditioned by a modern society in which racism is endemic.

Xenophobia is perennial. It happens between social classes, subcultures, and neighboring communities, as well as between differing ethnic and sectarian groups.

Contempt for another human being on the basis of a darker skin color, however, is not.

Archaneus said:
Now, really what this gets down to is semantics. On one hand you're completely right, the suspicion and negative attitudes are natural but you ignore the fact that racism is simply that exact thing just directed at a specific other race. They are indeed an outside group. The only real reason that racism as the concept we think of it today can be argued to not have existed is the very narrow way we think of racism. Racism is any prejudice against another racial group, generally for unfounded and bigoted reasons.

That "semantic" distinction is important, though. It's what makes the difference between the full assimilation of Irish, German, Norwegian, Polish, and whatever other kinds of "white" immigrants into this country, and the ongoing prejudice, institutional and otherwise, directed against African-Americans. That's not a trivial matter.

Archaneus said:
Of course, the sentencing does still show a huge bias, but I wonder if this would have spun into the huge issue it has if it was some white kids being treated unfairly by a court. I kind of doubt it would have been anything more than a 50 word mention in the back of the newspaper. I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying this should be less of a race issue and more of a civil injustice issue. When we draw racial lines around everything we just perpetuate the problem.

This is an exceptionally pernicious misconception of how to deal with racism, and it is exactly the reverse of the truth. It's a form of blaming the victim to say that talking about race perpetuates the problem, because it implies that if those uppity Negroes would just stop playing that race card all the time, we fine white folks would be more inclined to treat them right.

It's contemptuous to whites, too, since the underlying logic is that the only reason we and our institutions act with prejudice is out of spite at being twitted about it.

As a historian, you should be aware that a frank discussion of race in America has never really happened yet in our civic culture. We put it off till the Civil War, and then afterwards dismissed it as having already happened ("best just to move on!") until the Civil Rights Era, when the issue was again forced. A lot of work remains unfinished from that time, and the answer to that is emphatically not to try to sweep it back under the rug by claiming that everything to be said on the matter already has been.

Now I'm going to eat some breakfast, and when I come back I'll grind graphics77man into the dust for being a goddamn bigoted fool.

meatpieboy

Korea, D.P.R.

June 2004

SEP 21, 2007 09:02 AM

As a biologist, I can chip in and say that xenophobia is natural ('though that doesn't make it right, okay??). Race just makes it easy.

Zarth said: Now I'm going to eat some breakfast, and when I come back I'll grind graphics77man into the dust for being a goddamn bigoted fool.

Is this extortion? Or just threats?

fountainofdreams

Batavia, IL

January 2005

SEP 21, 2007 09:21 AM

magpieboy said:
As a biologist, I can chip in and say that xenophobia is natural ('though that doesn't make it right, okay??). Race just makes it easy.

Zarth said: Now I'm going to eat some breakfast, and when I come back I'll grind graphics77man into the dust for being a goddamn bigoted fool.

Is this extortion? Or just threats?

A promise.

Chainlink

Key West, FL

August 2005

SEP 21, 2007 09:37 AM

Reaver

I'm lost

August 2003

SEP 21, 2007 10:16 AM

I once had my ass beat in a six on one scenario in high school.

I didn't attend any school functions or school for a week, and no one was charged with attempted murder.

Granted we're in PA, and everyone was white.

But hey....

smithers_jones

I'm lost

November 2003

SEP 21, 2007 10:37 AM

It is certainly is a mistake to simply scapegoat "southern racism" here. It is also a mistake to pretend that southern history has no bearing here. The threat of lynching after Blacks dared violate the norms of the school by daring to sit under the "whites only" tree and the resulting outrage by Black folks in the community has everything to do with southern history and the legacy of Jim Crow.
One of the reasons this resonates across the country is that the behavior of the criminal justice system in Jena would not be out of place in Los Angeles, New York or anywhere else: namely the fact that there seem to be two different criminal justice systems at work here, separate and unequal--One for white folks, and a second, harsher and much more punitive one, for Black folks.

smithers_jones

I'm lost

November 2003

SEP 21, 2007 11:04 AM

graphicsman77 said:
Attempted murder has been dropped, so that's a non-issue anyway. But here's the question. Why did the 6 black students beat up the white student? He wasn't involved in the fighting, or the hanging of the nooses.

Justin Barker was no innocent bystander. Reportedly, he was shouted some racial slurs at some Black students and spoke out in support of the white student who beat down a Black student at a party and those white students who hung nooses around the "White Tree." In the context of racially charged climate where whites were threatening Blacks with lynching, pulling guns on Black students, and beating them up at parties while the school administration and law enforcement do nothing, it is not rocket science to figure out "why" Justin Barker got his ass beat. Barker, incidentally, was later charged with brining a gun to school%u2014which all upstanding, innocent kids do.

graphicsman77 said:
Maybe it's because blacks are just as racist as whites. You only need to look at Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to see it.

What the fuck are you talking about?

graphicsman77 said:
Do I agree with hanging nooses in trees? No. That's just plain stupid. BUT you cannot force people to like other people. The more you try, the more you will breed even more hate.

You realize that not liking someone, and threatening them with lynching for sitting under a tree reserved for whitey is are not the same thing? Had the school administration taken appropriate action after the noose incident, the whole situation could have been avoided. It wasn't because the same racist presumptions that led the white students to hang the noose were the same ones the protected them from being appropriately punished in the first place.

graphicsman77 said:
I cannot support the actions of any of the students. I think that they'b be better served with the suspensions and some counseling than expulsion. And I do think that the students who attacked the white student should get some severe punishment for putting someone in the hospital. We cannot make it okay to use violence because someone is stupid enough to say/do something idiotic (like hang nooses in trees). What if someone had simply taken the nooses and made a public display of burning them? Might that not have sent a message that juvenile expressions of racism are as ineffective as they are tolerable? I'm sure that a ton of white students would have turned out for the display, making the point all the more powerful. Instead, however, they get Jesse Jacksona and Al Sharpton to hijack the legal process....thus removing any shred of credibility to the incident...and immediately dividing people for whom there might otherwise have been a unified cause.

Yes, Sharpton and Jackson made this a divisive racial issue. Not the fact that there was "Whites Only" tree on campus, not the fact that Black students were threatened with being lynched for being "uppity" and challenging the school's Jim Crow norms, not the fact that white students repeatedly assaulted Black students, not the fact that white students could pull a gun on a Black student without repercussion. If not for Sharpton and Jackson, Black and white folks in Jenna would probably be engaged in a gigantic group hug right at this very moment.