Views > October 16, 2007

Jena and the Post-Civil Rights Fallacy

Around the country, black males face a criminal justice system that incarcerates them more than eight times the rate of whites

By Salim Muwakkil

Well, it appears that the post-civil rights era is old news. Put another way, the post is past.

This truth was revealed most recently in the huge protest surrounding the case of the Jena Six, in which six black high school students were victims of double-standard justice. Tales of their disparate treatment attracted at least 25,000 people from across the country on Sept. 20 to the tiny town of Jena, La., and prompted many activists to announce the emergence of a new civil rights movement.

The large, mutigenerational crowd was drawn by a convergence of factors, many of which were particular to the Jena Six case. Among them, the presence of three rope nooses (an incendiary symbol of racist violence), evidence of racial disparities in punishments for a school fight, and a powerful pro-Jena Six campaign pushed by black bloggers, black radio hosts and the black press.

But the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of the protest’s many organizers, discerned the real impetus for this unprecedented gathering. “Jena,” he said, “is just a DNA sample of what’s happening around the country.”

Indeed. Around the country, black males face a criminal justice system that incarcerates them more than eight times the rate of whites. Most of America’s penal institutions are festering holding pens for black and Latino youth. Moreover, the communities from which these youth are siphoned suffer from the absence of their potential contributions.

Anguish about this seemingly interminable social gridlock is the probable cause for the big protest in little Jena.

Jackson not only unearthed the nugget of the Jena protest, the former presidential candidate also inserted that wisdom into the presidential race. During a speech at historically black Benedict College in South Carolina, Jackson chastised Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for “acting like a white candidate” in his tepid response to the case in Jena.

Although Jackson later softened his comments and reaffirmed his solid support for Obama, he put pressure on the candidate to speak more forcefully on the issue of biased prosecution. Besides, Jackson’s more subtle point is that “post-racial” black candidacies are difficult, at best, until this society redresses its racist legacy.

Meanwhile, the media has been awash in assessments of a new cohort of black leadership. These neophytes are generally described as well-educated (often Ivy Leaguers), non-ideological coalition builders—in that they were not nurtured in the race-tinged battleground of the civil rights movement.

The star players in this coterie are Obama, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford, Alabama Rep. Artur Davis, Philadelphia mayoral candidate Michael Nutter and a few others.

These attractive newcomers are being cast as the harbingers of a new America, a nation untroubled by the ogre of rank racism. Race-focused leadership, like that expressed by the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jackson, are to be relegated to another era, a 20th century paradigm.

These ideas are part of a hardening notion that the protest mode is an ineffective way to redress the racial problems of the 21st century. Increasing numbers of commentators are stressing the need for African Americans to place more focus on internal social and moral reform than on external protests for civil rights. This is hardly a new debate. In fact, it was the core disagreement between W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Jena protest revealed that the currency of civil rights remains high in the black community in 2007. And although the protest was remarkably decentralized, many of the young organizers eagerly sought the expertise of the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton and welcomed their participation.

Black America is under assault by a biased criminal justice system, and the Jena protest was a spasm of its collective consciousness. This system, correctly labeled “the prison-industrial complex,” is the primary site of racial oppression today, and one of its most corrosive aspects is what many activists call the “school-to-jail pipeline.”

The Jena Six case revealed that pipeline in all its perverse glory: white students’ punishment for hanging nooses remained within the context of school discipline, while the black students’ cases were exported to the criminal justice system. Protesting this disparity is exactly the role of the civil rights community.

Obama is a black politician seeking national consensus. If he responded to every expression of racial bias, he would alienate his supporters who believe we live in post-civil rights America. However, some African Americans are uncomfortable that Obama’s prospects for success are enhanced by a state of racial denial.

• subscribe to print magazine

  First Name Last Name Home Address City State Zip Code Email

  2-year, 24-issues, $44.95 1-year, 12-issue, $24.95

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  Mr. Muwakkil, I agree,” “the prison-industrial complex,” is the primary site of racial oppression today”, and it underpins rual economies all over the country by providing decent paying jobs with benefits to mostly white prison employees and provide a tax base for the counties the prisons are located in.  Without these Black lives lanquishing in prisons many rual communities would be abandoned waste land ghost towns.  Equally disturbing is the “urban” contribution to the “school-to-jail pipeline.” where educated, unionized, middle class teachers, principals and school board employees, city, state and federal officials (many of whom are Black) and the legal profession fraternity go along with the “preparation” of poor Black and Hispanic kids for life as almost invisible exploited captives in America’s economic backwater underbelly.

  Posted by theloneous on Oct 16, 2007 at 10:40 AM

  No dispute from me that the prison system is a striking social ill, more likely to create a permanent criminal underclass than to inhibit the likelihood of more crime. Also no dispute from me that non-whites get treated rougher and are arrested more on average than whites, and get longer sentences, and are assumed to be crooks with greater frequency. All that is real, indisputable I think.

  However, it doesn’t matter race a real criminal is, I mean a real one, most especially a violent criminal. What’s the difference? The only question that really counts is, did he or she do the crime? Not what the emotional provocation was. Not why they felt the fury that made them decide to hurt someone. Just, did they. Apart from self-defense, that’s all that counts. Or, it should be.

  I wish more people cared about that, the individual responsibility everyone bears for their actions, rather than about the extenuating circumstances. One being the race of the victim or the accused.

  This is happening because racism is something not enough Americans intend to really outgrow, regardless of the colors of the skins they themselves wear. They apparently imagine it to be a permanent aspect of American life, or even human nature, which is nonsense.

  (rant continues)

  Posted by Kuya on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:11 AM

  (continuation of rant)

  As I complained on the thread linked to the article about the mother of the accused Purvis, why don’t the facts of the case, specifically the 6-on-1 nature of the assault, the severity of the victims injuries, etc, get more attention?

  Presuming the 6 didn’t do it, truly had nothing to do with an event of shocking violence, why were they charged? Unless of course, they were charged because they’re black. Racism.

  But if they did do it, jumping a guy and beating him so bad he needs a hospital bed, why all the indignation that they were charged? Racism.

  Some of my questions are:

  * Was the victim of the attack one of those who put the nooses in the tree? (even if he was, does he need to be beat down by 6 guys? but if he wasn’t, if he was just a white boy who served as a symbolic target of the assailants’ anger, again...racism)

  * Were the 6 accused all positively identified, and by whom? (if there’s no substantive evidence they did it and they were targeted because of their skins… racism again. if there truly is substantive evidence but people think it should be overlooked because of their skins… once again)

  * What drove the decision to file criminal charges, in terms of the ferocity of the attack and the injuries sustained by the victim, any disciplinary history the accused 6 may have had or not had, precedents based upon other acts of school violence in the past, before the nooses/6-against-1 incidents, established school policies to cope with fights (especially if multiple assailants jumped one victim) etc?

  For example, if past several-on-one fights of similar violence didn’t result in criminal charges, or if a another, earlier victim was also beat to a bloody pulp and the response by the school was relatively mild, then there really is a case that the race of the accused 6 was the salient factor in the charges. But, if comparable events in the past were responded to with similar severity, then there isn’t such a case.

  I also have another question which no one can answer except speculatively, but it occurs to me because of the “seemingly interminable social gridlock” (to say the least!) America is stuck in because of its rampant, obsessive fixation upon all things racial. The question is, how would this incident have been spun, and how would the different “racial” “communities"…

  (to employ generalizations that reveal themselves more and more to be less and less realistic or edifying to society)

  ...how would it have played out if the victim had been black and the accused assailants white?

  I submit that to the extent that skin color continues to be a filter between an individual’s actions and the responsibility he or she bears for those actions in the public perception and before the law, America remains a society sick and polluted with racism, to its continued shame and to the negation of its claim to be a society where equal justice under law is the guiding ethic. This applies whether the accused gets away with it or not, and whether the protesting masses favor them or not. Whether their skins are dark or pale, damn it.

  Posted by Kuya on Oct 18, 2007 at 2:12 AM

  It would seem that the Jena 6 case is perhaps not quite what it’s been made out to be by all our intrepid, dogged and deep-digging journalists.

  Salim, call your office.

  Posted by Natalie on Oct 25, 2007 at 1:43 AM

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Member Login

Also by Salim Muwakkil

• Chicago’s Olympic Dreams Undeserved
  
• Israel’s Openly Secret Nukes
  
• The Vendetta Against Black Men
  
• A Speech Even Condi Could Love
  
• The Man or the Movement
  
• How Black is Obama?