This brief article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune details a nasty incident in which a number of college students smeared mud on their faces, chanted racial epithets, and pretended to be the Jena 6.  This theatrical production made a brief appearance on YouTube.com before being yanked.

One of the young women involved in the episode burst into tears while being interviewed.  She insisted that she isn’t racist and pointed to her many black friends as confirmation. 

I wonder if any of her black friends were involved in the Jena 6 stunt.  I suspect not.

If the young student isn’t a racist, why did she get wrapped up in this spiteful pantomime? 

Nationwide support for the Jena 6 baffles a lot of white people.  They have grown accustomed to seeing poor, black defendants herded through the criminal justice system with silent efficiency.  The suggestion that the authorities have portrayed a group of normal high school football players as hardened thugs is disquieting.  Those with little personal acquaintance with law enforcement or the inside of a courtroom want to believe in the system is fair.  Or, if it isn’t fair, they don’t want to know about it. 

But back to my question: why did this young woman and a group of normal, apparently well-adjusted college friends, get caught up in such a tawdry exhibition? 

It’s called pack behavior.  No one likes to stand alone.  Adolescents are particularly prone to group-think.  The boys who hung the nooses in Jena weren’t evil; they just didn’t want to socialize with black students. It is possible that no one in the group felt good about the noose hanging idea; but nobody had the guts, or the moral grounding, to take a stand on principle. 

Racial equality, as an ideal, has few outspoken advocates in Jena.  If pressed on the point, most white residents would endorse the concept–in a formal, abstract fashion.  But I doubt there are many parents who sit down with their kids and emphasize that all children, red and yellow, black and white, are precious in the sight of Jesus (to paraphrase an old Sunday School song). 

My parents did that for me on a regular basis.  Several teachers championed the idea of racial equality during my school years.   Had the-girl-who-isnt-a-racist received the kind of explicit and repeated training from her parents, her church and her school teachers that could have averted this episode?  I hope so; but I doubt it.

The noose episode, the assault on Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn and the assault on Justin Barker at Jena High School are also examples of pack behavior.  One kid made a tragic decision and his buddies followed suit.  It’s about maintaining group solidarity. 

Kids can be cruel; we all know that from experience.  That’s why adult supervision must be constant, consistant and rooted in the principles of fairness and equality. 

I have made a few passing references to The Lord of the Flies, the William Golding novel published in 1954.  The book is open to a variety of interpretations, but on the most prosaic level, it is a story about boys trying to make their way without adult guidance or a clear moral vision. 

The tragic events in Jena followed a similar plot line.  Grown-ups could have intervened in the wake of the noose hanging, but they did not.  Actually, by dismissing the incident as a childish prank, adults fed the flames.

 The noose incident called for the re-affirmation of values that did not exist in Jena in any clear and explicit way. 

I have repeatedly asserted that Jena is America.  Actually, in many respects, Jena is better than America.  Residents are unusually friendly and polite (even after being beseiged by hundreds of reporters and camera crews).  Most adults genuinely want to live up to the highest ideals of their religion.  I do not say that dismissively.

But in a deeper sense, Jena is America.  Imagine a civic leader in Jena demanding that the school system respond to the noose incident with a K-12 program of diversity and tolerance training beginning with teachers and administrators.  The proposal would have been shouted down. 

Now imagine Hillary Clinton offering a similar proposal as a central plank of her primary race.  Just imagine the vitriol on talk radio and the blogosphere!  Clinton’s candidacy would be DOA within hours of making such a proposal.  Jena is America.

Friends of Justice wants to shift the national mood in the direction of mutual tolerance and respect.  We intervened on behalf of the Jena 6 because we feared a grave injustice was in the works.  But we also believed that the Jena story could spark a national conversation on the relationship between race, poverty and the criminal justice system.

Given the polarized and poisonous state of race relations in America, we had no illusions that this conversation would begin well.  When estranged marriage partners finally get around to addressing long-suppressed issues, the air generally fills with invective and high-decibel ranting. 

The initial stages of the conversation over Jena have mirrored this pattern.

But the initial explosion of emotion in a good maritial fight is usually followed by honest acknowledgment of pain and fear.  We haven’t gotten to that point in the Jena conversation.  Not yet. 

But this is a process.  The Jena story can lead to genuine social learning, but we are still at the kindergarten stage.  Much of the talk (on both sides) has been angry and ugly; but at least we’re talking.  My rhetoric has been overheated at times, but I make no apology for that; I’m learning right alongside everyone else.  The Jena story has much to teach us; I pray we will learn our lesson well.