Help In These Times raise $10,000 in three weeks! Donate now to support original and incisive journalism!
Help this website survive! Donate to In These Times now!

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… return to article

  • subscribe to print magazine

  • Zoom OutZoom In Reader Comments (4)

    Page 1 of 1 pages

    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.

    United States Posted by theloneous on Oct 16, 2007 at 4:40 PM

    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)

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Oct 18, 2007 at 8:11 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.

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Oct 18, 2007 at 8:12 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.

    United States Posted by Natalie on Oct 25, 2007 at 7:43 AM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

  • register a new account »Posting Security

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

    Retreive lost password »

Article Appeared in this Issue

Full contents
Past issues

Also by Salim Muwakkil
Popular Discussions