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What really happened in Jena
I first heard of the controversy in Jena, Louisiana on Friday morning and read a couple of stories and columns about it, including one by Mike Gallagher, but the incident did not not come into sufficient focus in my mind for me to have anything to say about it. Now Jared Taylor has written an article at American Renaissance giving the full story of what happened in Jena, the story the mainstream media have not given. As his article makes clear, there is no brief way of conveying the truth. The various elements of the story—the “white” tree, the noose incident, the punishment for the noose incident, the increasing racial tensions and racial incidents at the school and in the town over several months, the attack on Justin Barker, the nature of the attack, his leaving the hospital the same day as the attack—all these things need to be seen in full in order for their meaning to be understood. In the end, however, it all comes down to this: the way the mainstream media are portraying the events in Jena, as a resurgence of pre-civil rights mistreatment of blacks, is simply a lie. You would think that after the Duke affair the media would be more cautious before buying into the white-racism script. But you would be foolish to think that. The white-racism script is all they know—and all they live for. In reality, those who knocked Justin Barker to the ground and stomped and kicked his unconscious body were repeating the age-old ritual of black savagery, the same savagery that was unleashed against truck driver Reginald Denny in Los Angeles in 1992, against student activist Amy Biehl in South Africa in 1993, against the fallen U.S. serviceman in Mogadishu in 1993, and against innumerable other white and black victims over the years. But the media, in accordance with Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, are portraying this act of pure savagery as an understandable response to, and as the moral equivalent of, something done by whites to blacks. In liberal society, the worse the behavior of blacks, the more their behavior must be blamed on white racism. See also black columnist Erik Rush’s take on Jena, at WorldNetDaily.
(Posted 9/23). There are two questions that stand out in my mind at the moment. First, the nooses. Taylor reports:
The school quickly found the three white students who had hung the nooses but concluded—and this is admittedly surprising—that they had no racial motivation for what the school called a “prank.” It should be underlined that the local police and the FBI also interviewed the boys and found no racial motive. The local US Attorney, Donald Washington, who is black, later looked into the nooses incident, and he, too, and found no grounds for action. The nooses were painted in the Jena High colors—black and gold—which does suggest a non-racial motive. Jena High School does not release details about student disciplinary matters, but word leaked out that the culprits were imitating something from a television program.If they had no racial motive, some explanation is needed of what their motive was. Simply to say, “This is surprising, but authorities found no racial motive,” and leave it at that, is not sufficient. At the same time, given the ultra political correctness of the FBI today and other authorities, there must have been some reason for them all to conclude that the nooses were not meant in a threatening way and that this was not a criminal matter. However, even if it was not a criminal matter, even if boys who hung the nooses had no racial motive but were innocently kidding or imitating something on a tv program, how could they not know the meaning that the nooses would have to others? And therefore how could the act be innocent? To hang a noose is to threaten the murder of black people. It is arguable that they should have been expelled for this. Taylor continues:
The high school principal nevertheless recommended expulsion, but the LaSalle Parish School Board overruled him and the three were suspended. For several weeks they attended a special school for expelled students, and were only later let back into Jena High. Meanwhile, blacks held meetings to complain about the nooses, in which they refused to see anything but racial hatred, and were angry that the white students were not expelled.Second, was the charge of attempted murder in the attack on Justin Barker excessive? It seems to me that for six people to gather around a person lying motionless on the ground and kick him repeatedly, including presumably kicks to the head, can be reasonably seen as attempted murder. But it all depends on the specific facts, which I do not have. What kinds of kicks were they? How hard? How many kicks were aimed at the head? I’m sure a reasonable case could be made that the charge of attempted murder is excessive, as is the treating of the defendants as adults, and this is a major part of what set off the demonstrations. Was it therefore the combination of suspension rather than expulsion for the white noose-hangers and the charge of attempted murder for the beaters of Justin Barker, that set off the black rage? Suppose the noose-hangers had been expelled, and the attackers of Barker had been charged with aggravated battery rather than attempted murder. Would the black rage not have occurred?
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