Forest Conservation and the Jena Six
Today I was in the laundromat watching the protest on the news. Of course I WANTED to be in Louisiana.
Admittedly, I did not know the details of the case until today. I've been a bit wrapped up in my own world lately and events in the world at large have only entered my head occasionally. Yesterday at work, I half heard about it on the news while my boss was watching TV but I only heard enough to confuse me...that people were protesting the prosecution of six black kids that beat up a white kid. I briefly wondered why this was so outrageous and meant to look into it further but got distracted.
Hearing the details on NPR this morning, on the news while doing laundry, and doing further reading this evening, my stomach turned.
I sat here slack-jawed listening to newscasters say perfectly calmly that a black student asked if he could sit under a tree in a spot "traditionally" occupied only by white students.
That they could say it without choking disturbed me further and provided further evidence that all newscasters are robots.
I'm not one to get all upset over every horror story I hear on the news but, through this one, I've repeatedly had tears in my eyes.
As to why, I'll quote Roland Martin's CNN commentary (partially because it's apt but also because he had the gumption to describe the white residents of Jena's reactions as "We got no problem with our coloreds"):
"What should we take away from Jena? We must all be vigilant in demanding that our legal system is fair and just. We must not be silent and say it's not in our backyard, so therefore it doesn't matter."
Most of you know that I love the American south. I consider this country a chunk of map that I live on...but the southern portion is my home.
So, hundreds of miles away or not, this is in my backyard.
The people involved could be my family, friends, neighbors. Seeing video of Mychal Bell's father kicking open a courthouse door while his wife walked beside him crying and another woman cautioned him to calm down...they could be people I know. That's how people I live around would act in that situation. That's what they would sound like. That's what I would sound like.
And though I know that black-white inequality in the legal system is played out daily, it's so much more harsh to see it in such a personal way.
About the last straw for me was when I heard they cut the tree down...a perfectly good shade tree in an otherwise bare schoolyard.
It seemed to me the perfect metaphor for how Americans deal with their discomfort about racism (NOT southern Americans, Americans as a whole).
There was no tree here.
Therefore there was no tree for white students to sit under.
No nooses could have been tied to that tree...because there is no tree.
See, we solved the problem. Since there's no tree, no one can sit under it.
Er...not that there ever was a tree, or a problem.
Anyway, we're equal now. This town has no racial problem.
I hope some day we'll learn that destroying the visual reminders, changing the language, making token changes...will not change reality.
Speaking of which...
Media coverage as a whole has disappointed, but not surprised me.
As I said, I had no idea of the details of the case until thousands of people drew attention to it. I had to actively search for details to further understand why this was such a big deal.
A typical news report went like this"
From CNN:
"Racial tension in the town increased after the noose incident.
In November, someone burned the main academic building. The arson has not been solved, but many believe the incident is linked to racial tension.
Then, in December, the Jena 6 were accused of brutally beating a white student, Justin Barker."
Basically, it sounds like a bunch of redneck kids appropriated an area of the schoolyard. Black kids tried to enter their area and they pulled a "prank" involving nooses. Then those negro hoodlums set the school on fire and half killed a poor little white boy.
They neglect to mention other, possibly more telling incidents which occurred in between...a black student was hit over the head with a bottle. A white student pointed a LOADED SHOTGUN at this same black student, Robert Bailey, at a convenience store the next day..Bailey managed to get the gun away from him and took it home with him. Rather than being applauded for not shooting the fucker, Bailey was charged with disturbing the peace, SECOND DEGREE ROBBERY AND THEFT OF A FIREARM.
None of this is mentioned, just the "prank", the arson and the "attack"...but then the reporter looks shocked that these kids could be charged with attempted murder in such an enlightened society.
Speaking of pranks, if the use of nooses for decoration is mentioned as such again, I may scream. Covering someone's front lawn in pink flamingos is a prank. Hanging a noose from a tree in the south sends an instant message, "Remember the KKK? Lynchings? Murder? Rape? Mutilation? We can still do that...and watch your mouth or we will."
I'm white, but the sight of a Klan robe or a noose still makes me recoil...what must a black person in the DEEP south feel?
Not a prank...a THREAT. Those two words are not synonyms.
As to the seriousness of whitey's injuries...*snort*
Poor baby had a concussion. He was taken to the ER, checked out, patched up, let go.
He was NOT seriously injured...He got knocked in the face in a fight....it sounds like he roundly deserved it and I feel zero sympathy for him or his sniffling mama.
I've seen worse and had worse done to me. He was not in mortal peril. The idea of it being attempted murder is laughable.
In NC at least, I know it is "simple assault" unless serious injury is inflicted. A broken bone immediately makes it "aggravated assault". Attempted murder takes INTENT TO KILL.
Say six people my size attacked someone with the intention to kill. Chances are the "victim" would have at least one broken bone.
These guys weren't my size. Mychal Bell played football...none of the other guys involved were fainting flowers. So, if he was attacked by all six of them, why was he able to walk out of the hospital two hours later?
But do they question this? Do they ask the logical questions about possibility, probability, and how much shit a person's expected to take before he punches an asshole in the face?
No. They ask, "So is this about race...or about justice?" and "Does your town have a racial problem?"
And I slap myself in the forehead until I probably have a concussion. CNN is guilty of attempted murder.
So, for me, it has been outrage upon outrage to see the media pointing at the backward southern crackers as "the problem" while their coverage is a part of a problem in itself.
Even when they're obviously treated wrongly, black people cannot be portrayed too sympathetically. We can point out that Mychal Bell has a previous assault charge (no circumstances mentioned) but not the extent to which black students were repeatedly provoked and then punished.
We can't speak too frankly about what a white person did to hurt a black person...the culprit has to be the abstract concept of "racism".
We don't allow ourselves to THINK objectively enough about race to talk sensibly about it.
So we blame rural southerners and act like this is something that would only happen in Louisiana.
This is not me trying to say that the south is free of racism...this is me saying that this whole country has a serious problem with racism.
I worry that people will look at the coverage of this case and see it as foreign to their world because it happened in the south...you know, where we hang black people weekly while drinking mint juleps and flirting with our cousins.
I worry people will say, "Thank god we don't live there! We're so much better off in Connecticut! "
Guess what...if you live in the U.S, you do live there.
What happened in the little, podunk, deep-fried town of Jena, LA could happen, has happened, and still happens anywhere else in the country.
I'm not Rev. Jesse Jackson's biggest fan but he got it right when he said, "There's a Jena in every state."
That means we'd have to cut down a hell of a lot of trees to make this problem go away.
Please remember that...and look closely at your backyard too.
But, the best part of this whole thing?
This.
The estimated 15,000 to 20,000 demonstrators shut down the town of 3,000 in central Louisiana.
Many residents left for the day, and government agencies, businesses and schools were closed.
Sgt.Tim Ledet of the Louisiana State Police said protesters in buses were still bringing people to town at midday because of the gridlock, but many protesters got off and walked into town on foot.
Ain't that a beautiful thing?
As much as I feel sorry for those six boys, part of me is glad this happened. Maybe America needed to see outraged people marching on a town and demanding that things be done differently.
I know it made me ashamed of myself.
I can't count the number of times in the past couple years that I've shrugged in frustration at some injustice, saying, "Yeah, it's fucked, but what can we do? They have tanks. Rock doesn't beat tank."
Then I see thousands of people riding on buses from as far away as California, walking miles into town if their "escorts" took too long...because they wanted to do something.
...and they shut that town DOWN!
That doesn't make me misty-eyed...that causes me to straight out cry.
I'm proud of the people who did something about injustice in their backyard...and grateful to the rest of the country for coming down and helping them to do it.
They made CNN look at Jena instead of OJ and Britney. With the number of cases like this that go unnoticed, that's something! Whatever Jena does now, they have to do knowing that the world is watching and judging THEM.
That's what I want to hold in my mind from this and what I want America to see, not yet another case of white favored over black, but what we can do when we're not too scared and lazy to change things.
We can make people see the spot where they cut the tree down.
P.S. David Bowie gets extra points in my book for his contribution to the defense fund...and for being disturbingly hot at the ripe old age of sixty.
P.S.S. Thanks to anchasta for her post about this, which provided the banner I thieved.