Jena

I played basketball against Jena Elementary. They weren't very good, but they were better than us. The news says that the town has a little less than 3, 000 people (same as ours) but only 15% African-American population. That seems much smaller than my hometown, and far smaller than their athletics department would have us believe. This is an outrage! This and that other thing going on there. We could have totally kicked their butts had they fielded a team more representative of their town's racial makeup.

Of course, if our team had done the same, I wouldn't have been on it at all, seeing as how my family was the only non-white, non-black family in our whole parish.

As for that other thing -- clearly these kids have been overcharged, but six of them still beat up one other kid. Seems like there are only two sane choices: the nitpicky option, which is for some fair-minded person to count up every incident that occured (the shotgun, the party, the fight, etc.) and to charge each person accordingly; and the better, more neighborly, let's just everybody shake hands, say we're sorry and for the love of God try and be better people option where they do, well, just that.

And I know that sounds naive, but hear me out. A lot of the black community's anger is directed at the DA himself because of the sense of inequity in the justice system; that is, it's not about the crimes, it's about the punishment (or lack thereof) of the crimes. The noose incident, which started this whole mess, was deplorable. What if those kids agreed to a suspension equivalent to a suspension for starting a fight? The same with the "Jena 6" (who did in fact send a kid to a hospital.) I would say recall the DA but knowing Louisiana politics it's likely he'd be re-elected or replaced by something worse. Maybe even Satan, if his new show gets cancelled.

The funniest part about this whole thing is the media coverage. The tv news journalists are as surprised as we are that they're addressing an issue of substance, and twice as congratulatory. Plus they don't have wear flak jackets (it's not Afghanistan or New Orleans) and they get to broadcast a clear, uncontroversial message -- "Racism is Wrong."

And it's the best lesson ever, because we learned it forty years ago.
It's the best remote ever, because we're used to feeling superior to those people.
It's the best story ever, because it's not Iraq.

And this is why I think Soledad and company are so psyched. This one's a gimme. How long has it been since we've had a gimme?

Don't get me wrong. I do think the national attention, now that it's FINALLY come -- my parents told me about this more than half a year ago -- will make the powers that be extra careful in the handling of this case, and that's a boon to ALL the parties involved. I just wish the media would be a little less ostentatious in its chivalry.

And for the people of Jena, something similar happened in my hometown, a little more than ten years ago. A boy died, but no one knew exactly how. For a long time, everyone was angry. There were fights, and then the funeral, boys got jumped, girls were threatened, every grownup who'd ever read a Bible would quote it at us given the slightest provocation...
And then one day it stopped. People couldn't go on being angry. It was exhausting.