When adults abandon their responsibilities, children will take matters into their own hands.  The truth is that none of this had to be.  If school officials had addressed the problem when it occurred, making it clear that discrimination, acts of hate, etc. would not be tolerated at the school, creating an active solution that required apologies from the noose hangers and implementing some kind of racial sensitivity workshop for students—then the lives, the well-being of all children might have been saved. 

School fighting, bullying, excluding can be very painful and extreme—but is the answer to throw the students into jail for life?  Do you call the police if your son punches his sister in the nose? 

If a student is caught stealing a teacher’s purse, should we just throw him in jail and forget about him?  The best time to help a person, to effect behavior is when he or she is young.  We expect kids to behave as adults, to have control over their impulses and not need the education they are seeking. 

The children hanging the nooses received no publicized reprimand.  But when racial tensions escalated afterward, the district attorney was brought in to threaten black students. 

It’s hard not to act out when you are treated like garbage. Perhaps if a few white teachers had approached some of the black students and hugged them, apologized for the hateful students, and assured them that they were just as valuable to that school as anyone else none of this would have happened.  Is that so hard to do?

http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/09/jena.php

#102693 by rage

You GO rage!!! Thanks for the very important tip. Like about how the HUMAN RACE being the issue.

Friends nor enemies always unite in one. Two different sides may come together if theey have one goal. In a battlefield where rivals are at war are also united in one thing. Nobody knows what that thing is but it is there very visible.
In our country there are many tribal wars but I know they are united as a citizen of our country. When colonialism had spread through countries, tribals helped each other to defeat the enemy.

Last night, I dropped off a friend in the city and drove back through the ghetto.  I stopped at a Chinese carry-out to pick up some things for the folks at home ( an incredible people, the Chinese, able to do so much with so little).  As soon as I got out of the car and walked up to the window, one negroid, about fifty feet away, called someone on his cell phone. Then he walked towards me, trying to get a look into my wallet as I was paying. Immediately, about four of his associates showed up on bicycles.  They milled about me, chattering about “dat white boy.”  None of them appeared interested in putting in a food order.  I put my back against a wall, so that I was covered, and put my hand on my can of MACE.  Within a few minutes, two white men showed up, and the bugs retreated about fifty feet, circling the parking lot on their bikes. I was able to retrieve my food and leave without further incident. 
  I realize that I am guilty, in the minds of many of the deep-thinking “progressives” here, not only of unfair stereotyping, but of depriving these savages of their “civil right” to stomp my azz and relieve my of the contents of my wallet.  Having formerly lived in this area for nearly thirty years,  I did what I knew I had to do to protect myself.
  There seems to be a mathematical law that white people become more liberal, guilt-ridden, and silly in their prattling in inverse proportion to their proximity to any concentration of blacks and/or familiarity with the latter tribe’s behavior.
  I used to drive a cab and watched the city’s demographics change, until it became impossible to make a living without the serious threat of injury or death.  I have been robbed, shot at, and stabbed such that I was on life-support. So that, one might say, they have already “murdered” me. I do not hate blacks as a group, but I understand that there are ineradicable differences whether it is PC or in conformity with socialist dogma to recognize such differences. The greatest evil is the many white people who, often with the best of ignorant intentions,  preach to blacks that everything that goes wrong in their lives is the fault of (unspecified) white people. Blacks become convinced that any crime against whites is “racial justice.”  I think that these white leftists bear much responsibility for black behavior becoming more destructive over the last century.
  I used to have friends in suburbia who were quite liberal in their views, living in a lily-white neighborhood where the occasional black was an exotic novelty.  They would ask me why I was so prejudiced and narrow-minded.  I would ask them why they did not take advantage of the depressed real estate prices in the urban core, as well as the opportunity to send their children to a “multi-cultural” (black) school.  I was not invited back to their self-congratulatory social gatherings.
  Just my two cents, for what it’s worth….

Cyrena
Lincoln did issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. However, Texas, being part of the CSA, did not take notice of that nor any other order issued by the Union.
After the surrender in 1865, a Major was dispatched to Galveston via ship to spread the word, hence the time lag.
Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas for years, although strangely, the Civil Rights movement caused some to downplay the holiday. Not real sure of their reasoning, other than somehow it was seen as holding on to a past that they wanted eliminated.
However, it is a State holiday here, signed into law by Dolph Briscoe.
There is much of history that wasn’t taught in school. I reckon that is still the case in some States.
And you are tight about ones location bearing a role on ones attitude and thoughts.
Times are changing in East Texas. Though not enough.
There was the sad story of bus loads of Blacks being forced to move on to another city in East Texas after Rita hit the coast.
Happily, Canton opened up the Civic Center and did its best to feed and help the evacuee’s.
I doubt that racism will ever be completely a thing of the past, at least not nationwide.
Being white, as you pointed out, I cannot fully understand the feelings and emotions that Blacks nor any other Race have. And I am wont to type something that sounds right to me, only to offend another, completely unintentionally.
When I am called on it, it adds to my understanding of the differences. And I modify my thoughts accordingly if it is warrented.
And understanding one another and dealing with that understanding is what it is all about, or should be.

Farmertx,

...“At the same time, you get a bunch of Black teens and ask them about the struggles to achieve Civil Rights and you just might be surprised at the shallowness of their knowledge.”

Farmertx,

First, let me tell you that I’m not the LEAST bit surprised by the shallowness of the black teens that you’ve encountered, as to ANY knowledge of the earlier struggles on their behalf. I acknowledge this with great sadness, (as I do everyday) because I understand ALL of the reasons why, and they are too long to articulate here.

That said, I would point to your location, as part of the reason. (because, I study this stuff). There are different mindsets that accompany different parts of our nation, just as their are other variables that go with geographics. A regions’ or nations’ collective social mentality can be determined by many things.

But, here’s one thing (may not seem to have anything to do with this, but bear with me), that might exemplify what I’m saying. I’m hoping that because you live in Texas, (and even though you’re white) you may have heard of the (for lack of any better word) –holiday- that African-Americans have long celebrated in Texas, (and it has sort of spread from there), referred to as “JUNETEENTH”. Well, I’m from California, and despite being black, I never heard of it, until I moved to Texas.

Now, I don’t wanna bore anybody with any long stories about what this holiday is, but in the nutshell, African-Americans in Texas apparently started this memorial celebration to mark the Emancipation Proclamation. And, THAT certainly sounds like a holiday to commemorate, and in my idealistic view, it should be celebrated by ALL Americans, with equal fervor. The day that the Abe decreed that human beings could not be held in bondage, and forced to work for nothing, traded as cattle, and treated as less than a full human, because they happened to be black.

But here’s the catch. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Lincoln on Sept, 22, 1862, to become effective on Jan. 1, 1863. So far so good. The slaves were finally gonna be free. BUT, the slaves in TEXAS didn’t find out about it until June 19, 1865!! We’re talking what, damn near THREE YEARS LATER!!!

Now, I’m not saying it’s their fault they didn’t get the memo for that long. Maybe smoke signal transmissions didn’t get down that far. I don’t know what the deal was, since it would appear from the historical accounts, that pretty much all of the OTHER slaves knew they were at least SUPPOSED to be free by the Presidential degree, which became ratified as the 13th Amendment, just 6 months after the black folks in Texas got the word. 

But, what I AM saying, is that it seems (at least to me) like it’s sort of set a pattern. If you look over any parts of the Civil Rights Movement, you’ll be hard pressed to find any real involvement of the blacks in Texas at the time. That’s not to say that NONE of them were part of it, but the truth of the matter is that Texas, (all of it’s people, regardless of color) have seemingly been sort of last on the food chain, for progressive types of mindsets. Like one of my former co-workers once observed, “Well, there’s Texas, and then there’s the United States.” Another simply described it as a “3rd World State”. Having said that, I will sleep with one eye open tonight, ever vigilant that a native Texan of any color, might sneak a noose on to the lower branches of my tree house.

But, I’m not just pickin’ on Texans or African-Americans from Texas. The sadder truth is that so many of the lastest generations of black people are unaware of their history, because a legacy of slavery is not something that the majority has wanted to make known to the world. You have to admit that it’s a pretty sad testimony to our beginnings as a Nation.

I didn’t learn ANYTHING about the history of African-Americans -in school-, until I got to college.

So, that’s at least PART of the reason for that shallowness.

Some of us that don’t live in that part of the country that still believes it won the war fought over slavery, forty years after the Civil Rights movement, occasionally need a leaked story like this to remind us that racism and hate are very much alive and well in America. Never mind that the Reich masters have thrown out the law desegregating schools, in small rural towns in the South-my son works in one-nothing has changed. The white kids in these situations get one kind of justice, the blacks another, and though the lych mobs are less frequent, you can see that a kid that got in a fight and went to a party the same night was subject to ‘attempted murder’. In these towns, the white kids won’t get arrested or charged with crimes when kids of both race are at fault for fighting, and the whole thing was touched off by a hate crime. It’s the same old racist South.

If we are going to relive the civil rights movement lets relive the anti war movement as well.

Let the courts go through the paces and let appeals work as well, happens every day in this country with a whole range of issues more important than this one.

Whites are a minority in the suburb of Washington DC where I live and I am subject to variations of discrimination from a handful of blacks I meet or interact with.  On a professional level I have to deal with set asides, 8A minority contractors only which are not fair but daily business.

Where was the outrage from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on Channon Christians murder, a far more serious “hate crime” than Jena.

Cyrena
My comment on the kids not understanding was directed at the white kids understanding the full significance of the noose.
Looking back at the post I could have been more explicit.
At the same time, you get a bunch of Black teens and ask them about the struggles to achieve Civil Rights and you just might be surprised at the shallowness of their knowledge.
This is from personal recent experiance.

“We must realize that our party’s most powerful weapon is racial tensions. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races that for centuries they have been oppressed by whites, we can mold them to the program of the Communist Party. In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will endeavor to instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes. We will aid the Negroes to rise in prominence in every walk of life, in the professions and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this prestige, the Negro will be able to intermarry with the whites and begin a process which will deliver America to our cause.”
Israel Cohen, A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, 1912. Also in the Congressional Record, Vol. 103, p. 8559, June 7, 1957 top of page

•  #101808 by John Borowski on 9/21 at 11:16 am
(Unregistered commenter)
Are we living in a reiteration of a previous life? Have you ever had the eerie feeling that you have already lived through the present experience?
They call this feeling “déjà vu” John, and yep…I get it all of the time. I think it’s because in experiences like this, we all feel it, because it’s ALWAYS been there. Racism has existed since the inception of this country. It has ALWAYS been here, and unless one has lived it, (as a person of color) then one may not be able to grasp the full understanding of it. (then again, I think there are many white folks who understand it perfectly, and it’s lasted for centuries, because it’s what works for them.)

FamerTx, to suggest that kids don’t have any clue to what their parents or grandparents experienced, SPECIFICALLY black people, is an insult. It’s an egregious insult, and I take great umbrage with the Manifest Destiny and Great White Hope mentality that you display. Maybe YOUR strain of genetics is not in tune with the experiences of their earlier generations, but people of color are VERY well aware of the experiences of their ancestors, as well as their own obvious notice of the SAME bigotry that has been passed on to them, that they see and feel everyday of their lives.

Example: a couple of years ago at Halloween,  one of my neighbors HUNG a scarecrow- type stuffed figure from a NOOSE attached to his little balcony. This was right here in Southern California, but not a section where there are many people of color. However, for the few of us who ARE of color, we didn’t think it was a DAMN bit decorative or entertaining. (and we’re pretty well laid back here). STILL, the message was obvious, and a few minutes spent in attempted discussion with the perpetrator of this NOT FUNNY prank, revealed him to be the typical trailer house racist red-neck from Arkansas. And, he didn’t intend it in the celebratory spirit of Halloween.

Please don’t attempt to speak for those of whom you have not a clue, at least not until you’ve taken to time to actually find out.

A black man says police discriminate against him.

From Associated Press:

Huey Crockett, 50, lives with his wife, Carla, 45, in a heavily wooded, predominantly black district just beyond Jena’s limits, an area known as “The Country.” The Crocketts, who are black, have complained to police that Bell and other youngsters were causing trouble in their neighborhood — scratching cars with keys, breaking the windows of parked cars, spraying property with paint.

The authorities, Crockett says, were always slow to respond.

“But as soon as he had a run-in with a white boy, they came down on him like a hammer. That’s not right. If I call the police for an incident here, it may take them an hour, an hour and half to get out here. But they’ll be right out in an instant if a white person calls them.”

That the victim wasn’t badly hurt or killed was good fortune.  The perps could be up on murder charges.  Attempted murder goes to the issue of intent, not the result.  What is the intent of somebody who kicks an unconscious person in head?

I watch Amy’s show a lot.  However, like some of her counterparts on the right (such as Fox News), she is not always completely honest.

From Associated Press:

The so-called “white tree” at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.

Two nooses — not three — were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students “were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them,” according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.

There was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.

The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days — they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.

The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

About 225 miles and a world apart from racially mixed New Orleans, Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh) is a throwback.

Here, one refers to elders as “Sir,” and “Ma’am.” Children still pull catfish from creeks; couples court at Jena Giants football games; families rope goats and calves at weekend rodeos.

In a place where per capita income is $13,761, there aren’t any swank, French restaurants, but rather, family eateries such as the Burger Barn, Ginny’s and Maw & Paw’s. Most of Jena’s 14-odd churches stage Easter egg hunts. On summer afternoons, sweet tea and lemonade on a neighbor’s front porch are obligatory.

Re:#102078 by Frank on 9/22 at 5:08 pm
(69 comments total)

Frank, how can it have been such a terrible beating and the victim not even spend 1 night in the hospital. Treated and released denote’s a butt whipping, not attempted murder.

There are essentially two groups of people with two distinct viewpoints on the charges in this case:

1) People who understand that group kicking and stomping on the head of an individual already on the ground can reasonably be considered attempted murder.

and…

2) Morons, Simpletons, and Idiots.

Group stomping of someone’s head is not reasonable self-defense, nor is it even simply retributive pain infliction when the individual is already unconscious. It can only for the purpose of continuing significant damage to the head area of the person being assaulted without concern for the obvious possible consequences of brain injury or death.

The charges against the so-called Jena 6 were justified and I’ll wager that few if any of the people currently protesting would disagree with me if they had been white kids that stomped a black youth unconscious.  Al Sharpton would probably be calling for those kids to be locked away for life, had they been white. But dark skin has a way of transforming criminal offenders into oppressed-victims-of-circumstance in the twisted world view of many leftists.

The incredible stupidity (gosh, how racist) of the thousands of people who marched and all the liberal apologists for them is unbelievable. They seem to think that a fight is a fight is a fight and that charges should always be equal for any such incident regardless of circumstance or consequences, because anything else is “racial inequality”.  Apparently six-on-one stomping of an individual past the point of unconsciousness is just an average school fight to those who find the charges excessive. I’m glad I didn’t grow up in the culture where that is considered normal.

#101921 by mackTN

•  Whites fail to realize that one’s perception of reality is based on one’s experience—reality is an interpretive perspective which we organize based on the information we’ve stored from life experiences, education, etc.

MackTN,

If given a currency value, these words would be worth at least a billion, if not way more. Specifically, your explanation that one’s perception of reality is based on one’s experience; I would add only that there is in fact a DNA attached to this perspective, just like any other genetic piece of our being. No two people are exactly alike in their perception of reality, though there are certainly those who will be closer than others. (like twins maybe…people with similar experiences)

I truly wish more folks could “get this”, because it’s critical to our collective survival, but I’m telling you, it’s really tuff going these days. We are no longer training ourselves or each other, to be able to view the world though the eyes of others, and that spells atrophy of the senses, and then…death of the individual.

The only thing I would add to this, is just a reminder that while it’s ‘mostly’ white folks who don’t get this, it afflicts people of color as well.

Thanks for the wisdom.

#101877 by Louise
•  I suspect Doctor King would have been outraged by this injustice and racial prejudice. And I suspect were he here today, he would have been leading the march!
Dang it Louise, you’ve given me back –Religion-!! (I guess because I can switch pretty effortlessly from transmit to receive. )

Damn right Dr. King would have been pissed as hell, and leading that march!! And, I more than suspect it, I KNOW it!!

Somebody should have been reading his Letters from the Birmingham Jail, yesterday, just to make his presence known. (and, somebody may have. I don’t know, since I couldn’t go. Grounded)

I was there in spirit though.

Meantime, you are a wise woman. (but, you probably already know that.):0

#101908 by Enemy of State on 9/21 at 8:46 pm
(139 comments total)

Verne, keep talking.

Thanks and yes, I will.  Too many, mostly white people, just don’t get it after all of these years.

What bothers me really?  When OJ was acquitted of killing his wife and friend, the white community screamed in outrage about it.  They characterized the jury as stupid.  Whites fail to realize that one’s perception of reality is based on one’s experience—reality is an interpretive perspective which we organize based on the information we’ve stored from life experiences, education, etc.  Black people viewed the OJ situation based on their everyday relationship with the criminal justice system—we have too many black people arrested, harassed, falsely accused, set up to put a lot of faith in the police’s version of things. 

When OJ was arrested this past week in Las Vegas, the media had him investigated, tried, and judged in one short week.  Whites were outraged that he had gotten away with murder and they were on television screaming bloody hell about the INJUSTICE.

But where was there sense of INJUSTICE when black people were assassinated, lynched, set up, thrown into prison unreasonably.  Why does INJUSTICE only get coverage when a white person is killed senselessly? 

These are children in Jena, LA.  Children who have been on this planet for only 16 years, yet people expect them to control themselves in a mature, adult manner.  These boys were charged with adult felonies, attempted murder for a schoolhouse fight that could have been avoided if the school had addressed the initial wrong.  Hanging nooses, painting swastikas, are provocative acts difficult for even adults to deal with emotionally.

Verne, keep talking.

  I think this is a case where no white person is going to have the same strong emotional response on seeing such a noose, as a black person from the south. We can only imagine the effect it has.

The six guys attacked somebody who was not one of the guys who supposedly put up the alleged nooses.

#101810 by Grousefeather on 9/21 at 11:23 am
“HELLO!
Please switch from transmit to receive for a change and answer my question!”

#101748 by Grousefeather on 9/21 at 5:59 am
“Martin Luther King Jr. would never have condoned violence, so could someone please explain to me why violence is being justified and it’s effects minimized in this case?”
***

Sir, violence is not being justified in this case. At least not by the people marching in Jena and certainly not by the parents of the Jena six. That is not what this is about.

This is about JUSTICE!

Six black juveniles are alleged to have beat up one white juvenile.
The alleged victim recovered from his cuts and bruises and suffered no permanent damage.
The black kids were arrested and charged with attempted murder!
So far one has been tried ... while a juvenile ... in Adult court.

He was found guilty and sentenced to LIFE in prison!

Sir, life in prison is NOT justice for a beating, irregardless of any and all extenuating circumstances.
That appears to be JUSTICE based an racial bias. A common ailment in some parts of the country, particularly some parts of the South.

Even the State ruled the boy should never have been tried in an adult court and overturned the conviction!
But still he sits in prison. A juvenile, in adult prison.

He has been in that prison for ten months now.

I suspect Doctor King would have been outraged by this injustice and racial prejudice. And I suspect were he here today, he would have been leading the march!

Leading a force of numbers demanding justice.
Not a force of thugs looking to start a violent confrontation.

That role is all too often relegated to the other side.

While the good people of Jena insist this is not a race issue, their reaction ... or over-reaction indicates otherwise.

Maybe you don’t remember the fight for racial equality led by Doctor King. Maybe you’re too young.

There was violence, a lot of violence ...
and murder. But it came from the other side.
Sir what ultimately happened to Doctor King who always preached non violence?

He was shot and killed calling for justice.

I’m madder than Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson at a bar mitzvah.  That white kid’s vicious attack on those six black kids was uncalled for.

“At one incident, a white student approached a group of blacks with a broken bottle and a shotgun; the blacks disarmed the white student without harming him, yet they were charged with theft of his property!!  Huh?”

That happened near a store when a white kid fled from three black kids.  He went to his truck and grabbed a gun.  Rather than shoot them, he let them take the gun from him.

Hanging up a picture of O.J. out to get you 30 years of hard labor.

While I appreciate much of Robinson’s discourse on the Jena episode, I am perplexed with his title; I don’t believe the thousands that rallied in Jena were motivated to do so by hate, nor do I think that is the one issue that unifies the black community.  Perhaps united by anger over injustices, which still function everywhere in this country regardless of class, level of education, etc. 

It’s been a recent and accelerating phenomenon for the criminal justice system to go into schools and criminalize students—mostly minority students. Back in the 60s when I was in high school, there were fights everyday—between cliques, schools, at football games, etc.  Rarely were the police called to arrest students.  The schools handled discipline and suspended, reassigned, or expelled chronic offenders.  But these days everything seems to be a matter for the police, moreso for young minority men than for any other group. 

The school, indeed the town, could have nipped this in the bud when those nooses were hung from the tree, made it clear in no uncertain terms that that kind of racist display would not be tolerated.  But they did nothing and so racially charged events continued to occur in the ensuing months.

In all the incidents that have happened between whites and blacks during the months between the nooses and the beating of that boy, only the black students have been charged.  At one incident, a white student approached a group of blacks with a broken bottle and a shotgun; the blacks disarmed the white student without harming him, yet they were charged with theft of his property!!  Huh?

The white people in Jena who say everyone there loves one another probably don’t have one close black friend—unless it’s a maid or employee.  They are blind to the difficulties in the lives of black Americans who are dependent on a majority for education, jobs, and justice.  Even Eugene Robinson, who authored the above piece, has to count on the majority playing fair and allowing him to exercise his livelihood.

And, now, this 16-yearold has been denied bail—again.  Defies understanding, really.

Bearing in mind the gulags in the Soviet Union, how much prison time should someone get for hanging a red flag up?

Re:#101757 by Verne Arnold on 9/21 at 6:49 am
(245 comments total)

Get a grip, Verne.
These are kids we are talking about.
The noose is a bad symbol of a much worse time. But for kids to use it once isn’t cause for folks loding it.
Had it been an adult, that wasn’t retarded or mentally ill, put a noose up, then he/she should have known better and dealt with a little harsher.
Kids, Black or White or Brown or Red have little to no understanding what their parents and grand parents had to face daily.
That outside attention was drawn to Jena is a good thing, as it will make other folks aware that things such as this aren’t easily tolerated and the punishment has to fit the offense.

The truth is America has been globally embarrassed to have to admit that our human and civil rights strides have all been hugely very deliberately regressive, particularly during this Presidential administration, denoting that Jena is not the only hot spot.

Kind of makes the Statue of Liberty look a little more like that flaming eyeball in Mordor doesn’t it?

It occurs to me that the noose was as grave - or perhaps even more so - than the beating dealt out by the black students.  The beating was wrong, without question - I don’t sanction violence.  However, it was an assault.  Measure that against the implications of hangman’s nooses - racism, the quiet threat of force to maintain social structures, the (usually) chilling effect on speech - and it’s pretty clear that the nooses were a hate crime.  And they were treated as a prank….

In general, in the US, hate crimes are dealt with pretty harshly, as they’re serious not because they exact an immediate effect on a citizen but because they undermine the fabric of trust between citizens.  We are all American citizens, and that needs to be foremost in our minds.  Doesn’t matter where your ancestors are from…if you’re a citizen, you’re entitled to the full rights and responsibilities of citizenry.  And with that should (ideally) come a willingness to understand that we (well, working Americans of all colors/ethnicities/whatever) are all in this together.  If we allow ourselves to be separated into rival groups like squalling children, it does nothing but allow the rich and powerful to prey on us. 

So I’d have preferred to see the nooses dealt with appropriately…which probably would have included expulsion, perhaps prosecution.  Would it have been harsh? Yes.  Would it have made faith with the idea that Americans don’t (or at any rate, shouldn’t) tolerate that kind of behavior?  Yes.

To all of you,
It was a hangman’s noose…get it?  No?  Then you suffer the racism of the masses.  A hangman’s noose treated as a prank?  A hangman’s noose is a very powerful symbol…of the KKK.  Do you get it?  No?  Then you will suffer for your inexcusable naiveté and never will this racial issue go away from our supposed evolution into a meaningful society.  A meaningful society of equals…not a plunge into divisive, politicized, stratified, social structure.  This issue goes far beyond the immediacy of the “story” and speaks directly to what this administration is doing to us.  Wake up…Paul Revere is riding through the “streets” of the internet and blogs giving you this opportunity…don’t blow it…it might be your last chance!!!!!

My father ruined me, or enlightened me, back in 1963. I was a little kid and he was a vet, a smart Navy guy back from Korea, and he was going to San Diego State, and he became a high school teacher, of history and American Civ and in the 70’s, ecology.

But that day he showed me a picture in a book of an actual hanging of a black man.  He said “this is happening, now, in our country.”  He showed me photos of the drinking faucets in the south that the black kids had to use.  The separate bathrooms for ‘negroes’. 

I’m just a white chick hiding out in my little mountain home.  I have an aversion for cities, and too many people hogging up one little splice of land, because therin erups violence ... But I thoroughly believe this insanity is still happening, I have seen it in my Forest.  I have seen it, the disregard and fear of people of another color. I have heard my coworkers hoping that the likes of Blackwater can just come home from Iraq and kill the annoying humans at the border, in the wildeylands, I have heard this hope.  I have heard of young boys in San Diego county beat old hispanic immigrant men to
to death in the canyons. 

So good, make noise and march.  Make noise and march.

Failed leadership.

The Jena 6 suffered from judicial overkill, no doubt.
But, at the same time, 6 boys jumping 1 boy does not seem to be an issue of boys will be boys.
As the victim was able to attend a school function the night of the attack, it doesn’t seem that he was injured enough for felony charges to have been filed.
The placing of a noose in the tree was a dumb childish prank.
I know that the noose is a hated reminder of a much worse time in the South for all blacks.
But the Black students would have been better served had they put some white sheets in the nooses, rather than resort to ganging up on one student.
That was overkill on their part, but it sure didn’t warrent the judicial response that followed.
Racial issues, especially in the South, have improved somewhat and they still have a long ways to go. This is very true in the smaller towns.
Here in Van Zandt County (East Texas) the wedding announcements in the paper several months ago featured a photo of a young Black male and White female who were getting married.
It caused many raised eyebrows and lots of head shaking. But no assaults, threats or other acts of hatred towards the couple. That’s progress. A small step in one sense, but a giant leap from what would have happened if that photo was published 30 years ago. Heck, 30 years ago, no local paper would have considered publishing such a photo, nor item for that matter.
It’s going to take a long time for all racist acts to disappear.And they can’t be swept under the rug and ignored.
But to meet an implied threat (noose) with actual violence wasn’t the right way to have confronted the problem.
Now the tree is gone. And many White students will resent that, just as many Black students will be happy that it is gone.
I don’t see parents on either side being all that conciliatory and that is what all the students need; a family to show them a better way.