This story from Bradley County, Arkansas sounds like Jena, Louisiana all over again. 

Several factors distinguish Bradley County, Arkansas from LaSalle Parish, Louisiana.  For one thing, the alleged assailants haven’t been charged with attempted murder–the charges are more in touch with reality.  Secondly, public officials in Arkansas are admitting up front that racist provocation played a role.

On the other hand, the black defendants (see below) are being charged as adults–a growing national trend.  Adolescent boys don’t think, feel, or reason like adults; a fact the criminal justice system hasn’t reckoned with.

Friends of Justice draws attention to stories like Tulia and Jena because they change the way people think and act.  Maybe the folks in Arkansas just don’t want journalists tramping through their community.  Nothing wrong with that.  The point is, we aren’t seeing the bizarre over-reaction we saw in Jena.

Tragically, the legal system is still being viewed as the sole source of aid.  The key problem in Bradley County is the racial animus smoldering just beneath the surface of the student body.  Is nobody going to help these kids work through their stuff?  Does anyone really believe that filing of civil rights complaints with the Department of Justice is going to make things all better, or are we simply calling the problem a nail because a hammer is the only tool left in the box?

In Jena, Dr. Phil and the Reverend TD Jakes intervened briefly, implying strongly that the Jena 6 families should sit down with the family of the assault victim, sift through their differences, and engage in a group hug.

Sounds a bit naive, even dopey; but does the court system have a better idea?  Throwing the Jena 6 in prison for a quarter century (which is what Reed Walters was initially fixing to do) is a ludicrous response to a tragedy spawned in racial hatred.  At some point, folks need to find common ground.  Reconciliation is the only long-term answer; retribution drives the emotion deeper.

The little-reported religious revival that swept through Jena in the wake of a media feeding frenzy shows that local residents understood that some kind of new beginning was called for.  Schooled in the tradition of revivalism, Jena residents responded the best way they know how.  A revival may be a poor substitute for a conversation about the legacy of Jim Crow racism, but, realistically, it was probably the best option available. 

Who knows, Jena may be baby stepping its way toward real dialogue.

The troubles in Bradley County won’t be revolved so long as the criminal justice system is perceived to be the only remedy.  Judges, prosecutors and FBI agents are good at putting bad guys behind bars, but they are worse than useless when it comes to helping confused adolescents find their way home.

Six students charged as adults

BY MIKE LINN

Posted on Thursday, October 2, 2008

Prosecutors charged six black students with felony battery as adults Wednesday, accusing them of beating a white student over racial slurs written on a bathroom wall at Hermitage High School.

The Aug. 20 fight led to the suspension of 11 students at the Bradley County school and a three-day hospital stay for the white student, who suffered cuts, lacerations, bumps and internal bleeding.

Dwight D. Neal, 16; Darcarus Edington, 17; Martel Childs, 17; Tyson Kendrix, 16; Marcus Broughton, 17; and Demarcus Smith, 16, are all charged as adults with battery in the second degree, according to documents filed Wednesday in Bradley County Circuit Court.

Andrew Best, deputy prosecuting attorney in the 10 th Judicial District, said he didn’t know of any attorney representing the defendants. Efforts to find phone numbers for the defendants’ parents failed Wednesday.

All defendants remain students at the high school, Best said.

Best said the beating victim, identified in a school resource officer’s report as John Dillion Rippey, is not the student who wrote “KKK” and “nigger” on the bathroom wall.

Best said rumors had circulated that Rippey wrote the slurs, and Rippey had been in a fight last year with one of the defendants.

According to the report by school resource officer Denise Walton, another student wrote “KKK” – a reference to the Ku Klux Klan – on the boys bathroom wall and that Neal was a “nigger.”

Neal went to the cafeteria to round up friends, who approached Rippey and two other white students working in a classroom without a teacher during lunch, the report said.

The report said that during the confrontation, Edington struck Rippey from behind, Rippey lost his balance and hit the side of his head on a television cart. The six defendants then beat Rippey while two other black students watched, according to the report and Hermitage School District Superintendent Richard Rankin.

Rankin said one black student in the fight was suspended for 10 days and the other five were suspended for five days. The two black students who watched were suspended for three days, Rankin said.

During the confrontation, two female students guarded the doors to the classroom. They were suspended for three days, Rankin said.

The white student who admitted writing the racial slurs on the walls was also punished by the school district, Best said. He is a minor and has not been charged with a crime but was suspended for five days, Rankin said.

Best said that since race was an element in the beating, he reviewed the charges very carefully.

“If six white boys had jumped on an African-American youth at the school and sent him to the hospital, we would charge the white students just the same,” Best said. “I would be derelict in my duties not to prosecute were the situation reversed. There’s always a concern with something racially charged like this, but in this situation, when someone ends up in the hospital, someone needs to be charged.”

The president of the Bradley County chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People said he plans to have a meeting with school officials to discuss the writings on the bathroom walls.

“I want to know how long it was left written on the walls before anyone did anything about it,” Rodney Domineck said. “In the boys’ defense, I can understand that with anything racial like this you can get very emotional and sometimes do things out of character.”

Since the fight, Rankin said, the school held an assembly to try to bring racial harmony to the campus, which has about 180 high school students.

Counseling was also made available, Rankin said. He said no racially charged fights have occurred since then.

Best noted similarities in the Hermitage case and that of a case in Jena, La., that drew national attention. In Jena tensions between black and white students ran high for weeks before the beating of a white student.

Critics said the charges, later reduced, were racially motivated and overblown. Thousands marched in the Louisiana town in protest.

Special Agent Steve Frazier of the FBI in Little Rock said he knew of no federal complaints related to the racial slurs at Hermitage and hadn’t heard of the case until a reporter contacted him Wednesday.

Frazier, who said the FBI encourages those who feel their civil rights have been violated to contact the agency, notes that cases involving speech walk a fine line.

“People have the right to First Amendment speech,” Frazier said. “Where that crosses the line into state or federal law is a difficult legal question. In situations such as that, the FBI would receive the information from the person who reports it, consult with the U. S. attorney’s office and the Department of Justice in order to determine if that speech violates federal law.”