Wednesday, October 17, 2007

What hath Bubba wrought?!?

More and more, it looks like when three little redneck bigots in Jena, La., hung nooses from their high school's "white tree," what they really did was light a long fuse.

That fuse, thus far, has led to and set off various small racial bombs. And the fuse yet burns. We know not where the last bomb lay, nor do we know its size.

YESTERDAY'S U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Jena Six, however, gives us some clues.
The Politico reports:

The House Judiciary Committee hearing would have drawn a packed audience regardless — a crowd that is, by Capitol Hill standards, remarkably diverse — because the topic involves the Jena Six, a half-dozen African-American kids whose moniker has become the rallying cry of a resurgent civil rights movement.

(snip)

The room has a tense and excited feel to it. Two representatives of the Justice Department, Donald Washington, a U.S. attorney from the Western District of Louisiana, and Lisa Krigsten, representing the civil rights division, must defend the department for its decision not to press hate crime charges against teenage noose hangers in Jena, La., and for not doing enough to intervene in a racially disparate prosecution. Washington, an African-American, will draw the most heat from the committee.

“I’m sure we’re all familiar with the alleged facts,” says Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), though he and several Democrats enumerate them anyway:

On Aug. 31, 2006, “all Hades broke loose,” as Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) puts it. Three nooses were hung from what was known as the “white tree” at Jena High School after a black student requested the principal’s permission to sit under it. No charges were filed, and the culpable students, initially expelled, had their punishment reduced to a suspension and family counseling.

Tensions rose, and white District Attorney Reed Walters — who doubled as the school’s attorney — reportedly told students to cool it or he would “erase their lives with the stroke of a pen.”

Later that fall, one of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey Jr., had a gun pulled on him by a white student. Bailey wrestled the gun from him and was charged with stealing it; the white student was charged with nothing. Tensions rose further and white students were “calling folks niggers out in the school yard,” says Johnson.

Then in December, six black students beat up a white kid, Justin Barker. “There was a small degree of physical injury to the white student who attended a party,” says Johnson. The six were charged with attempted murder, and the story went national 10 months later when Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. got involved.

(snip)

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) also stands up for Barker and says that the beating is more significant than the hanging of the noose. Although, he concedes, “I know I come from a part of the country where there’s less sensitivity to that.”

“We see things different,” agrees Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). She goes on to point out that while Democrats are talking about racial injustice, GOP members are “talking about single-parent families.”

By 11 a.m., the man most likely to do some disagreeing still isn’t here, and that’s just fine with Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.). “If I were compiling a group of witnesses” with the goal of racial harmony, he says, “I don’t know if Mr. Sharpton would make the cut.”

“He may be here shortly,” warns Conyers.

“He may be looking for me,” worries Coble. Indeed, a few moments later, chatter fills the courtroom as Sharpton makes his way to his center chair and cameras flash.

Conyers recognizes Sharpton, who apologizes, claiming his flight from New York was delayed two hours. Sharpton draws press attention, but he also draws scrutiny: During recess, a Washington Post reporter goes online to fact-check flight departure and arrival times.

Sharpton, though, for all his star power, ends up a minor player in the hearing, overshadowed by the emotion filling the room. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) betrays some of the sensitivity King referred to as she questions the Justice Department witnesses.

“I am almost in tears. Mychal Bell is now in jail. ... The tragedy of this case is that it called out for federal intervention for the protection of children,” she says. “Shame on you.”

Krigsten struggles to maintain a half-smile as Jackson Lee grows louder, directing her anger now at Washington, who she pointedly notes is the first black western district attorney. “I’m asking you to find a way to release Mychal Bell and the Jena Six,” Jackson Lee cries. “What are you doing now?!”

The room erupts in applause and shouts. At Washington’s answer — that he did what he could — the crowd hisses as Conyers tries to regain control.

The next to pile onto Washington is Waters, who adds that she is disappointed that the district attorney, who was invited to the hearing, chose not to show. The crowd breaks out in repeated shouts of “Subpoena!”

“You do have the power of the subpoena,” Waters reminds Conyers, reigniting the crowd: “Use it! Use it! Subpoena!” Conyers sits through the outburst but makes no indication of whether he will subpoena Walters.

THE CONGRESSMAN FROM IOWA, Steve King, is from just across the river from here. He is somewhere to the right of . . . well, probably everybody not already in some Idaho enclave. And, like many Midwesterners, he is clueless about race in America.

Where and when I grew up -- in the Deep South, in the '60s and '70s -- white people often were malicious about race. Here of most white Midwesterners like King just don't get it and, in the absence of a tradition of de jure segregation, are nevertheless still happy with de facto segregation.

And unless they are hit in the face -- over and over again -- with the rank inequity of how white malefactors in Jena got a wink and a wrist slap while black ones are looking at hard time in the state pen, they probably aren't going to get it.

The passions unleashed by the sins of Jena, however, make "not getting it" an exceedingly perilous proposition across a nation not nearly so well-off, tolerant, fair-minded and progressive as it thinks.


UPDATE: And there's this, in New York.

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