jena6

To be fair, the case sounds like a porn name. I've no idea what the fascination with this is nationally except that it does spur up the old race arguments. Big Al is going about trying to start a new civil rights movement. The problem being that no sane person believes Big Al is a qualified person to lead said movement. In fact, I'm not convinced anyone who's gone about being a vocal 'advocate' for minorities is. Here's the problems as I've seen them. Keeping in mind that I'm white and, according to the race advocates, have no idea what I'm talking about.

1) Socioeconomic gap. There is substantive evidence that this socioeconomic issue is subject to what in sports psychology is referred to as the "culture of losing". A society that is molded with negative self-images, very few positive role models in the form of educated professionals, and very few positive outlets in the form of gainful employment and decent education is bound to have problems.
How we close this gap means changing a variety of cultures that have set in over years of previous social initiatives designed, well mostly designed to curry votes. Very few real changes have been made since the Civil Rights Act. Affirmative action for example has done very little to offer advancement to the people it was intended to target, namely the underclass of minorities. In fact that underclass has in many places grown. Yet people scream bloody murder when programs that are intended to be more racially balanced and directly attack the root problem of poverty in general are announced. It is true there is a gap at the very top still of executives or policy makers in our society. But somewhere in between people are doing quite well economically, putting their children into what they hope are better schools and living what is now derisively considered "the American dream". I make no light of the racial discrimination people experience; it is indeed difficult scrutiny to be prejudged on every instance of our daily encounters, but these hateful feelings are secondary right now to the symptoms that often perpetuate them. Dr. King's assassination came after speaking with a union in Memphis. It was not strictly speaking a race matter, even as he saw it. It was an American matter, the problems of the poor huddled masses that we took from around the world. There is perhaps a greater threat to the overall health of the nation in the form of economic uncertainty (people living paycheck to paycheck), but in dealing with race, the boundaries of statistical evidence pile up economic inequalities. The root problems of economic inequality are a mess that has shown signs of correction, for example black women are a more mobile and active workforce. To further tackle it, there are a good deal of matters which need to be attended to in a more cultural sense. Stereotypically, people who do not read or write in English or can't pass a drug test don't get very good jobs in my estimation (though Spanish is becoming increasingly useful, I suppose there are kickbacks to the immigration issue). It would be well if we broke the stereotype, but it would also be well if it was not given fuel to allow itself to burn on. There are a number of potential causes for those concerns, some of which relate to the charges occasionally levied against Sen Obama, as an example. ---

2) "That he's not sufficiently black." Whatever this means. It smacks of some sort of hypocrisy. I don't understand what is demeaning about having a particular racial heritage if someone wishes to be successful in the first place, but this was never something I've experienced personally. I really don't see where acting or speaking in an 'overly articulate' manner (read: being openly white) is somehow causing a disconnect in that person towards their past; they still look in the mirror and see the same person. Nor do I see a reason for a nostalgic re-living of growing up in projects or otherwise run-down housing with excessive crime rates and a pervasive attitude of 'don't snitch'. I understand completely why so many people would want to escape such situations and why they will tend to leave them behind. More can be done to improve them, yes. And yes, there used to be more of a spotlight on them, even as recently as the mid-90s (post Rodney King riots) through more socially concerned lyrics for example. Hip-hop itself has left behind a message of suffering and indifference that America felt (and in many places still feels) for its inner-city (and rural) 'communities' and instead bombards us with glittering images of self-importance. It is self-indulgent of us to believe that surrounding ourselves with images of fame and success makes us better people when we have real and honest problems in need of discourse in any forum possible. The growing discontent Americans have with all manner of problems includes very real and very deeply embedded scars from racism. Ignoring them won't make them go away any faster.

3) But making them up when they don't exist doesn't help us either. Lacking a good deal of unbiased information on the actual case at hand, I can't be the judge myself. There are very likely racial overtones to the case. It seems fair to surmise that in a population of mostly unemployed white people, who can still elect their attorneys, that they will seek harsh penalties towards virtually any minority as penance for the impoverished state they themselves have found. There are very real connections with racist practices in the demonstration that placed a lynching noose on a tree. Those students were to be (and should have been) punished more harshly. Despite claims of naivety, it can hardly be supposed that a noose being posed as a 'harmless prank' was not. I can think of very few reasons where someone would hang a noose from a tree as a prank and believe it to be both funny and without any racial reference. Whatever the insane motivations of both the students who committed the act of racial indifference and the school board which swallowed their bizarre admissions of racial ignorance (in Louisiana?), to compare the two crimes as though they are equal in stature is equally stupid. One is a beating, a violent assault upon fellow man. The other is a threat, veiled as a prank (like the bomb threats students call in, there are often more serious overtones in the people who make them). Both are serious offences to the stability of a community. Both should have been dealt with to the level appropriate to the crimes, circumstances, and the people involved. That our justice system fails to do so has much to do with race, but more importantly has much to do with how our justice system in general fails to satisfy the society around it. I don't believe that people who commit beatings deserve the same treatment by our penal system as juvenile racists. And I don't believe that people who use the collective memory of public lynchings to make a 'joke' are being funny. Our system is not designed to deal with both very effectively. And to introduce race into it, it becomes very, very muddled indeed. It is well to highlight the well-publicized demographics of our prison systems. But it would also do well to highlight the indifference our society has garnered and built upon itself. That we still permit children to grow up with hatred and intolerance in their actions and that we still play race cards when some of those children strike violently is not a 21st century civil rights movement. It is however a cause for grave concern. That we would rather be entertained by the "mutterings of a few black men shouting incoherent nonsense" (as one of those same black men ironically quips in a movie about this specific issue) than face the twin specters that poverty and a inbred heritage of racial intolerance has born into this new age is to me a more daunting factor than anything else in this case.