There is nothing remarkable about the sentiments expressed in Frank Conaway’s op-ed in the Baltimore Sun. It’s a restatement of the standard civil rights generation assertion that the hip hop generation has strayed from the ancient virtues of pre-civil rights black America.
Conaway isn’t angry. His tone is gentle. And, unlike white conservatives who spin Cosbyesque arguments to their own purposes, the Baltimore court clerk isn’t appalled by black America’s show of support for the Jena 6. In fact, he is inspired by the solidarity and wants to see more of it.
White conservatives (and black opportunists like Jason Whitlock who distort the Jena story because it ensures appreciative reviews from white conservatives) are rending their garments in horror over the enthusiastic support African Americans have demonstrated for the six black football players accused of assaulting Justin Barker.
“They are talking up these boys like they was Rosa Parks,” the narrative goes, “and they’re just a bunch of thugs!”
Invariably, “thugs” is the term of choice. It reduces normal, small town boys to a cold, malevolent inner city caricature. It associates the Jena 6 with the more unsavory elements of the old “gangsta” rap scene (thereby hooking the outrage of civil rights blacks and moderate-to-conservative whites).
In America, a “thug” is a throwaway person, a member of the dangerous classes, a person in relation to whom concepts like the presumption of innocence, due process and reasonable doubt can have no meaning. When a sure-fire thug stands before the bar of justice there can be only two questions–what is the maximum charge, and what is the maximum sentence. A thug is guilty by virtue of who he is.
When Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis were introduced to the audience at the BET hip hop awards ceremony in Atlanta, the announcer assured the audience that no one associated with the production condoned violence. Nonetheless, when Carwin and Bryant strolled onto the stage, they received an ecstatic ovation.
Why? Were the folks in Atlanta under the false impression that Carwin and Bryant were fighting sister Rosa’s good fight?
Not at all. The audience applauded because they identify. As Sammie Barrow, the brother and uncle of four of the young men railroaded in Tulia, Texas on the word of a white cop, once told me, “These kids don’t rate as no thugs”.
Every member of the audience in Atlanta has a close relative or a personal friend who has run afoul of the criminal justice system. There wasn’t enough money to hire a lawyer so the kid was assigned an overworked and jaded public defender or court appointed attorney who drifted through the motions as if in a daze. Maybe the young defendant took a plea bargain because a conviction would have put him away for decades; maybe he went to trial and got hammered by a white judge and jury. Maybe he was guilty; maybe not. It didn’t matter. Conviction followed on the heels of arrest with soul-destroying inevitability.
The facts in these cases are often muddy. Neither the state nor the defense takes the time to ask too many questions before entering the courtroom. Dockets are clogged and time is at a premium. So the prosecutor tells the jury the defendant is a dangerous thug and the defense attorney mumbles a few words about insufficient evidence. The jury doesn’t care about legal technicalities–if the defendant is a thug, he belongs in prison. It isn’t a matter of what he has or hasn’t done; it’s about who he is.
When I showed up in Jena in January of this year, the Jena 6 were being portrayed as pathological predators from the darkest sanctums of Ninth Ward New Orleans. But when I visited with members of the black community I got an entirely different story. “I’ve grown up across the street from these kids,” the sole black member of the school board told me. “I’ve watched them grow up. They’re just ordinary boys–good boys.”
In other words, “These kids don’t rate as no thugs.”
Then how do normal school boys get sucked into a vortex of violence? What motivated the white kids who jumped Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn on Friday night? Whence the rage? Why did Justin Barker get jumped at the high school? Whence the rage?
One thing was clear to me as I sifted through the facts before me; Robert Bailey and Justin Barker had run afoul of the same smoldering animus. None of these kids were thugs–black or white–just kids tangled up in forces they dimly understood and over which they had little control.
It is commonly supposed that the rage in Jena originated with nooses hanging from an all-white tree. Not so. The black kids took offense to the hateful symbol, but they didn’t know enough about the racial history of America to appreciate the full significance of a noose dangling from a tree.
Their parents had longer memories. They remembered Jena’s segregated school yard from their own school years back in the 70s and 80s. Everyone had learned to live with it. Yet they were proud of Kenneth Purvis for challenging the status quo–something they never dreamed of doing. And they were clear on one point–the nooses had been hung in direct response to Kenneth’s challenging question about where he could and couldn’t sit.
These parents were willing to wait for school officials to respond to the issue. Everything hung in the balance, and parents on both sides of the color line knew it. A strong disciplinary response to the nooses (the kind recommended by the principal) would have signalled that the de facto segregation at the high school was a thing of the past. A weak response would suggest that nothing had changed.
And that’s why my narrative focused on the gross misconduct of Superintendent Roy Breithaupt (who called the noose incident a childish prank), an arrogant and unresponsive school board (who wouldn’t even allow black parents to voice their concerns), and a bizarre prosecutor named Reed Walters (who threatened to punish any student bold enough to protest the status quo).
The rage in Jena was kindled by these brazen acts. Some white students (those emotionally invested in the maintenance of the color line at the high school) responded with glee to these not-so-subtle hints of official validation. But the white boys found themselves locked into an adversarial relationship with the black students who inspired Mr. Walters’ “stroke of my pen” threat.
Throughout the football season, the hostility was driven underground, erupting off campus in a series of inconsequential dust-ups that disintegrated when somebody called the police. Then fire was seen billowing from the windows at the schoolhouse and all bets were off.
The next day, Robert Bailey, a black football player at the center of the September tree protest, requested admittance to a private dance on the white side of town. The furies were released.
The folks at the BET awards ceremony understand this story. They have seen it happen before. The Jena 6 aren’t Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was the face of the Old Jim Crow. The Jena 6 symbolize the New Jim Crow that has been gradually taking control of the American criminal justice system for over a quarter century now.
The New Jim Crow is why America imprisons five to eight times as many citizens per 100,000 as other Western democracies. White America, tragically, is as oblivious to these sinister developments as I once was.
Frank Conaway understands the Jena 6, but he still wants to talk to the kids. And, precisely because he “gets” Jena, the Baltimore court clerk deserves a receptive audience.
African-Americans must rise to the example of our forefathers
By Frank M. Conaway
October 21, 2007
I once knew a proud man. He was called “black” or “Negro” – or worse. This man worked long hours to provide for his wife and five children. Rain or shine, he rose early and went to his job at the docks. It was a tough job, a thankless job. He didn’t mind because he knew he had to provide for his family.
He didn’t graduate from elementary school. However, he made his children stay in school because he knew an education would open doors for them that had been closed to him. He made sure he instilled in his kids a sense of values and good moral judgment. And, yes, he voted in every election.
When hard times came, he did not complain. This man was not angry, because he knew anger destroys the soul. Before civil rights became a reality, he dreamed of a better day. He dreamed that his children would become productive citizens.
Our forefathers, like the man I speak of, suffered, fought and died to make our lives better. As they look down on us, they must be so disappointed in what little we have done with our lives. They struggled to make black people equal, to get us the right to vote. What have we done with those hard-won rights? Many of us do not exercise our right to vote, much less become politically active. It is easier to sit back and complain about how unfair life is to African-Americans.
True, sometimes we are stirred to action. It was heartening to see how the African-American community bonded during the recent “Jena 6” ordeal. Black people from all walks of life went to Louisiana, or met at colleges and churches across the United States, to show their solidarity for the six African-American students who were unfairly charged in a racially motivated incident.
But such cases are rare. I have not seen this type of coming together of African-Americans for a long, long time – not since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. We, as a people, need to keep this momentum going. It is fine to support the Jena 6, but will we change how we run our own lives?
To quote Gandhi, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” We need to cure ourselves of our apathy. We need to rid ourselves of the collective chip on our shoulders and stop asking what’s going to be done for us. If our noise-making isn’t followed by action, it serves no purpose other than to grab headlines.
Many immigrants, legal and illegal, have arrived in the United States with little money in their pockets, not speaking English and with no transferable education. Yet they are industrious and find ways to make a living. Often, they work long hours in what others would call disagreeable jobs. However, within a generation, many become productive citizens who give back to the community. Many immigrants struggle to send their children to college. In turn, many of the second generation become professionals. Once immigrant families are established as citizens, they become politically active so their voices can be heard.
Many African-American dreamers have also turned their dreams into reality: people such as Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. These men and women and countless others paved the road for us with their blood, struggles and suffering. We need to get back on this road and travel together to keep their dreams alive.
The African-American community needs to wake from its collective sleep and begin to live its dreams. We began to wake up with the Jena 6. Now, we need to take a cue from the examples set by immigrants. If this is too uncomfortable, we should look back to our forefathers, who fought for our equality.
It will take hard work. Blacks are a strong force, one to be reckoned with – if we would only get our acts firmly together and stop lamenting what could or should be. African-Americans need to finally begin to be accountable for their lives and take action to improve their lot in life – like that man with the five children and almost no education, who yet managed to achieve a better life for his family.
He was my father.
The fact is that too often, we are our own oppressors. A strong dose of self-respect is greatly needed to cure the many social ills that plague the black community. We need to stop making excuses for our misfortunes and get on with it. These are tough words, I know. But sometimes the truth hurts.
Frank M. Conaway is clerk of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.
Friends of Justice 
Mychal Bell of the Jena Six has been sentenced to a juvenile detention center for multiple counts of second degree battery, simple battery and destruction of private property. These crimes predated both the noose-hanging incident and the beating of Justin Barker at Jena High School. Robert Bailey was the victim during the fight at the private party. Both black and white guests were invited to the party, but trouble started when Bailey and a group of his friends attempted to crash the invitation-only party. When a host asked them to leave, they refused to go. The 22-year-old white male who hit Bailey was charged with simple battery for striking Bailey with his fist. He pled guilty and was placed on parole because it was his first offense. In addition to charges of aggravated battery in connection with the beating of Justin Barker, Bailey faces charges of aggravated robbery and theft of a fire arms. This doesn’t sound like “ordinary good boys.”
The myth of the “white tree” has been so thoroughly debunked that the mainstream media now refers to it as a “tree under which white students sometime tended to congregate. Jena High School administrators, teachers and students, including back students, say students of both races tended to congregate beneath the tree from time to time. The student who asked permission to sit beneath the tree posed the question in jest. The assistant principal did not give him permission to sit beneath the tree, as is often reported, she told him that “You know you can sit anywhere you like.”
The federal attorneys who testified last week before the House Judiciary Committee presented a prepared statement. According to the statement, the department declined to pursue charges after learning that the nooses had been hung by juveniles who had been promptly sanctioned by the school. These sanctions against the three students who hung the nooses included (1) a nine day suspension, during which time they attended an alternative school; (2) an additional two weeks of in-school suspension; (3) several Saturday detentions; (4) an order to attend a discipline court; and (5) a referral to a family counseling. The attorneys also said any federal charges against the three students would not have resulted in a criminal conviction but a “finding of delinquency,” the equivalent of a misdemeanor.
The three Jena High School students who hung the nooses claim they did not realize that nooses have racist connotations. They claim they were merely replicating the famous lynching scene from Lonesome Dove, in which Texas Rangers string up with outlaws. This claim has been ridiculed by just about everyone, except those who actually investigated the incident. According to the Jena Times, state Welfare Supervisor Melinda Edwards said it might surprise everyone to learn that the three students did not have knowledge of black history in relation to that hanging of black citizens in the south during the civil rights movement.
“We discussed this in great detail with those students,” Edwards said. “They honestly had no knowledge of the history concerning nooses and black citizens. This may seem hard to believe for some people, but this is exactly what everyone on the committee determined.”
She also said that once the historical significance of the nooses was revealed to the students and how it was considered a tremendous insult to those of the black race, they showed great remorse. “When they were told about the historical relevance of the nooses and how others would interpret their actions, they really were very remorseful,” she said. “I can honestly say that these boys regretted tremendously ever hanging those nooses.”
Following the beating of Justin Barker, the Justice Department reopened its investigation into the noose-hanging incident and determined there was no link between the nooses and the beating, U.S. Attorney Donald Washington told CNN that, “A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection.” He added that none of the black students involved in the beating made “any mention of nooses, of trees, of the ‘N’ word or any other word of racial hate.”
Blair:
I have debunked these allegations so often that I hestitate to comment now. I will simply ask why superintendent Breithaupt made no mention of this long list of sanctions until a few weeks ago. The myth of the white tree has only been exposed to the extent that the term “white tree” was not actually used by Jena residents. However, for months people on both sides have freely acknowledged that the courtyard of Jena High School has always been segregated. Again, this didn’t mean that students never strayed from their side of the line, just that the sidewalk was universally understood as a dividing line that was not generally crossed. As for Mr. Washington, his role in this entire business has been embarrassing from the outset. Again, I will ask that you interact with the precise nature of my narrative, not with the mainstream media.
“horror over the enthusiastic support African Americans”
No, the horror occurs if those enthusiastic African Americans discover that they have been badly deceived. The news media are suing for unsealing Bell’s records. That does not bode well for the stories you have been telling.
The anti-racism movement cannot afford another debacle like Duke, Alan Bell. Your presentations here have been shoddily researched and the source for much doubt. Your house of cards is built on carefully omitted facts, enough facts for a news magazine cover story, if you catch my drift.
Have you considered yet how you are going to spin the convenience store trial once the media broadcasts the full account? How will you justify Bell’s beating of his girlfriend? How will you undo the damage you caused?
Repent now, Alan Bell. Come clean. Fix your mess before nothing is left to salvage. Tell us what you know to be true, and tell us where you padded the story to heighten the drama. Let’s work this out now while we still have the opportunity.