2007-09-19

Jena, LA Racial Injustice Gains National Reaction

I support those black teens in Jena, LA who are getting severely prosecuted for fist-fights resulting from a nasty act of white-on-black racism at that city's (only?) high school, which is integrated, as reported here before. Too bad that so many previous cries of racism have undermined this needs here, either from phoney racism (the Dukesbobo Boys) or from meaningless racism (the Imus affair).

And where in the hell are the Dukesboro Boys? I thought that those rich crackers were going to help non-rich people, in particular po' black folks, unjustly prosecuted? On the one hand I blame them outright for not jumping in here and leading their supporters into helping the Jena 6. But I also wonder how much more likely they would help here had the leaders of the Jena 6 (Jesse, Al, black college students, etc.) not acted against them, and then failed to reverse their course. In any case, I ultimately fault the Duke 3 for not stepping forward here and being bigger than Jesse, Al, and those screaming in-dignitaries at NC Central, which would have a good chance of bringing all these people together, reducing perhaps the chance of future false cries of racism, by working here on a real one.

4 comments:

Nadir said...

About 60,000 people will descend on the town of 3000 tomorrow.

Undermines?

Paul Hue said...

Maybe it could have been 160,000. Still no excuse for the Duke boys to not be there. I'm very pleased that so many have showed up.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir: Do you have a good article about this? I only get scraps that leave out stuff, I assume anyway. Did any white kids ever beat any black kids during this situation? I think I've heard on radio or TV reports that after the noose incident and before the black-on-white beating, that some white kids beat a black kid with a bottle.

Also, the Jena 6 assault gets described both as "a fight", which indicates blacks and whites fighting each other, and the white guy getting gang-attacked while he was unawares, which isn't a fight. Was that white guy in any case linked to previous incidents, such as the noose hanging, or a previous altercation?

This article below, for example, only mentions two incidents, the noose-hanging and the Jena 6 confrontation:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16885997/from/RS.1/

I agree that the noose-hangers should have been expelled, which is what the principal ruled; the school board overturned that. But I do not agree that they should have been arrested.

As for the Jena 6, was this a school fight? Or was it a blind-side attack? Even at its worse, a blind-side attack, I only see racism explaining the extreme legal response.

Paul Hue said...

Believe it or not, I have been blind-sidedly knocked out from behind. I regained consciousness a few minutes later and went on with my life. I do not think that my assailant should have gone to prison, and the circumstances of my incident lacked any mitigating circumstances as they do for the accused here.

Conversely, I have hit people before, even to the point of knocking them out... though never with a sucker punch. I am glad that I never went to prison. Those were fights, though. WAS THIS A FIGHT?