By:
Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.comSo, why did I hesitate to write about the case of the Jena Six?
For two reasons, mainly: One is the case of the West Palm Beach Two, who don’t seem to warrant any attention from black folks. When it comes to mistreating black people, the skin color of the mistreaters makes all the difference with us.
The Jena Six are African-American teenage boys in Louisiana who were charged with attempted murder for what amounted to a schoolyard smackdown. It is, indeed, as black folks have been saying for weeks, a case of the justice system meting out unequal justice.
Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, is the only one who’s been tried so far. His charges were reduced to aggravated battery, and he was found guilty in June. But what else happened in June?
At a predominantly black housing project called Dunbar Village in West Palm Beach, Florida, 10 black teens repeatedly raped a Haitian immigrant woman before forcing her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son. Why doesn’t what happened to the West Palm Beach Two outrage the good reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton just as much as what happened in Jena, Louisiana?
Jesse and Al have been to Jena, railing about injustice. If either has made an appearance in West Palm Beach, Fla., to rail about the injustice of what happened to the West Palm Beach Two, someone please kindly correct me.
It was our silence about what happened to that poor woman and her son that made me hesitate to write about the Jena Six. That, and the body count.
You know which body count I’m talking about. In Baltimore, as of the time I’m writing this, that body count has reached 215. It might top 300 by year’s end. Last year, Philadelphia’s body count was over 400.
Over 400 murdered in Philadelphia in 2006 and 215 in Baltimore this year. And let’s not forget who most of the victims are: Young black men, just like the Jena Six.
The case of the Jena Six has inspired some black folks to let out a war whoop as they sally forth to slay yet another dragon of white racism. But those black folks who think that white racism is the only problem we face in 2007, or even the main one, are deluding themselves.
In fact, our obsession with white racism, and with a criminal justice system that we insist is rife with white racism and institutional racism, may contribute to that body count. Here’s how.
I can’t speak for other cities, but in Baltimore our body count gets so high because jurors in this town repeatedly cut loose young black men accused of violent crimes. In Baltimore -- Bodymore, Murderland, the criminals call it -- the typical homicide victim is a young black man with a criminal record. Homicide suspects have the same profile.
I’ve had people in a position to know tell me that, more frequently than is ever reported, Baltimore jurors have cut loose young black men with lengthy criminal records who have been accused of either murder or another violent crime. It is our insistence that white racism is pervasive and that the criminal justice system is rife with racism that may inspire some jurors to send these young black men back out on the streets, where they commit more murders.
“Baltimore’s circuit courts are a conviction-free zone,” a source who wants to remain anonymous once told me. That’s an exaggeration. There are convictions in Baltimore courts and a hell of a lot of acquittals.
So, yes, we should protest -- and protest vigorously -- whenever cases like that of the Jena Six come along. But our lips should not be sealed shut when a black woman is raped and forced to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.
That body count of young black men murdered should outrage us every bit as much as what’s happened to the Jena Six. A young black man murdering another young black man and then walking out of court scot-free is just as much an injustice as six young black men being railroaded by the Louisiana criminal justice system.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King Jr. once said. And he might have added that injustice doesn’t come only in the color of white.
