Putting Jena On the Map

Last Thursday, 10,000 civil rights activists from across the country rallied in Jena, La. to protest and commemorate events that occurred in and around the local high school. A series of racially-motivated altercations culminated in a cafeteria brawl in December 2006. The victim, a white student who allegedly taunted the black students with racial slurs, was hospitalized but released a few hours later and attended a party that evening. The defendants, six black minors, were arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

They’ve become known as the Jena Six.

Haven’t heard the story before? You’re in good company. The American media has dropped the ball on the story—The New York Times, for example, did not begin cover the case until protests mounted earlier this month. This is a shame. For though we shouldn’t need reminding that the racism that this incident points to still exists in America, the larger concern are the holes that this incident highlights in the way our country administers justice.

Though many of the facts of the situation are still unclear, the final violence in Jena seems to stem from an incident in August 2006 in which white students placed nooses on a schoolyard tree after black students had the audacity to sit under it. The fact that neither the local prosecutor nor the federal district attorney could find statutes that such an dastardly and hate-filled act of intimidation violated points to a major problem with federal and local hate crime statutes.

But in the absence of legal action after the noose-hanging, the situation in Jena escalated. When a white student assaulted one of the defendants, Robert Bailey Jr., with a beer bottle, he was charged with simple battery and given probation. The Jena Six have been charged with aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon, their sneakers. When a white man threatened Bailey with a gun, Bailey was charged with theft of the gun for trying to stop the attack.

Almost a year later, the charges have been reduced to second-degree aggravated battery, still unheard of for a fist-fight where the victim walked out of the hospital hours later. The 16-year-old boys, all without prior criminal records, were tried as adults in front of an all-white judge and jury. Under normal circumstances, the charges and sentence seem unnecessarily harsh. Set against the background of events in Jena, they raise the specter of racism.

Whether the discrimination in the case is apparent or real, it serves to reflect on larger injustices that occur across the nation. The American justice system tends to impison black men at disproportionately high rates. Black people are six times more likely than white people to go to jail. Between 2002 and 2004, black youth constituted 58 percent of minors in adult prison.

There have also been other high profile cases in which discrimination has seemed to play a role. In 2005, Shaquanda Cotton, a 16-year-old girl from Texas, was sentenced to serve up to seven years in prison for pushing a teacher’s aide. In Georgia, Genarlow Wilson, now 21, faces molestation charges from engaging in consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

The case of the Jena Six is full of hearsay and contradictory testimonies, but one thing remains clear: Justice in its truest sense has not been served. All details aside, the charges are indisputably harsh and the prosecution was, at best, tinged with racial bias, and, at worst, pursuing a vindictive agenda against black youths who dared step out of their place.

Cases of disproportionately harsh punishments against black defendants of dubious guilt are, thankfully, gaining increasing national attention. The black community in Jena has harnessed national outrage to sign petitions, write letters, raise awareness, and fundraise for a better defense for the six defendants. Their spirit of indignant activism lends hope that we can put an end to such violent abuses of justice that haunt our country.