Anyone able to figure out the Jena 6 BS

[Skull]

As far as I can tell 6 black guys beat up a white guy. One of the black guys was under 18 ...prosecuted as an adult found guilty and then got his sentence kicked out ...then somehow some black kid wanted to sit under a tree frequented by white kids ...white kids hung a few nooses from the tree and the DA did nothing about it . What the heck do the two stories have to do with each other. Seems the black guys beat the white guy sometime last year, while the noose stunt was played this year. How the heck does that make the 6 black guys not guilty? .... is it just me or am I missing a big part of this picture.

Could someone fill in the rest of this story cause I for one am not getting the connection.

 

[dsteding]

I saw a bunch of people protesting downtown in Seattle tonight about this. Have no idea what is up, but it got me curious.

 

[robway034]

YouTube - The Jena Six

The real sad thing about all this crap is that no one seems to think "how damn dumb is it that this kind of crap still goes on in America" And I by crap, I mean that anyone gives a ratz *** about race, color, nationality...etc... Especially while we are in the middle of a war to protect our FREEDOM.... or so GW and the republicans claim.

 

[Charlie99]

A mental exercise I often apply to racially charged cases like this is to mentally swap the races of the various parties involved and imagine what the response would have been in that case.

In this case, if the races were exchanged, I suspect the Jena 6 would already have been charged under the federal hate crime statutes, or at the very least, that would have been the demand in yesterday's march.

 

[herman]

Duke lacorsse....need I say more.

 

[TwoBitTxn]

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Jena 6

You need to understand the timeline first.


TwoBit

 

[jscott099]

The noose hangers were caught and punished by the school. At the time the DA found no law by which he could prosecute them for hanging the nooses. That doesn't seem to sit well with some folks though. Poor judgment, tacky, mean...yep. Definitely not WWJD. On the other hand, beating someone, regardless of how minor, is a crime. There is a law by which the DA can, and is required to act. Yet he is chastised for it. I know if I was the victim, I would certainly want the suspects prosecuted. And it should not matter if I deserved to get beat. That's what laws are for.

 

[TwoBitTxn]

The expulsion should have stood up. A 3 day suspension isn't sufficient.

Just my opinion.

 

[drbill]

Thanks for setting the timeline straight. That is how I understood this.

Seems to me the placing of the nuises would be an act of domestic terrorism rather than just a "youthful stunt." A 3-day suspension is like a slap on the wrist. I think a much more dramatic (and, hopefully, "educational" punishment was warranted.

To think that today there are still places where members of one race were excluded from sitting is sad.

 

[stevephilanyc]

It seems to me the charges for a school fight—particularly when the student who got beat up was not an innocent bystander--were very, very severe. In addition, the student who received the beating was discharged by the hospital the same day and was in good enough shape to go to a social activity so his life probably wasn’t threatened. On top of all that, it was an all white jury in the South after nooses were hung and racial slurs were expressed. I understand why the people protesting are upset when the punishment doesn’t come close to fitting the crime. From what I heard on the news is that there have been instances of white kids beating up black kids but the district attorney never got involved in those cases. The charges, in my opinion, are overblown and as Bill noted, the judge allowing an all white jury is just not right.

I am a 50-something year old white guy who went to urban public schools in Philadelphia. At my junior high it was very common for kids to call each other out and fight behind the fire house across the street from the school. If that fighting was a crime and was the standard then many of my classmates (including me) would have been sent to jail instead of learning that fighting doesn’t solve much.

This is just my opinion, but I do understand why people are upset.

Steve