The Jena who?

When you turn on the TV nowadays you are bombarded with stories about the Spear’s family, the latest fashion trends, and the scores of the Sunday night NFL game. What about the important and relevant stories? Most of these stories get the spotlight for a brief period of time, typically less than a week, and then they are over shadowed by YouTube videos that Paris Hilton made. A story that is victim to this crime is that of the Jena Six.
You may or may not have heard of them, hopefully you have. They are a group of six black students from the ages of 15 to 17 who have been arrested and some convicted of attempted second-degree murder. I’m sure you’re wondering what heinous crime they committed. They got into a fight with some white students, in which one of the white males got some bruises and a concussion. I know what you’re thinking, “That’s all?” This is a typical response; this is the same one I experienced upon learning about the Jena Six. This fight broke out after three nooses appeared on a tree that a black student had sat under, a tree that was known as being “reserved” to the white students. This incident was the breaking point after a long list of racial issues that the school and town have faced. It took the white jury only two days to come to a decision. I don’t know what is more appalling to me, the fact that racist towns such as Jena, Louisiana still exist, that our government has done nothing to help the situation, or that the news media has become so corrupt by gossip stories that stories like the Jena Six are only briefly mentioned. Or maybe what is most disturbing is that our country is trying to make peace between two countries in the Middle East, and yet we can’t make peace in our own.


http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/10/the_case_of_the_jena_six