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Lessons from Jena, La.
By JASON WHITLOCK
Sep. 20, 2007
Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School
football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his
role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.
Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion
to and desire to see justice for the "Jena Six," the half-dozen black
students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.
Jesse Jackson compared Thursday's rallies in Jena to the protests and
marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s.
Al
Sharpton claimed Thursday's peaceful demonstrations were to highlight
racial
inequities in the criminal justice system.
Jesse and Al, as they're prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on
a
mountain of lies.
There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal
justice
system, and from afar the "Jena Six" rallies certainly looked and felt
like
the righteous protests of the 1960s.
But the reality is Thursday's protests are just another sign that we
remain
deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true
American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.
The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he'd thrown away a
Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as
heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally
landed him in jail.
Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism
because
he didn't show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the
court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.
Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?
That's the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country
on Thursday. But it wasn't asked because everyone has been lied to about
what really transpired in the small southern town.
There was no "schoolyard fight" as a result of nooses being hung on a
whites-only tree.
Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked
unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained
no
life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours
after the attack.
A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the "Jena Six" case
and
concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the
noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus
incidents were tied to Barker's assault by people wanting to gain sympathy
for the "Jena Six" in reaction to Walters' extreme charges of attempted
murder.
Much has been written about Bell's trial, the six-person all-white jury
that
convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated
battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and
offered
no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the
jury summonses and that Bell's public defender was black.
It's almost never mentioned that Bell's absentee father returned from
Dallas
and re-entered his son's life only after Bell faced attempted-murder
charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell's father and a parade of local
ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was
released
from prison.
Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?
It's rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when
he
was accused of participating in Barker's attack. And it's never mentioned
that white people in the "racist" town of Jena provided Bell support and
protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell's father and all
the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.
You won't hear about any of that because it doesn't fit the picture we
want
to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.
We don't practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before
he
was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The
best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn't fall
victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son's life on a
daily basis.
That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of
that message would short-circuit more potential "Jena Six" cases than
attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.
And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should've
been
expelled. A few years after I'd graduated, a similar incident happened at
my
high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He
was expelled.
The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the
kids for three days.
But the kids responsible for Barker's beating deserve to be punished. The
prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as
black
folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get
energized to help our young people once they're in harm's way.
I've been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas
City
for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours
a
week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis.
It's a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we're lucky
if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.
You don't want to see any more "Jena Six" cases? Love Mychal Bell before
he
violently breaks the law.
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/columnists/jason_whitlock/story/284511.html#recent_comm
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