Oct
17
2007
Nooses Under Our Noses
by Ben Tolksdorf
posted in Opinion |
Privy as they are to the lowest standards of broadcast and print journalism, our national media have failed yet again to address substance-bearing issues. While Rupert Murdoch and other media barons did whatever they do besides officiate faulty news corporations, civil rights were disposed of in a series of racially charged incidents in the Deep South. Granted, a town of 3,000 does not and should not share the national limelight with more critical matters like pop star custody battles, telling European media nevertheless managed to cover the story from across the Atlantic.
The story calls into question the implications of hate in all its illusive forms and the resulting vulnerability of civil rights. The fabric of America bleeds its characteristic apathy even now, as six young students, doomed by complexion, struggle to regain composure and some inkling of equality in a tale terribly reminiscent of Mississippi Burning.
Last fall, two black students sat under the “white” tree on the campus of their high school in Jena, Louisiana. The next day, the campus awoke to a display of three nooses hung from the tree. A large group of black students then protested the superintendent’s dismissal of the incident as a prank. Thereafter the District Attorney J. Reed Walters, flanked by local law enforcement, paid a visit to the protesters in a more than intimidating fashion, saying “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy… I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” Racial tension flared over the next month until a Jena High academic building was burned down in an unresolved blaze. A Black student was beaten by white students at a party later that weekend. The very next day, a young white man threatened black students with a shotgun at a convenience store. The threatened managed to grab the gun and run to safety. However, the students were arrested for theft of the gun, while no charges were filed against the white student. Gene Hackman be damned.
The next Monday at school, an outspoken supporter of the students who hung the nooses taunted the black student who had been beaten at the recent party, allegedly calling several students “nigger.” The same day, this white student was jumped by six black students. Though the young man was sent to the hospital, he was released and apparently well enough to attend a social event that evening. Subsequently, Jena High students Robert Bailey (17), Theo Shaw (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Mychal Bell (16), and an unidentified minor were expelled from school, arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder. Five of the six students faced an initial 100 years in prison before charges were reduced. Months went by as the families of these imprisoned students fathomed the outrageous bail, which was set between $70,000 and $138,000.
The first trial ended with the conviction of Mychal Bell on charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. The grossly unfair trial was conducted by an all white jury and a defense attorney who did not bother to call witnesses. Officials prohibited protests from taking place near the courtroom or anywhere in sight of the judge, while Bell’s parents were barred from speaking to media outlets. Early in September, a Louisiana appeals court ruled that he should not have been tried as an adult in a momentous overturn of his conviction. Bell was later released from prison on a $45,000 bail bond. His release met with little opposition from District Attorney Reed Walters, and came one week after tens of thousands of people gathered from across the nation to support the six in a historic march through Jena. Bell’s trial will be sent to juvenile court while the other five young men await trial. Though this may seem nearly fictional, it is even so representative of the type of concealed hate which needs to be calmed.
No other reflection on justice seems more relevant than that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that is “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Which unchecked attitudes, associations and assumptions allow for the proliferation of injustice, especially in regards to race and ethnicity? Do we students contribute to the rehashing of hatred, albeit racial, gender, heteronormative, or socioeconomic prejudice? Just as a prestigious university like our own enriches the disciplines of academia in solidarity with a larger intellectual community, we too are obligated in erasing those remnants of ignorance which have plagued collective conscious in the past. Apathy has long since become cliché with regard to matters of hate, and it is time we learn peaceable living. This begins with a grounded perspective on the individual as a subject of greater depth than her race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic standing, or any other frivolous distinctions we erect between one another.