Your Daily Dose of Outrage
Pam Spaulding at Pandagon recently posted an entry lamenting the lack of progressive blogging relating to the Jena 6. At first, I wasn’t going to post, since even the almighty Instapundit said outright that it’s hard to make sense of the case; if a luminary like Glenn Reynolds can’t make heads of tails of this, what chance does someone like me have? I gave it the old post-college try, however, and as it turns out, if you’re not a law professor who spends eight hours a day googling cyborg porn, it’s really not hard grasp the basic allegations of the case. Still, here’s the basic outline of the facts, as described by the linked article, in a format that can be understood by even the most brain-addled PowerPoint addict:
- There’s a high school in Louisiana with a “white tree,” where only white kids get to sit. This is apparently some sort of homage to the Constitutional principle of States’ Rights, and isn’t racist at all.
- Some black kids sat under the tree, thus spitting on the Constitution which made this country great.
- Some spirited high jinks occured, most notably when someone hung some nooses on the “white tree” as an innocent prank.
- When the school’s principal found three white students to be responsible for the nooses and recommended their expulsion, the superintendent instead gave them a three-day suspension because “adolescents play pranks.”
- Some black students were apparently dissatisfied with this, and organized a sit-in under the “white tree,” even though none of them were obviously white. This evidently prompted a school assembly at which the white District Attorney characterized the nooses as an “innocent prank” and told the students complaining about it that “I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” By showing his strong support for the principles that make America, great, the D.A. . . Ah, hell, forget it, I can’t keep up the Colbert-style faux-conservative act any longer. The fact that this Boss Hogg motherfucker hasn’t been disbarred is in itself a damning indictment of this country’s legal system.
- Some assorted other things happened, like a school building burning down, a black student getting beaten by white students at what’s described as a “white party” (although I suspect he’d have been less conspicuous if he’d remembered to wear his hood), and some black men being arrested for taking a white guy’s shotgun away from him during a confrontation outside a convenience store. I can only hope this latter event was taped by security cameras, because I’d love to see how that went down.
- This tension apparently culminated in a group of black students beating up a white student who had allegedly been making racial taunts. This sounds pretty similar to the beating referenced above, except that in this case, six black students were arrested for attempted second-degree murder and expelled from school.
Oddly enough, these arrests only seem to have fanned the flames of controversy. One of the students was convicted after a trial at which his public defender apparently neglected to make any jury challenges, offer any evidence, or call any witnesses, justifying these decisions by opining that race was not an issue in the trial. Even if this is true (and if the public defender really believes that race wasn’t an issue, he shouldn’t be allowed to use pointy scissors in case he accidentally hurts himself), lots of lawyers in this country are involved in cases where race isn’t an issue; they don’t use it as an excuse for not doing their jobs.
The Interminable Instapundit links to a post at a blog which describes itself as “the intellectual repository of a Midwestern, gas guzzlin’, beer chuggin’, one woman lovin’, son of a bitch conservative.” There’s no direct link because I’m trying to implement a “no directing traffic to dipshits” policy, and anyone who describes his own blog as an “intellectual repository” in a sentence containing three verbs which end in apostrophes probably qualifies for some sort of dipshittery-oriented prestige class.
This guy asks two questions: 1) is this a protest over the nooses? and 2) if so, why did it take so long for this protest to happen? The answers, so far as I can tell, are 1) yes, and in addition over the minor fact that the coercive power of the state is being used to benefit the white community at the expense of the black community, and 2) it’s been going on for a long time, Corky; see the reference to the sit-in, supra. Still, I can’t get too mad at this guy, because he can’t help the way God made him. Also, dudes like him help lower the expectations people from other regions have of Midwesterners, so when one of us demonstrates basic reading comprehension and reasoning skills, it freaks people out and causes them to treat us with the sort of exaggerated respect which would otherwise be reserved for the bastard lovechild of Learned Hand and Brainiac.
In any case, just to be perfectly clear about my position on this, if the facts that have been presented so far are accurate, and the authorities in the Jena case have consistently cracked down on black students as criminal while dismissing similar acts by white students as youthful pranks, they are engaged in behavior which is both illegal and immoral. The legal system does not exist to oppress minorities for the benefit of the majority, and when it does so, it casts away its legitimacy. When this happens, minorities are left with essentially two choices: accept whatever abuse comes their way, or engage in self-help. Ideally, they can work to reform the system as well, but while this is the most desirable strategy, it’s also a long-term solution, with limited short-term utility. In situations like this one, things can move very quickly; for instance, the events referenced above, from the burning of the school building to the beating of the white student, happened over the course of a single week. That’s simply not enough time to bring any significant political pressure to bear or to implement even minor reforms.
Once the oppressed decide to defend themselves, however, things can escalate quickly. Later on, I might make a post about the ways that abuse of the legal system can destabilize a community, but for now, I’m just going to declare next week to be Set Whitey Straight Week. If you’re a white dude like me, chances are that you hear a disturbing number of comments that can only be construed as racist, however mild or well-intentioned they are. If you think that Jena 6 case is worthy of outrage, I hereby invite you to set Whitey straight: next time someone makes a racist joke, or asks what’s wrong with black America, don’t let it pass unremarked; call them on their racism, and unload with both rhetorical barrels if you feel inclined. Maybe if we don’t let casual racism by individuals go unremarked, we can get people to start questioning the casual racism which our social institutions indulge in.