The case of the Jena 6 is being spun as a crude vestige of Mississippi Burning racism. From the blogs to the mainstream media, the Jena story is framed by a noose.
So, what’s the problem? After all, this is a story about old style Southern racism, isn’t it? Well yes . . . in part, at least. Unfortunately, when the part is taken for the whole we might be hearing the truth; but we aren’t hearing the whole truth. Sometimes only the whole truth can help us. This is one of those times.
Let’s face facts. The “Jim Crow is alive and well and living in Jena, Louisiana” message has been phenomenally effective. Letters, emails and donations have been pouring in from New England, New York, California, Old England, France and Canada; in short, from everywhere the American heartland (and the Old South in particular) is regarded as a breeding ground for small-minded bigotry.
Tragically, these howls of outrage are completely justified. Men like DA Reed Walters and Superintendent Roy Breithaupt bungled “the noose issue” back in August of 2006 because they couldn’t call a hate crime by its proper name. Place yourself in their position and their behavior, despicable though it is, becomes understandable.
To deal with the noose issue in a responsible manner, Reed and Roy would have been forced to acknowledge the obscene southern legacy of racial violence. By implication, they would have been tracing an unbroken line between chattel slavery, post Civil War “night riders”, lynching and the whole ugly panoply of Jim Crow laws that shaped southern culture until the late 1960s.
Reed and Roy couldn’t call the nooses a hate crime without admitting that a generous slice of the Southern heritage pie is lamentable. They would have been forced to say, in effect, “The nooses hanging from the tree in high school courtyard represent a tradition of racial hate and violence that all God-fearing residents of LaSalle Parish must repudiate and deplore.
Reed and Roy couldn’t do it. So they papered over the crumbling wall of bigotry and hoped nobody would notice. Worse than that, they warned black student who refused to live with the status quo that they would face dire consequences. There is no defense for this behavior.
Reed and Roy dropped the ball precisely because they were functioning as public servants charged with upholding, defending and reinforcing local values and mores. Their wheeling and dealing was driven by the prevailing moral market place. Any other course of action would have called down howls of protest from prominent white residents. Reed and Roy were acting in the public interest as defined by influential people in their social world.
So, what’s my beef?
I’ll try to explain. Tour the prisons in the general vicinity of San Francisco, Boston and New York City and you would see the same social world you would encounter in a typical prison in East Texas or Central Louisiana? In both cases, young black males would be grossly over-represented. If the coastal folks are so much more enlightened than their benighted brethren and sistern in the fly-over zone why are their prisons jammed with the same kind of people?
You probably won’t find “white trees” and nooses in New York and Los Angeles—that’s a Southern thing. But you will find the same kind of racial profiling regime that insures that young black males are disproportionately watched, hassled and arrested by the police; and you will discover that the over-prosecution of young black males is just as rife in our coastal paradise as it is in our southern purgatory.
That’s what Friends of Justice calls “the New Jim Crow”; and it ain’t just a Southern thing. Jena is America.
Could I have sold this story to the media as a New Jim Crow story? No, I couldn’t. To date, the mainstream media denies the existence of such a phenomenon.
Friends of Justice specialize in truths that don’t play well on prime time because a misdiagnosed disease cannot be cured.
This is a story about ugly vestiges of Old Jim Crow racism—a predominantly southern problem that is gradually, and mercifully, fading. But this is also a story about the New Jim Crow—a frightening new disease that is spreading like a metastasizing cancer.
Make no mistake; I want to win justice for the Jena 6! But in the process, I will be drawing repeated attention to the ease with which poor black males are targeted for prosecution in our nation.
That isn’t a story we are likely to see in the mainstream media any time soon. Media people face the same dilemma that haunted Reed and Roy—they can’t get too far ahead of the zeitgeist personified by their editors. Paradigm shifts rarely begin with public officials and they don’t incubate in the mainstream media. But a paradigm shift is exactly what America needs, so that’s what I will be writing about in the days to come. Stay tuned.
~Alan Bean
Friends of Justice
If you appreciate the work of Friends of Justice in Jena, please consider making a donation to fund our grassroots organizing! You can donate online here, or send a check to the address below.
Friends of Justice
3415 Ainsworth Court
Arlington, TX 76016
806-729-7889 or 817-457-0025
Friends of Justice 
What you have just written, Alan, is very profound.
Your observations,and conclusion, that you couldn’t have “sold the story” by presenting the whole ball of wax to the media is keenly observed.
I am definitely staying tuned!
You could try selling the story to Associated Content online. They only pay between $3.00 and $20.00 for articles picked for publication. You could publish it under “Opinion”. It would be interesting to see if it got published and showcased. Very few people have commented on the article that was published about the Jena 6.
One writer who insisted he is not racists and just wanted to “right” (he meant write) to educate people. It was basically a listing of the percentages of people, by ethnicity who are in jail. He is a prison guard and the theme throughout his articles and comments can be summed up “black males are criminally inclined”.
What was sad to me, was a comment from a guy who said “I am a black male” and he agreed with the writer. I keep trying to point out that perhaps the high % age of black males in the jail population is due to, well, Jena. Sad when even a black male does not “get it”.
I never thought that the elected guys were doing so to please the white population, I thought they simply felt likewise. “with the stoke of a pen” he could ruin there lives and he did.
You make such a true point. If racism is seen as merely a backwater Southern problem then the rest of the country doesn’t have to take a hard look at the policing and legal justice problems in their own backyards. Heck, they don’t even have to look at their own undiverse neighborhood. Well said and please keep up your work.
I hope that the trials & appeals of these kids is at the forefront of any action plan(s)?
Truth be told, America publicly puts these situations into a vacuum. We’ve all heard/seen/read comments relegating these situations to “backwater, redneck, towns” … but that completely ignores the fact that they continue to exist; not to mention creating a false image that it doesn’t exist in large/metropolitan cities.
However, as I’ve in posts on other pages on this site, use the Law against them. I would not be surprised, even with all the media attention, if the remaining 5 are similarly railroaded in Jena’s kangaroo court system. Consider that even if these cases WERE to be eventually heard by the Supreme Court … (assuming it ruled in favor of the J6) who would enforce its ruling?
That’s the real problem here. The Supreme Court can hand down whatever ruling it wants, but if Congress and the President do not enforce that ruling … what, exactly, do the Jenas of this country have to lose by continuing their defacating on basic human rights?
Nothing … not one thing.
You know the 1 thing this tells me as a 50 year old African American Man is that after 435 years nothing Changes as far I am concerned this Country was founded by Criminals and after 400 years this Criminals Ancestors are still running this country more or less the way they have been running it the only thing is that we are no longer Slaves working for free but we are no closer to freedom than we where when these white men brought our ancestors from Africa* even though there no Chains on our necks and ankles our minds are still not free ! and to have 6 children to be charged for a school fight as felony is outrageous and a miscarriage of Justice! but what can you expect from a Criminal Society ranned by Criminals! it like we are surrounded by Devils and Demons and living in Nightmare Land! white men as a whole are some Cowardly Treacherous Creatures who deals nothing but Death and Destruction where ever they go! they even Murdered and Stole this Country from the Indians and murdered and Stole our Names,Culture,Religion and Language to the point where we are going by the whitemans name speaking his Language and in some cases acting like him* but now is the time we as Black people should stand up for our Children and stop being afraid of these white people and fight for your rights and if we let these 6 children go to jail for this B.S then we as a Black people should go on ahead and Drink that cyanide Koolaide and fall into the grave because we are as good as Dead if we dont stand up for our RIGHTS and as a matter of history all Empires Fall the Roman Empire fell and all Empires fell after that so AmeriKKKa is no Different! the white man isnt Invincible! he cant be and will be overthrown.
I agree that none of the actions in Jena were called for, but one hate crime does not deserve another. Was the young man who was beaten almost to death the same individual who hung the nooses in the tree? If we keep excusing individuals for their actions, citing they are victims of racism, how will we ever be able to erase racism? I would expect the same charges brought against individuals of any race who senselessly beat another individual. What if the beaten individual had been your son, daughter, etc? If the accused are innocent of the charges, they will have opportunities to have their cases heard in high courts. The justice system was designed to protect individuals, regardless of the color, race, ethnicity, etc.