Meet Jesse Rae Beard: one of the ‘Jena six’
Much has been written during the last couple of days about the situation in Jena, Louisiana. This blog hasn’t spent much attention to it, but that’ll change now. For those who don’t know why we should write about this (small) city: six black students beat up a white classmate. They continued to punch and kick him until he was unconscious. The six were, then, charged with at attempt to murder the victim. This was, later, changed into battery. The maximum penalty they can receive is fifteen years.
African-American inhabitents of Jena (and in the US in general) accuse the prosecutor in the case of racism because he demands such a severe punishment. They believe that if the victim was black and if the ones who committed this dispicable act were white the prosecutor would treat the case quite differently. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III went to Jena to show their support for the violent students who were brave enough to completely beat up a fellow student who couldn’t fight back.
That’s what has become of the Civil Rights movement in the US these days. No longer are they defending blacks who were beaten up by white students, or who were lunched, or who were beaten up by the police for doing absolutely nothing; no, today they are defending the indefensible. Today the Civil Rights movement is defending not the victim but the perpetrator. Of course, Jesse Jackson and his merry bunch are supported by quite some in the progressive blogosphere such as Bring it On! and Daily Kos. O, and also by John Edwards. These bloggers point out that racism was and is still alive (and thriving) in Jena. They also describe what happened. Bring It On! recaps:
a black teenager sat under a tree on a high school campus that had informally been branded a “whites only” tree. The next day, three nooses appeared on the tree. Shortly thereafter, a scuffle at a party between a group of blacks and whites resulted in a white student being charged with battery. A few days later, the white student charged with battery was beaten up and sent to the hospital, where after two hours of treatment he was released; a group of six black students were accused of the assault.
Obviously, this is all quite terrible to read. Racism should, at all times, be condemned. However, the black students are (no longer) the victims in this case. They turned themselves from victims into aggressors and they should be punished for it. Was it an attempt to murder the victim? I don’t know, it’s not likely. Second degree battery? Quite more likely.
The Jena six are no martyrs for the cause of Civil Rights. They are no heroes. They’re a bunch of cowards who don’t dare take on someone that can actually fight back. Instead of fighting against six others, they singled out one white and beat him. Would Martin Luther King Jr. have supported their crime? I don’t think so. He advocated non-violence, not beating up a single individual with a group of six.
Racism should be fought against, and Jena obviously has some major problems. Excusing the outrageous behavior of criminals, however, isn’t the way to do so.
[...] Michael Van Der Galien makes the simple moral point that you are not hearing from the race card-playing reverends: Racism does not excuse violence. Racism should, at all times, be condemned. However, the black students are (no longer) the victims in this case. They turned themselves from victims into aggressors and they should be punished for it. Was it an attempt to murder the victim? I don’t know, it’s not likely. Second degree battery? Quite more likely. [...]
I live in Louisiana, and on our local TV news coverage, they interviewed a few days ago some of the people headed up to the protest in Jena. The black men they interviewed were not arguing that the young men should escape punishment; they agreed that it was appropriate to charge them with something for their actions. They were participating in the protest simply because they believed the initial charges were too harsh.
So they’re protesting something that has already been altered? What’s the use of that? And why are they chanting “release the Jena six”?
Nooses, goddamit. Also, “whites only”. Ah-hur-hur-hur. Knee-slap. The entire situation was so infected any assailant living at the school could be said to have acted under an extenuating state of fear, paranoia and supreme irritation with the weak-mindedness of his kin. Fifteen years is as exaggerated and biased as the beating in my opinion.
But release? Parole? Defending the act in its entirety? Oh no. Noooo way. I can accept a degree of moderation, discourse and a reminder of the factor that racism is in criminal charges, but it must all be very respectful of what the victim suffered, and I guess DKos and Edwards has not been that to a sufficient degree.
As someone who rails against false charges of racism (and stirring of the pot by certain black ‘leaders’), I think there is reason for people to side with the “Jena 6″. I do think the black kids involved have been subjected to injustice and that the racial tensions were handled very wrongly right from the start. Assuming the accounts are true, I think one of the most egregious parts of the story was the way the DA reacted in the immediate aftermath of the noose hanging incident; apparently when black students organized a protest of the white kids getting off with a three day in school suspension for the noose hangings, the DA came to the school and dressed down the kids in an assembly, saying that they needed to stop making a big deal of the incident and that he could be their friend or their enemy, that he had the power to make their lives disappear with the stroke of a pen. Frankly, my jaw dropped when I read that a law enforcement authority in 2007 would have the gall to say that in a racially charged situation, since it clearly implies that the blacks should remember their place in society.
That said though, Michael’s point is apt: although it’s a catchier slogan to say “Free the Jena 6″ than to say, “Drop the inappropriate charges and give a fair trial to the Jena 6″, it doesn’t help their cause to act as though they shouldn’t be responsible for their actions. And you have to wonder where the NAACP and other organizations were when the families of the accused couldn’t meet bail or pay for private attorneys. They seem a bit late to this party and they could have provided much more assistance at an earlier date, which would have prevented a lot of the blowback (but then that would have taken the wind out of the sails of the PR, wouldn’t it?)
No, Michael, racism doesn’t excuse violence. But neither does violence excuse racism.
The differences in the treatment of the various bits of this series of high school fights make it clear that (no matter what the local DA claims) racism was seriously involved in the actions of the criminal justice system. Sure, the charges got reduced. But look at the differences in what they were originally.
Michael, not all the charges have been reduced, and the DA is still trying to charge the 16 year old as an adult. And the white kids who hit and threatened the black kids haven’t been charged with much, either.
Like CS, I’m very reluctant to find racism in law enforcement actions. But from the school board overturning the expulsion of the kids who hung the nooses on the tree to the DA, the government authorities in Jena have not handled this well. When a white kid in the South displays a NOOSE to a black kid who had the temerity to sit under the “white” tree, that should be treated as an extremely serious matter, with a lot of authority descending in force on the campus to explain to these kids that we are not that society any more, that we don’t do that anymore. Jena’s paying the price for not taking the initial incident more seriously.
CS, you may be right, but if the NAACP et al. had gotten involved at an earlier stage, they also wouldn’t have had sufficient public support to do very much, because the various crimes committed wouldn’t have been as egregious.
And they’re chanting “Release the Jena 6″ because “Reduce the sentences of the Jena 6″ doesn’t make for a very compelling protest chant. Like in a negotiation, you ask for more than you can get, more even than you think you could get, while you’re stirring up attention to your side, so that when the compromise comes, it will be somewhere in the middle.
Frankly Pat, it seems to me that the noosles were suffice to get the civil rights movement out. And I agree that there seems to be a lot of racism there, note that I’m not arguing there isn’t. Nor am I saying that nothing should be done about it, however, it seems to me that demanding their release because they ‘didn’t do anything wrong’ and it’s all ‘racism,’ isn’t the way to do that. No, these boys have to suffer the consequences of their crime. Change the culture in Jena, yes, fight racism, yes, but do so without breaking the law in such a way. Whatever happened to something called peaceful resistence?
No, these four should not be defended by civil rights movement. They should get a good lawyer, who’ll try to convince the court that 15 years is excessive. The civil rights movement, however, and certain politicians are sticking up for them in a way that goes too far.
And Pat: are you kidding me? Because it’s a better chant? That’s not a good reason to demand the idiotic. No. The civil rights movement should advocate justice, not to let colored people off the hook just because they’re colored / were provoked.
And besides, from more reasonable quarters I’ve heard the slogan: “Justice for the Jena 6″ which works quite well (without the idiotic push to free the kids of all charges).
And on this Pat:
I agree that’s why they waited but I’m not as forgiving of that mentality. There’s always a fine line in activism of any kind, where if you solve a problem too quickly and easily then you won’t drum up sufficient public interest in the problem to fund or sustain your activities. But the civil rights organizations generally lean way too far in that direction IMO- to the point that they don’t really serve the interests of the minorities that they are supposed to be helping.
It’d be nice to have a perfect world, but we don’t. I remain appalled and embarrassed that the authorities reacted so cavalierly to the initial racial animus displayed by some of the white students. But the rest of the world didn’t get outraged by that. So I’m not going to act terribly outraged now that the protesters are asking for a little bit more than they should get.
A white kid in the south putting a noose on a tree in reaction to a black kid sitting under the “white” tree is about the same as a German teenager painting a swastika on a Jewish person’s front door. Because of the history of the area, it is a particularly egregious action and should have been treated as such immediately. It wasn’t, as best I’ve been able to tell.
As for the slogan, all I can tell you is that the local news interviews of some of the folks heading up to the protest revealed them to be quite reasonable, not expecting the Jena 6 to be entirely released, but simply to have their charges and punishments reduced. I can’t say what’s in the minds of Sharpton or Jackson or the other leaders, but the regular folks going up there who I saw were quite sensible, and shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush simply because the organizers of the rally are too far out there.
You’ve got to keep in mind where I’m coming from here. I remember the noose incident from when it happened and was only a minor local news story. I thought at the time that the reaction of Jena officials was insufficient, and the School Board’s imposition of only in-house suspension against the little white punks who put up the nooses was particularly egregious. I worried at the time that it would lead to a conflagration exactly like what we’re seeing now.
I’m a white, Republican, former prosecutor in Louisiana. If anybody should be standing up for the law and order side in this case, it’s me. But I’m not, and I even know people who are (or at least were, I haven’t talked to him recently) assistant D.A.s under Reed Walters. I’ve met Reed Walters and will undoubtedly have to work with him again on issues. I’m certainly not pinning all the blame on the D.A. To a certain extent, he inherited the mess the School Board and other community leaders helped create.
I certainly don’t condone the actions of the “Jena 6″ in beating that white boy. But that kid was hardly a complete innocent, picked at random just because he was white. I’d rather the Jena 6 had adopted the practices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rather than those of Malcolm X. They certainly need to be punished. But so do all the other wrongdoers in this dreadful drama.
A final note, Michael, about the wording of the slogan. If you’re going to criticize the protesters for asking for more than they should get, then you should at the same time criticize the prosecutor for charging more than he should have. This was not, ever, actual “attempted murder.” Like most prosecutors, I’m sure the D.A. charged as high as he could to encourage a plea deal. But that is, in essence, the same rationale adopted by the protesters asking for more than they can and should get. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
“…racism was and is still alive (and thriving) in”…many places in the US.
Where I currently live on the east coast, I am treated like dirt on a regular basis, possibly because of my color….or lack thereof. It may only be that people here are just taught to be rude from birth — I haven’t entirely figured it out yet, but I have definitely figured out I’m going to get the hell out of the east coast region as soon as possible. People are awful here, but I often sense some sort of racism behind a lot of it.
Sorry to get off topic of Jena but racism goes both ways and it can be found in many places.
Pat: I certainly agree with you about the grievances with the way law enforcement has handled the situation, and I mostly understand where you are coming from. But when you say that the excessive charges justify the call for excessive leniency, I can’t agree with that. If anything, look at it from the flip side; the initial problem started because one side refused to take the grievances of the other seriously enough and now the other side is wanting to dismiss the legitimate grievance of the white victim. That kind of justification never works well; instead of saying that one side overplayed it’s hand which means that the other side can do so as well, it would be far better for the black leaders to take the high road and call for justice which penalizes the kids appropriately and fairly. And I agree with you that this seems to be what a lot of the protesters really want; I just think that it’s a shame that some of the black leaders aren’t going about it that way and that their actions hurt the cause more than they help.
I agree with SC; IMHO tu quoque behavior could be humanity’s biggest curse.
I didn’t say they justified it, CS, or at least I didn’t intend to. What I said was that if you’re going to criticize the excessive calls for leniency, it’s imperative to also criticize the excessive criminal penalties. One call is being made by a bunch of private citizens, exercising nothing more than their right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. The other call is being made by actual government officials empowered under the law to put you in jail.
Of the two, which excess should we focus on more, the cry for excess leniency made by private citizens, or the formal criminal charges which would lead to excessive penalty?
I’m just saying that I’m going to stay focused on criticizing the government officials who may have abused their authority rather than the protesters at this point.
To emphasize, bloggers and reporters around the world were not sufficiently moved by the excessive charges filed by the prosecutor against the Jena 6 until the protesters showed up. It strikes me as inappropriate to then focus on the protesters rhetorical excesses, which successfully brought an injustice to your attention, rather than on the government misconduct which led legitimately led to the protest.
I get you….
And actually I was just returning here to make a different but related point. I realized that what I wrote earlier might come across as a bit naive, and I wanted to clarify that I do understand that the overreaching is the way that our legal system operates. I’d have no problem, for example, with attorneys representing the black kids asking for excessive leniency because I do understand that each side goes a bit beyond what they really think the ultimate outcome should be- and then each side attempts to bargain.
BUT- here’s where I still disagree with what I think your stance is, I guess. In the legal system, that makes a certain amount of sense but when I criticize the activists what I’m really saying is that I think the method of overreaching is actually counterproductive to their cause. In other words, what works in the legal system isn’t going to work well when the case is tried in the court of public opinion. When it comes to uniting the public, I think the activists would make their case much more strongly if they’d bend over backward to be reasonable- perhaps even to the point of being more reasonable then people should be expected to be under the circumstances. MLK Jr understood this- he led people to behave in an incredibly upstanding way in order to highlight the injustices against the blacks by making sure they weren’t committing any injustice in retaliation. That’s the best way to get the general public to sympathize with the plight of the downtrodden, IMO.
I take your point, and I agree that it may be counterproductive a bit to their cause. As I said here or at Stubborn Facts earlier, I’d certainly rather both these young men and boys had followed the example of MLKjr. rather than Malcolm X.
But I’d rather not engage in that sort of meta-analysis and criticism until the larger, actual injustice (as opposed to unhelpful rhetorical overreaching) has been addressed.
And I’d point out that bending over backwards to be reasonable and address their grievances through proper channels has demonstrably not helped in Jena up to this point, so a little bit of overreaching may in fact be necessary to bring attention to what’s going on. At every turn, until now, the white governmental officials have treated the misconduct of the white children as decidedly not serious and have refused to do much to address a clearly very bad situation.
Here’s a timeline from a Louisiana news source which you may find helpful.
[...] the “Party of Lincoln” — See Michelle Malkin’s “props” to Michael van der Galien, a Dutchman who “loves” America and posts on Joe Gandelman’s “The Moderate [...]
Generally, if Malkin cites you with approval, it’s a bad sign. I can only assume it’s a case of stopped clocks being right.
TO put a noose on a tree in Louisiana is truly a terroristic threat if there ever was one. We live in an era where Republicans have the vapors if Move On dares to criticize a general who is carrying water for an unpopular president and refers to him by a term that is commonly used by the soldiers under his command. That kind of language is just too toxic for their tender ears. We live in an era where the slightest and most obvious joke about a bomb in an airport is enough to send people to jail. We live in an era where huge numbers of Americans think it’s okay to give up almost every civil right because they fear some mythical Arab is going to target them in the Columbus mini-mall. And yet an act with truly vicious and personal intent such as hanging up a noose on a “white tree” (excuse me???) to threaten black students is treated like a childish prank.
Yes, the six did beat up one. And they deserve to be punished. But apparently a group of white kids from that school had beat up a black kid earlier, and they faced no charges. Furthermore, justice doesn’t just mean that someone is completely innocent. If someone steals a loaf of bread, they shouldn’t be charged with murder. Justice is also proportionate. Something is obviously terrribly wrong in Jena. People are right to protest for fair, proportionate justice. i
Alex, a post will be published today about the facts and how the media has distorted them according to the Jena pastor who first draw attention to the case because the racism and bigotry worried him.
Gents…. read:
http://thepopulistblog.com/2007/09/20/jena-louisiana-a-different-opinion/
‘Nuff Said
[...] legal judgments in this case, and have observed, WITHOUT knowing the final “truth,” as so many commentators – especially on the Right — seem to. One of the hallmarks of intellectual honesty is [...]
[...] legal judgments in this case, and have observed, WITHOUT knowing the final “truth,” as so many commentators – especially on the Right — seem to. One of the hallmarks of intellectual honesty is [...]