Strange Fruit (weapon, racism, crimes, high school)

[Minnehahapolitan]

Residents: Nooses spark school violence, divide town - CNN.com
This makes Nifong look like a saint. What a backwards lot of prople.

[TXboomerang]

Neatly arranged statements to make this look like a scene straight out of 1930. An intentional hit piece on a town as a whole, just like the way Paris, TX was the target of a Chicago Tribune hit piece that drew national attention.

I've already addressed this topic before, so I won't bother discrediting the "KKK town" portrait painting being done.

[gallowsCalibrator]

"the punishment should match the crime"

Ok. So this kid has a juvi record already on file that includes PREVIOUS assault crimes... LOTS of "kids" get tried as adults because of the heinous nature of their crimes.

As tnbound2day says, all they are doing is painting this town to look like something out of history. Nooses were a little extreme to be considered a prank.. that's understandable that it would cause a bit of tension. But I'm sure the ENTIRE school/town was not involved with it.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me"

I've been called any number of names because of my tiny size, my glasses, my heritage, color, intelligence, etc. In fact, I don't know of a person who didn't get called names in school. It still should not lead to somebody in a hospital.

[TXboomerang]

I remember growing up in small town Mississippi. There was racial tension at school sometimes, and one time in particular it got way out of hand. A white student was murdered and thrown in a creek, and nobody knew who killed him at first. The rumor mill started spinning, and it became gossip that he was killed by black gang members (yes, we had a black gang in a town of 1500). One of the black gang members that was in school decided it would be funny to play with the rumors, so he made a fake "hit-list" and posted it in the bathroom where it was found and turned over to a teacher. There was a list of 10 white students that were to be killed in the coming months. Guess what? I was on the list! It was crazy, the news showed up and the whole southern part of the state was running newspaper articles about the serious racism problems in our school and city.

Turns out, it was of course a joke. The white kid who was murdered was murdered by his uncle for unknown reasons. The black gang member who put my name on the list? A friend of mine who told me about it later the same day while we were playing basketball, and also told me, "don't worry, I got your back anyway, I was just tripping".

Wanna take a wild guess how many news stations or papers decided to run any retractions or updated articles about our town and school? One, our town's newspaper. The rest of the state kept assuming for who knows how long that we were just a really backwards and screwed up town. BTW, the kid who put the list in the school bathroom was punished severely: a 3 lick paddling by our black principal. Case closed, story over.

That is why I am always leary of articles that paint a whole town instead of focusing on the immediate issues in a fairly objective manner.

[Minnehahapolitan]

/\ No one was arrested and put in jail without a trial for a year. The Parish DA did not get in front of the school auditorium and threated to do their lives away with a swoop of his pen. The Black students should have got the same punishment the white kid did who broke a bottle over a black man's head - 3 days suspension. Instead, the latter got a slap on the wrist, and the 6 boys get their lives stolen. There are good people in that town, there are in every town. This isn't some sticks and stones argument. They didn't have a right to beat on the poor kid, but they have a right to Habeas Corpus and a fair jury trial. That DA would have us all beleive that the shoe was a deadly weapon. He was convicted by an all white jury. Tell me how that isn't 1964.

[TXboomerang]

The Battle Against Racism In Jena Hi-jacked (article) by Eddie Thompson on AuthorsDen

Let me dispel a few rumors and innuendoes that have festered into questionable facts. First, the media keeps repeating what some of the distraught parents of the six black students keep erroneously insisting: “that nothing happened to those white kids who hung the nooses.” These students being minors, administrators can’t comment on the facts. I have learned that those white students were first suspended and then sent to an alternative school off-campus. They underwent psychological evaluations before being re-admitted to Jena High School and even then were separated from the student body at first. The victim of the December beating was not one of these students. The attack was not retribution for the nooses, as some have speculated. There have been no riots, fights, or other violent demonstrations or racial clashes in the streets of our town. In eight months, just those incidents listed above. In fact, local clergy and other elements of our town’s leadership have attempted to come together in unity to bring racial healing and progress to our community. In the last eight months, more has been attempted to unite the races in Jena than at any other time since the schools were integrated.

So the beating at school was a totally seperate incident. And as I have stated previously, if the guys who ganged up on the one student were yelling things like "Kill him!!" or "I'll Kill You" and then preceded to beat him till his eyes were closed unconcsious, then yes they have now given ample reasons to seek attempted murder charges by law, even though I think it would be a bit much.

Anyway, I don't live there, I don't know what happened, and I refuse to let some one sided stories with obvious sensationalistic tones get off as a plain story with straight facts. It is biased sensationalism and it is sad to see a town painted by a media's paint brush.