Just Curious

Why did the story that African-American protesters surrounded the Justice Department on Friday to get them to increase their prosecution of hate crimes get more attention in the media? I caught some of the speeches on C-SPAN and they were stirring, particuarly Al Sharpton, who called the dodge that states must handle issues of this nature "a return to state's rights" and the issues over which the Civil War was fought. The scene at the DoJ was dramatic. Yet, very little beyond a blurb here or there.

I'm trying to figure out if this is because of a bias against African-American issues in the traditional media, or that protests as a whole don't work anymore because they don't focus attention. Both of those are undercut by the extensive coverage of the march on Jena, Louisiana, of which this protest was a kind of sequel.

Freed: The Jena Six

Mychal Bell is out on bail, the way most juveniles accused of aggravated second-degree battery would be, I gather. And he won't be tried as an adult, either. I do wonder if he will be tried as a black devil, however.

GIBSON: So, this is -- what they're worried about is a mirage of 1950s-style American segregation, racism from the South. They wanna fight the white devil. I -- you know, there's no -- you can't go fight the black devil. Black devils stalking their streets every night gunning down their own people -- can't go fight that. That would be snitchin'.

Apparently, racism is over. Hm. Tell that to the white supremacists converging on Jena right now.

First came the word that a neo-Nazi Web site was under investigation by the FBI for purportedly publishing the home addresses of the six young black men involved in the case.

Now there's this report from Abbey Brown at the Clarion-Ledger about how they're exploiting the whites involved with the case too:

The beating victim in the “Jena Six” case has given an interview to a group that has been labeled as white supremacist, but his parents now say they feel duped.

Richard Barrett, who described himself to a reporter as “pro-majority,” said he spent Wednesday evening with Justin Barker and his family. Barrett said his goal was to publicize Barker’s side of the story.

Barker, who is white, was beaten last December at Jena High School, allegedly by six black teens. The charges filed in the case, including attempted murder and conspiracy, drew international attention and sparked a protest Thursday in Louisiana by tens of thousands of people from across the country who said the six teens were being persecuted because of their race.

“People need to realize what is going on, speak up and speak their mind,” Barker told Barrett, editor of a publication called Nationalist.

“I’ve got to work every day,” Barker said, “while the attackers sit there on a couch, or sit on some bench with sleeping-pants on. Something needs to be done.

Yeah, it's over all right...

What Digby Said

(Bob) Herbert reminds us about the Southern Strategy -- and famed GOP strategist Lee Atwater's candid admission: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

But what is unusual this time out is that the Republicans are getting more overt rather than less for the first time in 40 years. In recent campaigns the Southern Strategy had developed into a sophisticated code, even more obscure than Atwater's examples, where they would support "Southern heritage" symbols like the confederate flag and run on "law and order" but at the same time make a great show of "outreach" and inclusion to the public at large. This has been the pattern for some years now, perfected by the current president in his "compassionate conservative" campaign in 2000. But as Rick Perlstein points out here, they aren't even doing that anymore.

It actually isn't surprising. If you listen to right-wing talk radio these days you will hear more outright racist rhetoric than I can remember in the last 25 years. The Internet is even worse. Blacks, "illegal aliens," Muslims -- all day long you hear an endless litany of complaints about these illegitimate people who are allegedly trying to ruin the American way of life through whining and scheming, stealing jobs and trying to kill us all in our beds. The other day, even General John Abizaid's statement that the world could live with a nuclear Iran was greeted on rightwing forums with a spew of insults about his "Arab" ancestry.

The racist beast is clamoring to be set free.

That is the through-line connecting the immigration fight, Bill O'Reilly's surprise that black people eat like human beings, Jena, Ahmadinejad's visit and the imperial project in the Middle East. One party is less likely to cloak their racism anymore.

Say, you can MEET Digby tonight, and help us raise money for the Calitics ActBlue list, head down to our end of Q3 blograiser tonight in Santa Monica, in association with Drinking Liberally.

Featuring also Ron Shepston and Russ Warner, two great antiwar congressional candidates, LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, members of Iraq Veterans for Progress, and more.

No Bail For Bell

One of the Jena Six teens, Mychal Bell, was denied release today, despite his conviction being tossed out of court because he was illegally tried as an adult. Apparently, being black in Louisiana means you don't get released when charged with being in a fight. Aren't there like 1,000 bar fights a weekend in this country? Are all of those people locked up?

Jena, The Day After

The NYT story claims 10,000 but other accounts have up to 50,000 Americans marching in central Louisiana yesterday to condemn unequal justice and to support civil rights. It was certainly an evocative moment that captured simmering frustrations in the black community with the persistent theme of "racism is over, it's not an issue anymore."

“That’s not prosecution, that’s persecution,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the founder of the RainbowPUSH Coalition and an organizer of the demonstration, told a crowd in front of the LaSalle Parish Courthouse. “We will not stop marching until justice runs down like waters.”

And while President Bush reported being "saddened" by the events in Jena (I wonder why), Grandpa Freddie Thompson, as if to prove how far we still need to go with race relations in this country, does not recall.

Asked about the Jena Six case today on his way into a San Antonio fundraiser, Thompson said, "I don't know anything about it."

The fact that only yesterday did this start getting broadcast news coverage is both a testament to the power of activism and and an indictment to the Freedie Thompson-like ignorance of broadcast news. Here's a month-old story from Newsweek with plenty of astonishing details.

Decades of suppressed racial hostility spilled forth at the appearance of those swaying nooses. Word spread quickly that day; before long, scores of black students congregated under the tree. "As black students, we didn't call it a protest," says Robert Bailey Jr., one of the Jena Six. "We just called it standing up for ourselves." School officials convened an assembly in early September, where local District Attorney Reed Walters appeared, flanked by police officers. "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy," he told students, warning them to settle down. "With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear." A visit to the school, along with the fact that the three white boys who admitted to hanging the nooses were only dealt a few days' suspension, further inflamed the African-American community. "It felt like they were saying, 'We can do what we want to those n-----s'," says Marcus Jones, Bell's father.

Things reached a boil later in the semester. During the Thanksgiving holiday, someone set fire to the school, reducing the main academic wing to rubble (no one has been arrested, and though a link between what was ruled an arson and the racial discord hasn't been proved, many suspect there is one). The following day, Bailey was punched and beaten with beer bottles when he tried to enter a mostly white party in town. The white kid who threw the first punch was later charged with simple battery and given probation. The next day, Bailey ran into a young white man who was at the party. Bailey and parents of the Jena Six say that when the man pulled a gun on him, he tangled with him and stripped it away. He was later charged with theft of a firearm.

The tension culminated back at school the following Monday. Justin Barker, a white student who says he is friends with the kids who hung the nooses, reportedly taunted Bailey at lunch (Barker denies this). A while later, an African-American student allegedly punched Barker from behind, knocking him unconscious. Then, say white witnesses, a group of black students that included Bailey continued to assault Barker, kicking and stomping on him. (Jena High student Justin Purvis and other black witnesses dispute this.) Barker, who was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital, was released later that day, apparently in strong enough shape to attend a class-ring ceremony that evening.

We know the rest. The white boys got suspended, the black boys got charged with attempted murder.

Yesterday in Alexandria, Louisiana, a driver hung nooses from his truck and drove through an area where protesters were gathering to drive to Jena. The ugliness of this country is coming to the fore during this unfortunate incident. Good. It needs to be out in the open so we can deal with it, instead of tucked away somewhere.

UPDATE: What an a-hole:

O"REILLY: You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.

And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin [...]

O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."

WILLIAMS: Please --

O'REILLY: You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.

Black people don't shoot each other while eating!!!!

The Jena Six And Race In America

I have been remiss in writing about the Jena Six, and with today's expected protest it seems like a good news peg to do so. The story is a keen reminder that we're not yet the society we believe ourselves to be; that the ugliness of racism still permeates too many elements of our lives.

The outlines of the story are this: last year a black student in Jena, Louisiana sat under a tree "traditionally reserved for whites" at a public high school (That alone should tell you everything you need to know). The next day, white students hung a noose over the tree, evoking the sad legacy of lynching. Three white students were suspended for a couple days. Later that year, six black students beat up a white schoolmate outside the gym. The white kid left the hospital immediately and hung out at a class ring ceremony that night. The black kids were charged with attempted murder.

Although the charges were eventually reduced, and even the one conviction on battery made thus far was tossed out, the story highlighted the issue of equal justice and the continuing treatment of blacks in the South. Today's march will shine a spotlight on this persistent problem.

Today, thousands of protesters from across the country are expected to march through Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh), dwarfing its population of about 3,000. Not even the organizers know how many people to expect, but some say it could become a major civil rights march.

"Again, we come to the South to raise new hope, not to condemn," Sharpton told reporters outside the courthouse. "This is not a march against Jena."

Yet with predictions ranging from 1,000 to 60,000 protesters, many locals are apprehensive. The march has been publicized on talk radio and Internet blogs.

Jena High School and LaSalle Parish Library will close for the day. Most local business owners planned to close their stores too. Activists, they noted, vowed they would not spend money in Jena.

There's more context here. You can add in the other sickening hate crime, where 6 white West Virginians kidnapped a young black woman and repeatedly raped and tortured her for weeks, while one of them said "that's what we do to niggers around here."

We have a long way to go before we reach the goal of a truly color-blind society. And awareness is the first big step.