Across America, African Americans are still trying to fathom the unfathomable: a black man is president of the United States.   At the celebration I attended in Fort Worth on election night, the crowd was majority-minority and the emotion was palpable.  A new species of patriotism was in the air.

Of course, almost half of America (and a majority of white folks) didn’t vote for the black candidate.  Most McCain supporters are willing to give Obama a reasonable chance.  In fact, Republican reaction to the work of the Democratic transition team has generally been positive.  In a crisis, fear trumps ideology. 

But there are places where Obama’s election is deeply resented.  How many white voters, for instance, supported the Democratic candidate in Jonesboro, Arkansas?  I’m not sure.  But the report below raises a troubling question: did race and ideology influence the behavior of white police officers responding to an exuberant election-night celebration by black college students?   Did a display of black pride hook a crude manifestation of white power?

David Koon’s “A Night from hell” appears in the most recent edition of the Arkansas Times, a left-of-center publication that occupies a similar place in the journalistic landscape as the Texas Observer (the paper that, at the invitation of Friends of Justice. broke the Tulia story eight years ago). 

Much depends on the decisions the prosecutor handling these cases makes in the next few days.  Will the defendants be charged as felons?  Will this  story devolve into a swearing match between white police officers who say they were assaulted by an angry mob and black students insisting they were harassed by belligerent police officers? 

If so, how do we adjudicate the conflict? 

All we know at present appears below, but I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this story

‘A night from hell’

Students: Police overly aggressive during Jonesboro ‘riot.’
David Koon
Updated: 12/4/2008