The Jena Six Legal Defense
There's two ways, as journalists, you can write this story to receive two different reactions. There's the one way I read it - lone white kid was pounded on by six raging blacks, who've since been imprisoned and drawn the backing of the Rev. Al Sharpton, among others. Now, whenever Al Sharpton gets into the mix, you never know if it's for his own self-serving ego reasons. But, then you can read about it the other way, where instead of leading off the story with the poor white kid, you lead off with how there's a "White Tree" where blacks aren't allowed to sit and where - at the beginning of the school year last year - two nooses were found hanging in a blatant statement of anti-black racism.
I'm not even really all that pissed off about the supposed judicial bias against the Jena Six, although the charges DO sound pretty fucking extreme. No, what I'm pissed off about is the fact that town officials let this go on for so long.
When you're a small town like Jena, Louisina, is - comprised of 3,000-some-odd residents - all you're really looking for is to never, ever, have the national media focus its attention on you. Because no matter the reason, it's never a good thing. The national media - with all their cameras and annoying, bleeding-heart, perfectly groomed New York reporters - will only go to a place like Jena, LA, if there's some kind of tragedy (girl in a well), some kind of religious fervor (dying deaf-mute's spouse wants to pull the plug), or some kind of moral outrage like this. And, when it's as apparently racist as Jena, LA is being portrayed, the last thing they REALLY want is for the angry blacks to come to town in droves with their signs and their protests and their chants and their Rev. Jesse Jackson's rhyming sermons.
This could've all been avoided, though. Had they nipped this thing in the bud right after the nooses on the White Tree, had they nipped it after the first set of racial fights in the school, had they nipped it again after the second set of racial fights in the school ... but they didn't. Up until the final 6-on-1 beating, the principals and the mayor and everybody else simply took a Boys Will Be Boys stance on all this white hate crime against blacks. Then, when they finally want to put their foots down and stomp on all this racial tension once and for all, they choose the one time where it's a fight where the black kids outnumber the white kid. They went overboard in their zeal to quelch this thing, and now they deserve to have all this negative attention on them. Not necessarily because they're racist - although I could easily make the case they are - but because they were really fucking lazy in the discipline of their derilect fucking children.
I'm not even really all that pissed off about the supposed judicial bias against the Jena Six, although the charges DO sound pretty fucking extreme. No, what I'm pissed off about is the fact that town officials let this go on for so long.
When you're a small town like Jena, Louisina, is - comprised of 3,000-some-odd residents - all you're really looking for is to never, ever, have the national media focus its attention on you. Because no matter the reason, it's never a good thing. The national media - with all their cameras and annoying, bleeding-heart, perfectly groomed New York reporters - will only go to a place like Jena, LA, if there's some kind of tragedy (girl in a well), some kind of religious fervor (dying deaf-mute's spouse wants to pull the plug), or some kind of moral outrage like this. And, when it's as apparently racist as Jena, LA is being portrayed, the last thing they REALLY want is for the angry blacks to come to town in droves with their signs and their protests and their chants and their Rev. Jesse Jackson's rhyming sermons.
This could've all been avoided, though. Had they nipped this thing in the bud right after the nooses on the White Tree, had they nipped it after the first set of racial fights in the school, had they nipped it again after the second set of racial fights in the school ... but they didn't. Up until the final 6-on-1 beating, the principals and the mayor and everybody else simply took a Boys Will Be Boys stance on all this white hate crime against blacks. Then, when they finally want to put their foots down and stomp on all this racial tension once and for all, they choose the one time where it's a fight where the black kids outnumber the white kid. They went overboard in their zeal to quelch this thing, and now they deserve to have all this negative attention on them. Not necessarily because they're racist - although I could easily make the case they are - but because they were really fucking lazy in the discipline of their derilect fucking children.
