Thursday, July 5, 2007

Of Southern Trees & Their Fruits: Follow-Up

If you be's black in Jena, LA, you best bettah keep thet broad, flat nose clean, knee-grow!

Last week I posted on the racially charged situation in Jena, Louisiana, an 85% White/cracker-asshole community (3000 whites, 350 blacks) up in the piney woods around Alexandria, where black students who questioned the propriety of there being a "WHITES-ONLY" shade tree on campus, were met the next school day with nooses hung in the tree by white students protecting their racial privilege. Three white students were suspended for three days for this egregious act of racial terror.

Resentment apparently festered. In December, one of the three was met by several of the black students whom they'd sought to terrorize and who, understandably, took exception to the threats and beat the shit outta the cowardly little racist shit: kicked his in-bred, red-neck, racist ass into the middle of the next semester.

On the weekend there came the news that a black youth, who was one of six charged with replying physically to racist taunts of White racist rat-fucker students and kicking a little racist ass, was convicted of assault (sentencing set for July 31) by (soo-prahs, soo-prahs) an all-white jury, before a white judge, after prosecutors lowered the charges from attempted murder. Said a friend of the convicted teen's family:"The best thing, if you're black in this town, is to stay out of the system, because once they get you, you're done for. You're not getting out." Blacks constitute only just over 10% of the population of LaSalle Parish, where Jena is situated, making the seating of black jurors improbable at best.

I bet ya never imagined that could still happen in color-blind (the SCROTUS sez so) Murka, now didja?
A longer account of the situation, the circumstances, and the probable outcomes is presented by MSNBC here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Having read the link, the evidence against Bell specifically at the trial does sound flimsy.

But I'm not okay with a bunch of kids jumping another kid -- or bunch of kids -- for any reason.

If it had been white on black, I would have wanted charges.

I wish the kids had responded by sitting under the goddam tree and refusing to be moved.

And I'd like to think a few white kids and adults might have supported them.