The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101762 Message #2060545
Posted By: Azizi
25-May-07 - 07:15 AM
Thread Name: BS: Does Being Dark Matter?
Subject: RE: BS: Does Being Dark Matter?
It appears that "the Jena 6" have beome "the Jena 3", See this article for background:
Tom Mangold in Jena, Louisiana Sunday May 20, 2007 The Observer
Racism goes on trial again in America's Deep South
"The prosecution of three black Louisiana youths reveals the rise of discrimination by stealth
In the cool and beflagged small courtroom in Jena, Louisiana, three black schoolboys - Robert Bailey, Theodore Shaw and Mychal Bell - are about to go on trial for a playground fight that could see them jailed for between 30 and 50 years.
Jena, about 220 miles north of New Orleans, is a small town of 3,000 people, 85 per cent of whom are white. Tomorrow it will be the focus for a race trial which could put it on the map alongside the bad old names of the Mississippi Burning Sixties such as Selma or Montgomery, Alabama.
Jena is gaining national notoriety as an example of the new 'stealth' racism, showing how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America's Deep South, even in the year that a black man, Barak Obama, is a serious candidate for the White House.
It began in Jena's high school last August when Kenneth Purvis asked the headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during breaks. The boy was told that he and his friends could sit where they liked.
The following morning white students had hung three nooses there. 'Bad taste, silly, but just a prank,' was the response of most of Jena's whites.
'To us those nooses meant the KKK [Ku Klux Klan]...
The three white perpetrators of what was seen as a race hate crime were given 'in-school' suspensions (sent to another school for a few days before returning)...
On 30 November, someone tried to burn Jena High to the ground. The crime remains unsolved. That same weekend race fights between teenagers broke out downtown, and on 4 December racial tension boiled over once more in the school. A white student, Justin Barker, was attacked, allegedly by six black students.
The expected charges of assault and battery were not laid, and the six were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. They now face a lifetime in jail...
Bail for the impoverished students was set absurdly high, and most have been held in custody. The town's mind seems to be made up.
But now the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union - 'damned outsiders' - have become involved and have begun to recruit, enthuse and empower the local black population. Reporters from the BBC and the New York Times have been drawn to the story..."