Jena High School: The school’s colors are black and gold, but the preferred color is white.
Photo: LaSalle Parish Schools
It’s 2007, isn’t it? I’m a little scatterbrained sometimes, and not always aware of the date, but I just checked the little clock in the corner of my computer screen, here, and, yes! It’s 2007.
Or, my computer’s messed up.
Let’s assume my computer is right about something for a change. And then let’s ask, all together now: “What the hell?”
The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school’s 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree’s cooling shade.
“Sit wherever you want,” school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.
You can imagine the effect that sorry sight had on the students. The hanging nooses were placed to intimidate, and intimidate they did. But when the school superintendent overruled the school principal on whether the culprits should be expelled from school, or merely suspended for less than a week–
But Jena’s white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.
“Adolescents play pranks,” said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
–that’s when all hell broke loose in Jena.
From Counterpunch:
In the first weekend of December, a Black student was assaulted by a group of white students, and a white graduate of Jena High School threatened several Black students with a shotgun. The following Monday, white students taunted the Black student who was assaulted over the weekend, and one of the white students was beaten up.
Within hours, six Black students were arrested. “I think the district attorney is pinning it on us to make an example of us,” said Purvis. “In Jena, people get accused of things they didn’t do a lot.”
Soon after, their parents discovered that these students were facing attempted murder charges. “The courtroom, the whole back side, was filled with police officers,” Tina Jones, Bryant’s mother, recalls. “I guess they thought maybe when they announced what the charges were, we were gonna go berserk or something.”
Listen, I think if one of those young men were my son, I really would go berserk upon hearing the charges. Attempted murder?! I know I’m old, but my high school had fights all the time, and yes, some of them were probably racially motivated–yet I don’t recall any of the participants in any fight ever being charged with attempted murder. And just in case you were tempted to speculate that the white students involved in other fights at Jena High School were met with similarly harsh treatment, guess again:
NOTE: The white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn’t charged with any crime at all.
Yes, “pulled the shotgun.” No crime at all, just like the nooses were merely a “youthful stunt” and no threat whatsoever.
Pandagonians everywhere, but especially in Louisiana: The AfroSpear could use your help:
. . . if anyone knows contacts for grassroots organizations in Jena, please let me know and spread the word. Shawn also mentioned developing some way to contact the Department of Justice (for the net, perhaps a petition and letter writing campaign?) and letting them know that we need a stringent and definitive action taken on cases based on inequitable treatment among races in the criminal justice system, using this case and others as examples.
Lastly, we should figure out ways online to raise money for the legal defense of these three young men, and we should write letters to our hometown papers and media about the situation so that we can keep these discussions in the forefront of people’s minds. We can’t table them until the Next Big Case; our dedication and our awareness must remain ongoing.
You’ll also find a mailing address and contact information for Joe Cook, Executive Director of the Louisiana ACLU, in that post. Use it! I’ve checked the ACLU website, and so far nothing related to this case has been posted. For now, keep updated at Dallas South Blog, Vox Ex Machina, Listen to Me for One Minute, and AfroSpear: A Think Tank for People of African Descent. Contact Sylvia at AfroSpear if you’ve got any fundraising or organizing experience to contribute, and above all, resist the urge to see this injustice as a purely small-town, Southern phenomenon that could never, ever happen where you live. Because:
Our actions affect others’ realities. It is highly likely that if the school officials took decisive action after the nooses were placed on the tree, the resulting incidences would not have occurred. Perhaps I should say: we need to pay attention to those small matters and discuss them seriously before they escalate.
Conservatives decry hate crime legislation because the events at Jena High School are their vision of a desirable future. Decent people view those events as ideally confined to a horrible, sickening past, to be remembered but certainly never longed for. We the decent have to help put a stop to this injustice. If you think that’s unfair, the way we decent people are always having to clean up messes made by the habitually indecent (and I don’t mean “indecent” in the fun way), ask yourself: Is it only a little unfair, or charged-with-attempted-murder unfair? Hey! Suddenly life looks a little better, huh? Great! So get to work.
121 Responses to “Under the White Shade Tree”
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man, being from Louisiana leaves me so warm and fuzzy inside, sometimes.
Louisiana is just full of “youthful stunts” and the like, btw. It’s a line of reasoning I hear all the time back home when I call any of this casually institutionalized racism into question.
the dress code at the “totally not segregated” bar? it’s just to keep out “unruly troublemakers”.
the confederate flag decals on the body of a pickup truck? it’s just “pride in our heritage”.
and, yup, race-related humiliation, threats, and assaults are inevitably “just youthful pranks”, “just boys being boys”, etc.
wow, you could wear out the scare quotes on your keyboard trying to write about racism in Louisiana.
This just makes me ill. So crazy. Made worse by the fact that a friend of mine seriously almost did die when he was attacked outside a bar (not racially motivated, just asshole-motivated) and no charges could be filed at all as there wasn’t enough “proof”!
I’m sorry, I should clarify: My point is, you do not bring attempted murder charges just because the person behind whatever happened is black. You bring them when it’s actually attempted murder–and from my experience that’s a pretty hard charge to get people to press when it’s from a physical fight!
This is why hate crime legislation is necessary even though “murder/assault/vandalism” is already illegal. This “youthful prank” is not mere vandalism or property damage. It was meant to terrorize an entire group of people. Despicable.
Oh my god, this made me want to throw my monitor through the window. How absolutely un-fucking-believable. Or many I should rephrase - how absolutey horrifying, and how sad that I don’t have any trouble believing it. Jesus fucking Christ.
Unfortunately, I am not very surprised by this. It’s disgusting and horrifying, but this is, after all, the state that gave us David Duke.
The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students.
So racism at this school certainly wasn’t a new thing. In fact it has probably been going on for many years.
But as long as the
white preferencestatus quo remains undisturbed, then the white kids will (reluctantly) allow thecoloredsnegroesblacks to be at school with them, as long as they stay on “their own side”.I’m with ilyka - I swear the last time I saw this movie was sometime in the ’60’s…
And yet some people I know can’t understand why I don’t want to take my family (even on a vacation) to “The South”…?
oh, and i can pretty much promise you that the segregation of Jena High’s campus into a white side and a black side isn’t racist, btw. it’s just “the way things have always been”. and “that’s how the black kids want it, anyway.”
*pulls the quote key out of her keyboard and flings it out the window*
Any chance for a federal civil rights investigation?
Or is having a working FEDERAL government too much to ask? Not like, you know, a real bona-fide war hero republican President is running things these days.
NOTE: The white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn’t charged with any crime at all.
Sadly, this kind of overt racial double standard is making a big comeback in the Bush years. Bob Herbert of the New York Times has written about a number of cases recently, though the only one I can remember right now is the Genarlow Wilson case (a black teenager imprisoned for having consensual sex with an “underage” white girl, even though she was only two years younger than him). In spite of the fact that the Georgia (?) legislature changed the law to make exceptions for cases like Wilson’s, Wilson himself is still in prison.
Herd of posters showing up to remind us “But racism happens in the North toooooo!”
Three…two…one…
I’m with ilyka - I swear the last time I saw this movie was sometime in the ’60’s…
I saw it all the time growing up there, and I lived in a less rural part of Louisiana, closer to New Orleans. When we moved there in the mid-70s, one of the first things we got in our mailbox was a Klan pamphlet, and 20 years later when I was tending bar at a redneck joint, I heard the slurs all the time (it paid the bills, and I spit in a lot of drinks) from some regulars who were open Klansmen. And this was an area that was enlightened compared to Jena.
There are plenty of parts of the south where racism is less and less of an issue, though it still infects every bit of the discourse, but there are still places like Jena, LA or Jasper, TX, or Mountain Home, AR, where they may have taken the sundown signs down, but where the attitude still reigns supreme.
Stick with the big cities on vacation and you’ll be okay for the most part. There’s lots to see in New Orleans and Memphis and Atlanta and the like.
No, there’s no chance of a federal civil rights investigation. They’re all busy investigating Christians’ claims of civil rights violations. No time for something as petty as school kids’ innocent pranks. Besides, racism is over, didn’t you get the memo?
well it does, Seraph.
of course, not this crazy. and i wasn’t going to be the one to come out and say it.
but it does.
Seraph, it does happen in the North, and it’s every bit as wrong. (and I do understand you’re pre-mocking of the trolls we will no doubt soon be experiencing…)
There are places in “The North” I fear to tread also…
Any chance for a federal civil rights investigation?
Of course not. And that’s why you’re seeing more of this kind of crap now. Because they know they can get away with it.
“No, there’s no chance of a federal civil rights investigation. They’re all busy investigating Christians’ claims of civil rights violations.”
And don’t forget all that “voter fraud” they’re up to their necks in…
(Reichwing definition of voter fraud: Anybody who dares to vote for a Democrat in any district that isn’t solidly Republican and so might actually affect the outcome of an election…)
This reminds me of a recent case in Paris, Texas, where a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to seven years for pushing a hall monitor at her high school. Her sentence was extended because she had “contraband” in her cell at juvie. The “contraband” turned out to be an extra pair of socks.
The girl was African American (big surprise). The story has a (sort of) happy ending, though: Enough “outside agitators” agitated to get her released. IIRC, this came on the heels of a big scandal about Texas juvenile corrections authorities extorting sex from the kids they were supervising.
Is it just me, or should we have let Sherman keep going and send him matches for the next twenty years after 1865?
Seraph– I know you’re just trying to be funny, or troublesome, or whatever, but if you actually would like to learn about racism throughout the United States, I would recommend reading James Loewen’s Sundown Towns. While the neo-confederate rhetoric prominent in much of the south is surely a huge part of the reason why things like this happen more often and more violently there than in the north, another reason is that many towns in the north and midwest are still (or have very recently been) all white, due to similar tactics of intimidation and violence and explicit warnings to blacks that the cost of moving in or holding jobs there might be their lives.
Of course, the fact that there is racism elsewhere doesn’t make this story any less sad or horrific, or more surprising. Thanks for letting us know about this, Ilyka; I hope you’ll keep us updated.
This is a terrible story, unfortunately, hate crime legislation is not going to solve anything. The original act was a threat, clearly, and no matter who it was directed at it should have been treated accordingly. Creating hate crime laws would just mean a few more laws for the authorities to ignore in these situations.
How would hate crime laws have kept those black students from being charged with attempted murder if they beat up a white student. And the white student, what, instead of being charged with “assault” he would be charged with “Hate crime assault”? The answer is not more laws, the answer is changing attitudes. Unfortunately, that is a much more difficult task.
six-oh-seven-nine, I suspect you are too dumb to understand that Sherman’s punitive measures helped (along with subssequent Reconstruction punitive measures, of course) to make this continued situation inevitable. Kind of like the way that the Russian empire’s treatment of Polish peasants contributed to the 19th & early 20th c. pogroms and abetting of the Nazis in WWII - divide and conquer, pit your lower orders and despised subject populations against each other, and then sneer as they go along with it.
–I bet you think that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were heroes, too - and don’t even understand your inconsistency. And have no harsh words for all the Northerners who bought clothes from the Lowell mills in the pre-war era, either. What do you think paid for all the 16, 17 and early-1800sprosperity in New England, eh?
Ass.
…an immoral, inhuman, barbaric ass as well as an illogical, historically-illiterate one, at that. But a smug, self-rightous liberal one, so it’s all good!
This reminds me of a recent case in Paris, Texas, where a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to seven years for pushing a hall monitor at her high school…The girl was African American (big surprise).
I think the girl in the “French Fry” case (a 12-year old arrested for eating a french fry on the DC Metro) was also African-American. Our current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, incidentally, wrote the opinion finding that the police in that case had not violated the girl’s civil rights.
There are places in “The North� I fear to tread also…
I grew up in a mixed-race family in Chicago, and I could tell you some stories….
I’d heard about this a couple weeks back and it still makes me crazy.
Also, last friday I saw my first “Speak English or Die” T shirt on the chest of some white fool in my local shopping mall.
Everything old is new again, eh?
Bellatrys, if there’s anything under the sun the South did not need help with, it was oppressing blacks. As for “punitive” Reconstruction, if anything, the North didn’t go far enough in protecting human rights for the South’s black population.I presume your sneer at Washington and Jefferson is a reference to their owning slaves. All I can say is, if you conflate that with the efforts of men like Calhoun, Davis, etc. to keep black people in bondage forever, you’re the last person on earth who should be calling anyone else an ass.
I think what Bellatrys was getting at was that the sheer destruction caused by Sherman and other parts of war only made the shitty economy in the south that much worse, as they had to rebuild.
Compare Germany after WWI (extremely punitive measures; no rebuilding assistance; general economic shittiness led to scapegoating the eternal European scapegoats) with after WWII (Marshall Plan, Wirtschaftswunder in the portion of the country the Allies didn’t give to Russia).
This is absolutely insane. I’m speechless.
The StrawTroll wouldn’t come here saying that there is racism in the north, too - that’s way too real and true and doesn’t undermine the assertion of racism existing in the south, or at all!
No, seraph, the StrawTroll would land in the Pandagon comments section whining about how racism hurts WHITE people too!
VERY big difference - one is a statement of fact to add to the original issue at hand, the other is backasswardery.
I’m with Cara. I don’t even know what to say besides that is some fucked up shit right there.
One could make the case that the problem with Reconstruction (and the Union’s actions at the end of the war) is not that they were punitive, but that these actions were not punitive enough. The egalitarian window opened after the Civil War was closed when it became apparent that the federal government was not willing to truly force a change in the fundamental racial relationship in the South.
And, furthermore, enfranchising Blacks was not a punitive act. It was an act of justice. It was only after the old order was restored after Reconstruction that such things were thought of as punitive.
See- its like the republicans have been saying for the past 7 years - Racism is dead in this country.
The reality based community just needs to stop looking at these “incidents” as “evidence” that racism still exists and we’ll all get along just fine.
This story pissed the hell out of me, not just for the obvious reasons, but because our milquetoast elected representatives let the racist fucks get away with this by framing this kind of raw ugly hatred and illegal thuggery as a “cultural” difference.
Yep, those “God fearin’” “real American” folk sure do love their … heh heh … NASCAR’n'beer.
Yep, I like my constitutional protections like medical privacy and freedom of religion and to drink A FUCKIN LATTE IN THE MORNINGZ. They like to threaten black people with hanging or actually do it and not have to splain it.
I guess we’re just two totally equal “extremes” of the center as defined by Moderate Dems and Moderate Pugs.
Feh. Ptooey.
Hear hear, Bitter Scribe. As for the expectation that trolls are gonna say “but there’s racism in the north too,” we can say “well yeah, and we would and do spring into action the exact same way.” I think for us the location of racism matters only for background of the issue. Doesn’t matter where racism rears its ugly head, we’re ready to fight it anywhere. North, South or West. It’s time to fight the good fight.
Wouldn’t the obvious concern troll involve saying that because the black kids didn’t sit still and get their asses kicked by the white kids, the whole thing is one big morally equivalent mass? But in a concerned voice.
The Jena students were not just charged with attempted murder, but conspiracy to commit murder as well. That’s up to 100 years in prison for something high school students do on a daily basis around the country (get into fistfights) if they’re convicted.
And there was a six-year-old black girl in Florida arrested for throwing a tantrum in her kindergarten class and charged with a felony, a seven-year-old black boy in Baltimore arrested for sitting on a turned-off dirt bike, an 11-year-old Ojibwe boy arrested in Minnesota for not appearing in a court case where he was the victim (the boy who beat him up didn’t appear at the original date and they just rescheduled it), a Korean American sixth grader who was pulled into the office and interrogated for hours because she was bullied the week after the Virginia Tech shooting, a 13-year-old Latina girl arrested for being forced into prostitution, Shaquanda Cotton (who was mentioned in the comments above) … the criminalization of children of color is not new, it’s just finally getting media coverage because it’s gotten a little more blatant in recent months.
One could make the case that the problem with Reconstruction (and the Union’s actions at the end of the war) is not that they were punitive, but that these actions were not punitive enough. The egalitarian window opened after the Civil War was closed when it became apparent that the federal government was not willing to truly force a change in the fundamental racial relationship in the South.
One could also make the case that the problem with the 2006 election (and the Democratic Party’s actions after the election) is not that they were punitive, but that those actions were not punitive enough. The window opened after the Republicant’s absolute control of all branches of government was closed when it became apparent that the Democrats were not willing to truly force a change in the fundamentally partisan behavior of the Republican’ts.
One could also make the case (as some have here) that the good ole boys partisan nature would let these things happen more and more as the (non-Republican’t) masses get more and more unruly. And that those disparities in sentencing become more and more pronounced as things get worse and worse. You know that this will be pinned on the laxity of the Democratic state government, right?
Why is one party still bringing knives to the gun fight? How can the Democrats win against people who flagrantly break the rules on a regular basis, and then squawk when the other side gives the appearance of using their own tactics against them? America needs more Waxmans who aren’t afraid to tell it like it is, and all patriotic americans everywhere need to call out Republican’ts every time they try to get away with the crap they’ve been peddling for the last six years.
Then again, I recently heard about the finalization of the martial law propaganda, so maybe we’ll all see each other on our way to Room 101…
This is blatant historical revisionism on par with Jubal Early. Sherman’s march to the sea was meant to destroy the machinery that funded and resupplied the confederate armies. It has long been held that any enterprise producing or funding the machinery of war is a valid target. If this is not the case then Lee’s push to Gettysburg to seize supplies and shoes is a war crime, Morgan’s Raiders were brigands, and blockade runners were what we would today call illegal combatants.
The north didn’t do anything to pit southern underclasses against each other, this was done by southerners. It wasn’t the union that started a war based on the right of one person to own another and couched it in terms of state’s rights. It wasn’t the north that forced the south to enact Jim Crow laws. Reconstruction was as successful as it could have been. Just because some people wanted to stay ignorant and poor while clinging to old hatreds isn’t the fault of the north.
And if this gets some notice in the national press, the media will run to interview Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton about it, so that the Wurlitzer can talk about Hymietown and Tawana Brawley again.
I am glad to see that the good people of Pandagon have told off the neo-Confederate troll, thus sparing me the trouble.
Tim,
It depends on the flavor of the hate crime law.
You are right that a law that simply gives more or stronger penalties for hate-based incidents runs the risk of being ignored along with the original incident (or worse, being used in this sort of case against the victims who fight back - since THEIR motivation was clearly race-based against the “pranksters” who were just “having fun.”)
But a law that mandates both federal level reporting and allows federal level oversight in any hate-based situation might (again, might) have moved the responsibility for this from the white good ol boys who probably honestly (but wrongly) did see the nooses as humor and the fistfights as far more serious to someone else without that local bias.
All too often, the privileged kids (and adults) in a small town are friends of or related to the mayor, sherrif, pastor, and other people in power, who have a strongly vested interest in spackling over any blame that might attach to the little hellions. Which means blaming the victim. Then it escalates into needing to so solidly put down the victim that nobody else will dare speak up.
Even if it is only federal oversight, the local authorities still have someone looking over their shoulder, and then all the same forces of “making it all look good” that now throw the victims under the bus work to try keep the town from looking bad nationally — and disciplining the noose-hangers would have been seen as a better answer. Or at least it would the next time in the next town.
as I said in another post about interracial couples “there are still some states [or places in some states] where we don’t drive.
I wish I could be surprised
Bellatrys isn’t a troll. I mean, disagree away. But she’s one of us.
Opoponax, MikeEss, MsKate and anyone else who wants to correct me:
I do know that racism exists in the North. I really do. I grew up in a small town (pop. 2500) in northern New York which I suspect has more cultural similarity to the Southern and Western towns we’re discussing than what you probably picture when you think of New York. To this day, people ask if I’m from the South because I drawl. I’ve never encountered the kind of active, violent racism we’re talking about here, but there were more than enough stereotypes and casually racist language flying around (a shit job being described as “nigger work”; somebody, upon seeing the scene in “Mask of Zorro” where the white antagonist drops his gun and goes after Antonio Banderas with a sword, joking “He’s in trouble now. No white guy is gonna beat a Mexican in a knife fight.”).
However, it frustrates the hell out of me that every time an incident like this occurs, someone shows up before too long and complains about our one-sided criticism of the South, and points out that there’s racism in the North too, as if 1) This is news and 2) it somehow mitigates the *specific event* that we’re discussing.
Because our collective instinct is toward fairness, we admit that this is true, and the thread quickly devolves into a discussion of racist incidents we’ve also experienced in the North, and then to racism in general, and the actual topic at hand is completely lost.
Which is why the Southern apologist is a lot more effective than your StrawTroll, MsKate. If someone showed up complaining about how “racism hurts whites too” in the face of the noose incident, we’d chew him up and spit him out and go about our business. “There’s racism in the North TOOOOO!” does an extremely good job of getting us talking about nothing, and I don’t believe for a second that the people who bring it up don’t know it.
Seraph, I swear I wasn’t correcting you. I really was agreeing.
You’re right, one of the first troll tricks is the old “somebody else is doing too” statement, whose truthfulness is still immaterial to the topic at hand and whether or not it’s a problem…
Sorry, Mike. It’s not you - or the others I mentioned - that I’m mad at.
Bellatrys said:
Uh huh.
Will, you’ve been told by a Pandagon blogger once. Consider this twice and knock it off, because there ain’t gonna be three.
Disagreement = fine. “You’re a troll” to a regular = not fine. Plus, it’s just thread drift. This is a thread about the history of Reconstruction, not a thread about–wait, no it isn’t.
Well, fine! I’ll just ban ALL OF YOU.
You’re right, Chris. I shouldn’t use “troll” to mean “person who holds odious opinions.” That’s not a proper use of the language, and it’s intellectually lazy. I apologize.
I will, instead, recommend some reading.
Jon L. Wakelyn, ed., _Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860-
April 1861_ [University of North Carolina Press 1996].
The Cornerstone, by Alexander Stephens
March 21, 1861
Savannah, Georgia
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=76
The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976)
David Potter and Donald Fehrenbacher.
The Civil War was about slavery. Secessionist Southern leaders started it because they knew Lincoln wouldn’t let them use the power of the federal government to keep their brothers in chains. While some historians do make counterarguments, so do some scientists suggest that global warming is a bushwack.
Bellatrys, as you are not paying me tuition, it is not my responsibility to educate you. I strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with American history before you talk about it.
Or just read Chas. Dew’s _Apostles of Disunion_, which shows that the earliest southern arguments for secession were almost entirely about race.
http://www.upress.virginia.edu/apostles/index.html
I must confess, I had the Northern racism thought too when I read MikeEss’s comment. As someone who grew up mostly in the South, I got really tired when a certain streak of white “Northerner” would act like it was utopia above the Mason-Dixon. (Most people from the North, to be fair, knew better than that.)
But then I realized that no one was saying that.
I spent most of my time in a big city or a little hippy/punk college town that were nothing like this, but just about everytime I ventured out of my little bubble I was shocked by the Confederate flag memorabilia. Being afraid to hold my girlfriend’s hand. Not being able to stop for gas or a bathroom because my non-white friends and/or queer friends were uneasy.
Systematic racism is everywhere, but I’m glad to not live near those places anymore.
Whether or not Bellatrys understands Civil War history and military strategy (so what are you saying, Bell, Sherman SHOULDN’T have marched to the sea, bringing home the reality of war to the largely protected residents of Georgia, denying strategically important foodstuffs to the Confederacy, dividing the Confederacy into thirds, and enabling him to move in support of Grant’s army in Virginia?) is irrelevant to the main point of this post, which is that racism and bigotry is alive and well in this country.
Well, at least this thread hasn’t devolved into some pointless discussion of the merits of various Civil War battles and tactics and the merits of various aspects of Reconstruction.
After all, there have been people arguing about that since before the end of the war, and there will probably be people still arguing over it when are children are long gone.
At least we showed those wingnuts that Pandagonians are above that sort of thing…
“Conservatives decry hate crime legislation because the events at Jena High School are their vision of a desirable future.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Conservatives I know what equality and fairness; not preferences for anyone or any group.
” I’ve never encountered the kind of active, violent racism we’re talking about here”
that’s probably because there were very few if any non-white people in your town. if there’s nobody there to enforce active, violent racism on, then why bother?
the reason the south seems so “racist” in comparison to the north is that there, people of different races are actually forced to coexist. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a black person north of Westchester county.
“Conservatives I know what equality and fairness; not preferences for anyone or any group.”
…translated from the original “calm white conservative” to English this becomes:
“Let us keep what we already have, never question our position in society, and let us pass our privileges to our white children and we’ll call it even.”
Joseph, do you actually believe that rot, or are you just another one of those people who can’t understand why your privilege is resented?…
Admit it, you put the nooses on the tree yourself, right?…
opoponax -
I’m sure that’s part of it. I could have counted the number of non-white students in my high school class on one hand (one - first-generation son of immigrants from India - beat me out for Valedictorian by a few tenths of a point, the sumbitch). The total number of non-white households (even counting trailers out in the woods) could probably have been counted on two hands and had a few fingers left over. No threat there.
“The total number of non-white households (even counting trailers out in the woods) could probably have been counted on two hands and had a few fingers left over. No threat there.”
I’ve know quite a few POC who live in all sorts of places in the US and Canada. There seems to be a very interesting and common phenomenon where a foreign/”other” family will move into some town (as the first “outsiders” of their “kind”) and things will be just fine.
But as soon as a bunch of “them” move in, something happens to trigger the assholes to come out of the woodwork and cause problems.
I’ve wondered for a long time why this seems to happen…
Where do you people live?? Have you ever been to New York or Albany or Toronto? Plenty of black people (and Hispanics, and Indians, and Asians) in these places. How about Providence or Boston? Lots of black people there, too. What’s wrong with Chicago–tons of black people.
Maybe the small towns in between the big cities are lacking in racial minorities, but cities all across America feature people of different races trying to coexist. If you don’t like non-white people, you would have a pretty sad time in any one of the cities named above.
So after all the trolling accusations and noose-tying allegations, how many people actually took time to do more than clutch their pearls–and take action in the hands-on practical ways that ilyka names at the start of her post?
And check out what the influx of Asian immigrants in Minnesota is doing to the normally “progressive” midwest state. You’re absolutely right: it’s not less racism, it’s less opportunity.
And anyone who thinks this is “harmless pranks” I have some beach-front property in Arizona to sell you…
“I’ve know quite a few POC who live in all sorts of places in the US and Canada. There seems to be a very interesting and common phenomenon where a foreign/â€?otherâ€? family will move into some town (as the first “outsidersâ€? of their “kindâ€?) and things will be just fine.
But as soon as a bunch of “themâ€? move in, something happens to trigger the assholes to come out of the woodwork and cause problems.”
I remember back in the fifties when our town began to exceed the legitimate quota of Italian-Americans. They were white people, of course ….. well, sort of.
In the end this worked out sort of ok.
>Where do you people live?? Have you ever been to New York or Albany or Toronto? Plenty of black people (and Hispanics, and Indians, and Asians) in these places. How about Providence or Boston? Lots of black people there, too. What’s wrong with Chicago–tons of black people.
>Maybe the small towns in between the big cities are lacking in racial minorities, but cities all across America feature people of different races trying to coexist. If you don’t like non-white people, you would have a pretty sad time in any one of the cities named above.
Um…Foucault…exactly who is this addressed to?
>So after all the trolling accusations and noose-tying allegations, how many people actually took time to do more than clutch their pearls–and take action in the hands-on practical ways that ilyka names at the start of her post?
Now this actually makes sense. Consider me duly shamed. But you do mean the end of the post, right?
[…] In other news, I came across this at Pandagon which really got me down. […]
My post was mostly addressed to MikeEss, though there are several other people who seem to be taking the opportunity to sniff out “trolls” and “neo-confederates” based on rather ambiguous evidence.
MikeEss replies to Joseph’s (presumably personal rather than general) assertion that the conservatives *he* knows want equality and fairness by suggesting that Joseph must have hung nooses in the tree himself! That is a pretty broad leap of logic and rhetoric. Isn’t is conceivable that *some* small-c conservatives actually do want equality and fairness in the same way that *some* small-l liberals are stereotypical latte-sipping jerks who have no action-based interest in politics?
I was just wondering if anyone who has voiced their indignation about this article (or towards other readers) has bothered to contact the director of the Louisiana ACLU or the AfroSpear to offer his/her assistance?
But I didn’t mean to attack MikeEss or the others who suggested that the South has bigger racial problems that the North. That may well be true; I’ve only lived in the North, but there are still plenty of racial tensions up here (between police and black men; between the long-standing residents of impoverished black and hispanic neighborhoods and the new influx of mostly white students/artists who move in and “gentrify” such neighborhoods; between mostly Middle Eastern or Indian cab drivers and the City; between migrant workers in upstate NY and those who would like to drive them out of their shanty-style housing, etc…
Anyhow, I think I should have left this well enough alone. I really don’t know enough about the South to speculate on how the injustices there compare to the injustices faced by racial groups in “liberal” New York.
Foucault, I said: “Admit it, you put the nooses on the tree yourself, right?…” as a joke, a sick joke, but a joke.
But the serious point I was trying to make was to point out the stupidity of a statement like “Conservatives I know what equality and fairness; not preferences for anyone or any group.â€?, which yet again implies that “No True Conservative” could possibly a racist.
That’s what pushed me to react to Joseph…
If I offended outside of that, I apologize…
And yet some people I know can’t understand why I don’t want to take my family (even on a vacation) to “The South�…?
Did you happen to catch Boston during the Busing Crisis? Just aking…
Crank, I’ve never been to Boston, but I know what you’re referring to.
Way up there somewhere I admitted there are are many places in “The North” I’m afraid to take my family to also…
No problem and no apology needed. Sometimes I react to things without fully knowing why.
There are only two reasons to avoid summer vacationing in Boston: 1) there are already too many obnoxious tourists around here who constantly get in my way; and 2) if you attempt to rent a car and drive it around the metro-Boston area without knowing EXACTLY where you’re going at all times, people will cut you off, nearly kill you and you will cry.
The bussing crisis? Irish and Italians. 1970s. Lots of black kids in schools, doing very well, all around the state now.
That story is beyond fucked up. That they thought they could do this without attracting masses of negative attention into today’s world shows just how normalized this racism is for the white folks in Jena.
—–
I was raised in Utah, in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. I didn’t see a black person for the first time until I was thirteen years old.
Of course, that just meant that all of the racism was deflected onto the Latinos and Pacific Islanders, but they all lived in the southern part of the valley. If you lived in the northern part of Salt Lake Valley, moving through your life without ever encountering a non-white person is effortless.
Later, the small-to-midsize Oklahoma town I lived in was a little more racially diverse, with a handful of black and Native American kids in a sea of mostly white kids.
Interestingly enough, the most nakedly hostile racism I’d ever seen was in Massachusetts, among the young, white, middle/working-class men and women I ran into. At least, until I moved to Florida, where I have seen and heard some things that would make a Klansman tingle with delight.
“I’ve wondered for a long time why this seems to happen…”
I have some wild speculations:
One “other” family means the locals can feel good about themselves for being open minded, and also feel secure that they are the majority.
An increase in “others” means the locals start to feel worried that they have to keep a happy face on all the time. They can’t have that facade of accepting concepts they can’t actually deal with by simply thinking “Well, they don’t live in my street”. Plus, they can’t feel superior due to numbers (despite what then umbers actually are).
Sarah, those are some good thoughts…
I guess it’s all just more proof of how weird
(some)people can be…the opoponax:
You know, that point would be a lot more meaningful to the rest of us, I’m sure, if you actually clued us in to at least what state Westchester county is in, and preferably which part of that state, or a nearby city we’d typically be familiar with.Keep scrubbing those hands! I swear I can’t see any blood!
I’ve been a victim of several hate crimes myself. I’ve almost been murdered twice. I have 6 scars on my head from pistol whippings. I’ve had loaded guns shoved in my mouth and been hit so hard with brass knuckles (from behind no less) that I couldn’t eat solids for a week.
I am in a prime position therefore to speak on this issue. And I don’t know which way to go. From what I understand, these kids knocked a guy out and kicked him while he was unconscious. To me, this crosses a line. Once someone is unconscious the motivation of the beating changes. While he is awake, the purpose it to terrify him into altering his behavior or submitting to the will of the attacker in some way (this of course discounts truly random acts of violence, but that is irrelevant to this particular case). Once the victim is knocked out, the purpose becomes to inflict further bodily harm. Therefore, there is some logic behind the charges.
That said, the noose thing was a hate crime to begin with. The principal is going to get hell for this if things continue to escalate, which is a shame because it appears he did try to deal with it by at least expelling the offending boys.
Anyone know the extent of the “attempted murder” victim’s damage?
wait…
“The following week, Black students staged a protest under the tree. At a school assembly soon after, Jena district attorney Reed Walters, appearing with local police officers, warned Black students against further unrest. “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen,” he threatened.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty05092007.html
I guess I was wrong.
I just read some W.E.B. DuBois for the first time. “The Souls of Black Folk” 1903. Not much has changed. Jeez, why didn’t this get assigned in high school? But then again, I was in high school in Louisiana. We didn’t get the same version of reconstruction, but at least we covered it. From what I gather, my friends who went to school out West or up North got only the “South=Bad, North=Good” narrative. Truth is, they both messed up. We’re all still dealing with the big unspoken crime that is/was slavery.
I suspect Bellatrys went into the aside on six oh seven because a snide comment that amounts to “We shoulda let Sherman kill more rednecks” is both counterproductive and honestly pretty odious, not particularly different from “This whole bit with North Korea’s weapons program would have been solved if we’d given MacArthur nukes like he wanted.”
although I disagree with any assessment that says Sherman’s March made entities like the Klan inevitable (I have more faith in unicorns than Historical Inevitability), and Sherman WAS justified in his conduct according to the rules of war as they were understood at the time, it was still pretty fucking brutal, and doesn’t deserve celebration any more than the firebombing of Dresden.
I’m going to assume (because its a given) that the SPLC is all up ons this. I hope the wrongdoers are justly punished (which will sadly take far too long) and that the city and school district enjoy their horrible, crushing lawsuit which they will soundly lose.
As a white Southerner, that is what irritates me most about any discussion about slavery/race/the Civil War, etc.
I know the South had and still does have problems. I live here.
However, there are some people who seem think that racism is a uniquely Southern problem or that non-Southerners have consistently working for equality while the South is full of racist rednecks.
The truth is far, far more complex than either of these caricatures. Both sides did mess up, and both sides still have a long way to go.
Wayward I’m a white southerner myself (if we count Texas as “The South”, which it isn’t technically, but it was one of the treason states), and I call BS on you.
Both sides did not mess up. One side committed treason with the explicit purpose of continuing the instutition of slavery, the other acted to preserve the United States of America. I won’t argue that there was slavery in the non-treason states, or that racism didn’t exist in all geographic areas, because that’d be false. But inadiquate action by some states on racial matters does not equal active treason to continue slavery on the part of other states.
Now, following the civil war I’ll agree that the USA did mess up by being insufficiently willing to take punative action to guarantee the rights of black Americans. Reconstruction was a failure due to an unwillingness to use sufficient force to make black civil rights stick, not due to any excesses by loyal Americans.
six-oh-seven-nine I agree with your sentiment, the United States was not sufficiently punative towards the treasonous rapists and murderers who called themselves “Southern Gentlemen” [1], but you are spreading a falsehood re: Sherman and fires. He really didn’t burn nearly as much as he is accused of. Many of the treasonous armies, when retreating, burned their own territory in order to prevent it from being seized.
Some of the fires are of disputed cause, which means “neo-Confederate appologists blame loyal Americans for the burnings, non-crazy historians say it was the traitors who started the fires”, and a great many are acknowledged by all historians (including the pro-treason idiots) as being started by agents of the treasonous rapists and murderers. Take Richmond VA, for example. All the pro-treason types use the passive voice when discussing the burning of the city. Why? Because it is impossible for them to claim that loyal Americans started the fires, there is solid proof that Richmond was burned by the retreating traitors.
Sherman did burn a few cities in the traitor states, that’s undeniable. But he didn’t start as many fires as he is blaimed for.
[1] I call a spade a spade, and all slave owners were rapists and murderers. Had there been justice for the “Southern Gentlemen” they’d have all been hanged, if not for treason, then for the multiple rapes and murders they were guilty of.
bellatrys:
Dark humour. Up yours.
As an American, a Black person, and a mother my initial reaction is disgust.
I would like to see how this pans out…
I am also thinking that this is a large scale version of interactions that take place in our daily lives.
I have a very unsettled feeling when I interact with certain White people in the workplace, in the gym, running errands, while commuting… And I KNOW I am not imagining things.
I have at east one White person remind me that I am Black every single day.
Ok smart-guy, prove it happened. Show how the north whipped up racism in the south. Name the northerners who did it. Let’s hear some specific incidents.
Pet Peeve.
At this current point in history, there is no “we” and “they” regarding the Civil War. Both sides are now “we.” There is the North part of we and the South part of we. And all the blendings and changes, and good and bad consequences that have happened since. But it is now all “we.” A modern American identifying as a Union person is just as misguided as one identifying as a Confederate.
This always grates on me as much as modern Protestants blaming the modern Catholic Church for what “they” did in the 1300’s, as though the Protestants are not just as much a descendant of that church as are modern Catholics.
bellatrys: you and I have exchanged, even corresponded amicably in the past. I hope that the exchange of nasty comments is the end of such abusiveness and the return to the previous respect and courtesy.
Both bellatrys and some posters who have taken issue with bellatrys have squarely addressed the issue of just how far the North went and whether that was a cause of Southern bitterness and resistance or whether the North’s actions did not go far enough. There are a number of questions at play in such a debate.
First, we should probably take a cue from some excellent military historians and refuse to use the terms “North” and “South”. Blacks were part of the South; pro-union whites were a part of the South. Therefore we can assume that a very large swathe indeed of “the South” was not Confederate. It was the Confederates, though, who held (and continued to hold for over 100 years [and counting?]) the key religious, economic, social and political levers of power. Personally, I deeply agree with those who have posted here that the Union did not go far enough in rooting out the underlying structure which caused the damn problems in the first place. (Whether a Shermanesque destruction was the correct way of doing it is another matter. It is easier to understand Grant and especially Sherman if you accurately see them as the first 20th Century generals.)
Second, if we are talking about one’s punitive actions serving one’s own purpose or that of the enemy, we might want to consider two key questions: method and thoroughness.
Regarding Method: On whom does one launch such violence? In other words is it targeted violence or indiscriminate violence? The latter creates resistance, the former often fragments it. I don’t think, for example, that any rational analyst can argue with the notion that a Nazi Germany that targeted only the Communist state and its servants and avoided (or at least cunningly delayed) wholesale assaults on the entire Slav populations would have garnered enough support to shatter the Soviet state in 1941-42. We should therefore examine Sherman’s actions regarding exactly what he did target; some have done so well here.
Regarding Thoroughness: I found it interesting that somebody else brought up what can arguably called the Versailles myth. Please, put that one aside. Compared to the treatment that the Germans meted out to the French in 1871 or the Russians in 1917, Germany was treated with phenomenal leniency in 1919. Indeed, its industries were intact, its farms untouched by war, and its debt problem small compared to the British and French. The Americans were providing generous aid and stabilization to Germany at the same time that Coolidge was insisting on prompt repayment from his allies. No, the problem lay in what could be called societal psychopathy, which that era of Germans had in spades: “when you do me Bad, that is the worst thing that ever happened, and you are evil and I am Good. However, whenever I do you not only Bad but Evil then I remain morally pure and you are wrong to question me. Only your Wrongs are Wrong.” Think I’m incorrect? Spend some time reading Shirer, who lived in, worked in and studied Nazi Germany; I specifically recommend Berlin Diary. It is arguable that it was only the phenomenal , near-total, savage levelling of Germany which shook the Germans out of that mindset (or, alternatively, killed most of the millions that held it). That mindset existed in huge measure in the Confederacy. Indeed, it’s arguable that any society that claims to be Christian and honourable whilst murdering and enslaving cannot survive without that cognitive dissonance.
I recognize that taking the Thoroughness and Method arguments together can create a bit of a paradox, in that they seem to — and can — argue against each other. I advance them only to further the discussion, and to address what Sherman did, didn’t , should have and shouldn’t have done.
@ Randy Owens:
Westchester County is the New York county just north of NYC, it’s mostly considered a part of the NYC metro area, very suburban, with a certain degree of ethnic diversity just like NYC. once you head north of there, though, and into what most people consider “upstate new york”, it’s pretty much all white, with very few exceptions. especially in the small towns.
the reason i didn’t specify more in my post was that i was mainly responding to Seraph, who commented that while he knew that some people in his small upstate New York town were racist, nothing like what happened in Jena ever goes on there, ergo, “The North Is Less Racist Than The South”. i was pointing out that based on my experience, it was unlikely there were any people of color in his town for anyone to harass.
and thus the reason southerners get the “racist” rep is that southern towns, even very small ones, have sizeable non-white populations to terrorize while most northern towns do not. it’s kinda similar to why Norwegians do so well at the winter olympics compared to, say, Kenyans — it’s not that Kenyans are bad skiers, they just don’t get a whole lot of oppurtunities to ski.
You’ve got to be joking.
There’s a hell of a lot more to Upstate New York than “North of Westchester.” Get outside the NYC sphere of influence and you’ll find whole communities that have no interaction with NYC except when they pay their state taxes.
I’ve lived in small towns in Upstate New York. There are African-Americans in small towns in Upstate New York. There are Native Americans who often bear the brunt of rural white prejudice. Last time I went to visit my late grandmother in Gorham, NY, a town that’s not much more than a wide spot in the road, I walked into the tiny, dilapidated old grovery store where I used to buy gum 40 years ago and found the new owners were a Korean family. (The greeting when I walked in to the store: “Who are you?” “Um, I’m Ruth Clarke’s grandson.” “The one from California?”) There are farms there, and vineyards, and some of them rely in migrant labor, much of which in that area is people from Puerto Rico and Jamaica.
It’s not all one big uniform stretch of White Plains up there.
“…you’ll find whole communities that have no interaction with NYC except when they pay their state taxes….”
I don’t mean to be obtuse, but don’t those go to Albany? (Puzzled Foreigner Alert!)
yes, Chris, it’s true that my assumption of “any” was incorrect. there are some people of color upstate, obviously (not to mention that Buffalo has a chinatown, and i’d be surprised if the other bigger cities in NY didn’t have sizeable non-white populations). but Seraph himself confirmed my general conception of the place — he said he could count the non-white kids he went to school with on one hand, and count the non-white households in his town easily on two, with fingers left over.
which is pretty much how it works — one Korean family running the local store, sure, fine, “they’re very nice people, those Koreans”. But once the locals’ unspoken “quota” is surpassed, suddenly “those people” aren’t so nice, after all. in fact, this goes hand in hand with something you’ll notice in the south. people of color who aren’t black often get a pass, because the locals’ internal “quota” of latinos, asians, etc. is not surpassed (and jews, italians, etc. often fall into this, as well). class comes into it, too. my dad gets along great with his Cuban neighbors, and his business partner is Indian. but he doesn’t have nearly as nice things to say about the day laborers the contractor hired to work on his roof, or the people who now run the neighborhood gas station.
i’m also pretty sure that the reason for the recent anti-Hispanic hysteria across the country has to do with the many small towns across the country who’re suddenly having their unspoken quotas surpassed.
you’re right that i totally forgot about the Native American thing, though.
They get mailed to Albany, yes.
Thanks. I was genuinely puzzled, and love minutiae.
Racism DOES happen in the North too. And frankly I’m disgusted that this is being turned into a FTS session. We know racism’s a problem down there, OK? But it becomes a handy distraction, as well, from racism that goes on in the rest of the country. One of the biggest white supremacist shutdowns in American history took place in Idaho, when the mother of a hate crime victim sued the ass off a group leader and won his compound out from under him. The modern Klan was born in INDIANA. It’s not technically the North, but some really fucking rampant racism goes on in California, where the beating of Rodney King was caught on camera. And then there’s the anti-immigrant activity in the Southwest that is KILLING people.
Is the racism in the South important? Yes. By all means. But to pretend that it’s somehow a bad thing to point out that it is NOT solely endemic to the South is fucking dishonest and bigoted besides. The poverty rate is also higher in the South, along with the rates of a whole slew of other social ills, and bigotry is not going to fix any of that–only education, time, and patience will. And a willingness on the part of the Feds to prosecute this shit where applicable, if the locals won’t bother.
BUT. It’s got to happen elsewhere in the country too. Racism is racism, no matter the accent of the white person guilty of it.
I wonder if anyone’s contacted the SPLC? They specialize in dealing with this garbage.
CJS, unfortunately, I can think of a few — mostly 1970s Republicans who realized that they could feed southern racism post-civil-rights and get them to drop their historic antipathy toward “the party of Lincoln.” They stoked the fires of racism in a land that was resenting the SHIT out of its black population for finally not putting up with it anymore. Nixon’s “southern stragey” is an excellent example, and he was a Californian, which shames me as a soCal transplant.
They didn’t create southern racism by any means, not by a long shot. But they stoked it, fanned it, used it, exploited it, cosseted and encouraged it under the radar, until we ended up with every single old slaveowning state colored red post-election night, and then some. We’ve all seen that map of “slaveowning state vs. red states in 2004″ and gotten the shivers at how profound the overlap is.
Again, northern and non-southern Rethuglicans didn’t create southern racism, but damn they sure learned how to manipulate and encourage it in a way that guaranteed it would fester like a boil under the surface, in an effort to create a massive power source for themselves to ride to political victory. Which is exactly what they’ve done.
(That) Dana, either you need to change your screen name, or we need to get the “Other Dana” to change his.
I started reading your post and was confused for a bit because it actually sounded reasonable.
The other Dana is Reichwing, wants to be considered a Troll, but hasn’t quite stepped over the line far enough yet.
Maybe the two of you can get together and work out an arrangement?…
:)
I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is that whites in the north and whites in the south were still all white, with all the expectations and norms that go along with it. The fact that the south has a worse / more visible history of it doesn’t go any way towards making black people in the north feel better when they’re reminded how bad it is for them to be black. Racism in America isn’t some sort of bizarre tropical malaise and being from the north isn’t a get out of being-white free card.
karpad:
While I can sympathize with the feelings, consider the effect on the school district. If/after they lose, they have less money to offer as an inducement to get school administrators that are actually worth a damn to come work for them. Maybe they’ll be scraping even deeper into the bottom of the barrel. It all seems rather cut-off-the-nose to me, in much the same way as NCLB does. Cut off funding to improve the quality of their education? How’s that supposed to work, again?Yeah, they surely need to be punished somehow. I wish I could think of a better way, though, one that didn’t leave things in a worse state for both “sides.”
Karpad, thanks for reminding me about the SPLC. There’s a form people can use to contact them here, or use their phone and/or address:
(334) 956-8200
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104
But the Southern Juvenile Defender Center administered by the SPLC might be the better approach for this; I’m not certain. They can be reached at the same telephone number above, or by mail to
PO Box 2087
Montgomery, AL 36104
In the new Zimbabwe, when black students were bussed in from the rural areas to attend white schools, around the early 80s, the integration process was much more fluid and simple. I suggested to someone recently that this is because we were an authoritarian culture, so the generation of kids of my age didn’t object to what the adults were telling them to do. Our racism probably just didn’t go that deep. I don’t remember feeling that black students in the schools was anything exceptionally strange.
MikeEss wrote:
I wondered why I had an incoming link from a thread on which I hadn’t commented!
As it occurs, I twice dated girls named Dana, the first just because of her name, and the second because she asked me out. But I’m married now (for 28 years and 4 days), so no more “arrangements” with any other Danas.
“Right” Dana, I don’t mean to be insulting, but the thought of dating a woman with the same first name I have is a little creepy. And with a name like Michael, it IS possible…
[…] Under the ole shade tree… Welcome to Jena, LA — mix high school segregation, racism, nooses, fights, ineffective school administration, attempted-murder charges, shotguns, and a town in upheaval–a "racial powder keg". Much more here, including links to help. […]
Slavery was legal in all 13 of the original colonies.
Northerners held slaves, northerners profited from slavery, and when the northern states abolished slavery, many northern slave owners sold their slaves southward before emancipation took effect. (Read more at http://www.slavenorth.com/)
Secession was not justified and it would not have happed if not for slavery. However, the Northern states fought to “preserve the union”, not to free the slaves, although emancipation was a nice side effect.
Following the Civil War, the USA messed up in that the Reconstruction governments were more interested in lining their own pockets as they were at helping the freed slaves. A lot of good was done by the Reconstruction governments, but it wasn’t all good, nor was it entirely noble.
So yes, both sides DID mess up.
My comment is on the bit about hate crime legislation. I am a huge supporter of fighting systemic injustice, especially when it comes to violence against minorities of any kind, but I just don’t agree with using hate crime legislation to do it. Not because I don’t think beating someone for being black or homosexual is a very stupid reason to beat someone, but because I just don’t see how it can actually work as a deterrent. The US executes people all the time, but it hasn’t lowered the murder rate, so I don’t see how harsher penalties against homophobes and racists will prevent further homophobic and racist crimes.
Slavery was fine and dandy in the north too, AFTER the civil war. Unless Im mistaken and women were magically not considered property and Native Americans were given their land back and allowed to vote and own property instead of being enslaved on reservations. The whole argument about who wanted to abolish slavery and who fought to keep it is ridiculous, given the fact that only certain slaves were actually freed. Black women were still slaves, their owners were just a different color after abolition.
Commnents by white Northern posters who say they would never visit the South are very close to the epitome of white privilege. The underlying assumption is that a white person would be visiting other white people (or their history) and not the many native, African American, or hispanic communities that comprise the South.
Well, Mike, I didn’t date either one of them for long!
“Commnents by white Northern posters who say they would never visit the South are very close to the epitome of white privilege.”
Q Grrl, since you’ve prejudged my reasons for being leery of certain parts of this country, I’m sure this won’t help, but I can assure you it’s the white people I’m concerned with, not the “many native, African American, or hispanic communities”.
I won’t reveal the details of my private life, but I have several very good reasons for fearing white racists. I’m married to one of those reasons and have a daughter that’s another one…
“it’s the white people I’m concerned with”
I didnt realize the Mason Dixon was a magic line where above it you’d be immersed in non racist white people.
From a POC perspective, white people tend to be the common denominator in all this, not their zip code.
There are a shitload of Northern states I wouldnt visit again. Im not too keen on accidentally wandering into a sundown town.
“From a POC perspective, white people tend to be the common denominator in all this, not their zip code.”
I’m a white guy, but I know what you mean. We’ve had a few interesting experiences that we’re not looking to repeat. And it’s always a white guy that’s the problem, although there are many white women that will look down their nose and give you the evil eye too…
“There are a shitload of Northern states I wouldnt visit again. Im not too keen on accidentally wandering into a sundown town.”
On this point I’m in 100% agreement. I would say there are more frequently PARTS of states to avoid, not necessarily whole states. But there are a few states that I would be very reluctant to do more than pass through while going somewhere else…
I was already leery of many of these places before I got married. But since then, the list of verboten places in America has become much larger…
pheeno, I made a response to you but it seems to have gone to moderation (without saying it did so)…
Regarding the Mason Dixon line, or course it’s not magic. There are pockets of racism all over the country. The only the reason “The South” came up at all was because of the location of the original outrage.
The fact that it could have occurred in certain parts of all of the other 49 states (although to be fair to Hawaii it’s hard to imagine where) doesn’t change how outrageous this incident was, nor diminish the very real fear some of us have while traveling through those places…
When I lived (for two years) in the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware, I found out all about how nice and tolerant y’all damned Yankees are.
When the federal courts ordered the desegregation of the Wilmington public schools, the response was worse than anything in the South. They virtually destroyed the public school system, and if you can in any way afford private school for your kids, that’s where you send them. That isn’t just anecdotal: Delaware has the highest private school attendance rate of any state in the nation, and the vast majority of that is in New Castle County, which surrounds Wilmington.
There are four diocesian high schools, tuition at which was about $6500 a year going into the 2002-2003 school year (when our older daughter would have started, had we not moved), and three Catholic high schools not controlled by the diocese where the tuition was about $12,000 — and these schools had waiting lists! There were many other private schools (though I never knew how many.)
New Castle County was the most segregated place I ever lived. The city of Wilmington was very heavily black and Hispanic, but Hockessin, the suburb in which I lived, only six miles from the Wilmington city limits, had very few blacks.
Mike: I can’t speak for our hosts, but on most WordPress sites, when a comment just disappears without a moderation notification, it has gone into either a “kill queue” (WordPress does have such a setting) or got caught in a spam filter.
Is it just me, or does that school look like it was built to be an 1877 US Cavalry barracks?
“But there are a few states that I would be very reluctant to do more than pass through while going somewhere else…”
That holds true for me as well, but they’re not in the south. Every time I go north, I feel like Ive just been thrust into a sea of white people. Sure there are minorities, but theyre all on one side of town and not mingled all together like Im used to here. But I live where the hispanic population and the white population are pretty even.
“There are pockets of racism all over the country.”
Id say there are pockets of non racism in a country chock full of it, from sea to shining sea.
“Id say there are pockets of non racism in a country chock full of it, from sea to shining sea.”
I guess you’re right about that, as much as it pains me to see it that way.
I want so badly for all of us to live in a country and a world where we will truly be “judged by content of our character” that I sometimes get ahead of myself…
[…] Extra detail at Pandagon. […]
My name is Lydia Bean, and I work with the grassroots organization that got the Jena, Louisiana case in the public eye. We’re called Friends of Justice, and we were formed in Tulia, Texas to oppose the infamous drug sting that arrested 61% of our town’s young black men in 1999. Since then, we’ve been organizing in other communities across Texas and Louisiana.
If people want to contribute to organizing in Jena, we’re running on a shoe-string budget and we would much appreciate their help. We’ve been working really hard to get lawyers and media behind the Jena case, and also half a dozen cases around Louisiana and Texas that are just as outrageous. Any funds that folks can contribute will go straight into the local organizing effort in Jena or one of the other cases in Louisiana that we’re working on right now.
If people want to get involved or donate, please refer them to our website or have them call our director, Alan Bean at 806-996-3353 or 806-729-7889:
http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
Our donation page is here:
http://www.fojtulia.org/donation.htm
Donations can also be mailed here:
Friends of Justice
507 N. Donley Ave.
Tulia TX 79088
Thank you so much for raising awareness of the Jena case!
Peace,
Lydia Bean
[…] There’s more on this here, and from the BBC here. My thanks to Arthur for bringing this to my attention - please spread this as far and wide as you can, and hopefully enough press coverage may shame the residents of Jena into re-evaluating their lifestyles. […]
Please dont blame this on the state of Louisiana. Blame it on the close minded bigots of the town of Jena. Not all people in this state are that evil. Oh i didn’t vote for Duke either.
No, not everywhere in louisiana people are like that. i am from there, and i know for a fact its not like that everywhere in louisiana. this is the first ive heard of something for horrible since the 1960s. like really.. what are they thinking in jena?!
As I’ve been watching and reading the coverage… the long-awaited coverage… of the Jena Six situation, I cannot help but feel angered at my former profession, the “media”.
First, it’s covered this travesty in Louisiana far too little, and covered Paris, Lindsey, Brittney, and OJ far too much… in my humble opinion.
Now, when the “media” does cover the marches and vigils… and NOT the story itself, it is leaving out some crucial facts to the story.
Please read the following Chicago Tribune story, dated May 20, 2007. And, note the facts about the white kid beating the black kid and the white man pulling a gun on three black students that the “media” is now evading, overlooking, and/or simply leaving out to, in my humble opinion, “craft” the essence of the story of the Jena Six:
Racial Demons Rear Heads
Howard Witt
hwitt@tribune.com
Senior Tribune Correspondent
reposted from thechicagotribune.com
The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town’s jagged racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites. Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.
One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman’s nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.
The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school’s 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree’s cooling shade.
“Sit wherever you want,” school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.
African-American students and their parents were outraged and intimidated by the display, which instantly summoned memories of the mob lynchings that once terrorized blacks across the American South. Three white students were quickly identified as being responsible, and the high school principal recommended that they be expelled.
“Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple,” said Tracy Bowens, a black mother of two students at the high school who protested the incident at a school board meeting.
But Jena’s white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.
“Adolescents play pranks,” said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
Yet it was after the noose incident that the violent, racially charged events that are still convulsing Jena began.
First, a series of fights between black and white students erupted at the high school over the nooses. Then, in late November, unknown arsonists set fire to the central wing of the school, which still sits in ruins. Off campus, a white youth beat up a black student who showed up at an all-white party. A few days later, another young white man pulled a shotgun on three black students at a convenience store.
Finally, on Dec. 4, a group of black students at the high school allegedly jumped a white student on his way out of the gym, knocked him unconscious and kicked him after he hit the floor. The victim — allegedly targeted because he was a friend of the students who hung the nooses and had been taunting blacks — was not seriously injured and spent only a few hours in the hospital.
But the LaSalle Parish district attorney, Reed Walters, opted to charge six black students with attempted second-degree murder and other offenses, for which they could face a maximum of 100 years in prison if convicted. All six were expelled from school.
To the defendants, their families and civil rights groups that have examined the events, the attempted murder charges brought by a white prosecutor are excessive and part of a pattern of uneven justice in the town.
The critics note, for example, that the white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn’t charged with any crime at all. But the three black youths in that incident were arrested and accused of aggravated battery and theft after they wrestled the weapon from the man — in self-defense, they said.
“There’s been obvious racial discrimination in this case,” said Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who described Jena as a “racial powder keg” primed to ignite. “It appears the black students were singled out and targeted in this case for some unusually harsh treatment.”
That’s how the mother of one of the defendants sees things as well.
“They are sending a message to the white kids, ‘You have committed this hate crime, you were taunting these black children, and we are going to allow you to continue doing what you are doing,’” said Caseptla Bailey, mother of Robert Bailey Jr.
Bailey, 17, is caught up in several of the Jena incidents, as both a victim and alleged perpetrator. He was the black student who was beaten at the party, and he was among the students arrested for allegedly grabbing the shotgun from the man at the convenience store. And he’s one of the six students charged with attempted murder for the Dec. 4 attack.
The district attorney declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story. But other white leaders insist there are no racial tensions in the community, which is 85 percent white and 12 percent black.
“Jena is a place that’s moving in the right direction,” said Mayor Murphy McMillan. “Race is not a major local issue. It’s not a factor in the local people’s lives.”
Still others, however, acknowledge troubling racial undercurrents in a town where only 16 years ago white voters cast most of their ballots for David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who ran unsuccessfully for Louisiana governor.
“I’ve lived here most of my life, and the one thing I can state with absolutely no fear of contradiction is that LaSalle Parish is awash in racism — true racism,” a white Pentecostal preacher, Eddie Thompson, wrote in an essay he posted on the Internet. “Here in the piney woods of central Louisiana … racism and bigotry are such a part of life that most of the citizens do not even recognize it.”
The lone black member of the school board agrees.
“There’s no doubt about it — whites and blacks are treated differently here,” said Melvin Worthington, who was the only school board member to vote against expelling the six black students charged in the beating case. “The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided.”
And the troubles at the high school are not over yet.
On May 10, police arrested Justin Barker, 17, the white victim of the Dec. 4 beating. He was alleged to have a rifle loaded with 13 bullets stashed behind the seat of his pickup truck parked in the school lot. Barker told police he had forgotten it was there and had no intention of using it.
PLEASE, make sure that you get the word out… ALL OF THE WORD OUT… to people who need to know the TRUTH.