But their plea agreement the statement said that Justin Barker did nothing to deserve what happened that day. As far as not prosecuting the noose incident as a hate crime, it was not directed at any individual or group and as such, did not meet the criteria to be classified as a hate crime. That conclusion was reached by local, state, and federal authorities.

But the nooses had NOTHING to do with the Jena 6. The noose incident was investigated by local, state, and federal officials and all came to the same conclusion. FYI, US District Attorney Washington is African-American and was called everything but an Uncle Tom by the Black Cacuas during a Congressional hearing.

Blue Deacon- you have that just a bit backwards - the white kids left the nooses in a tree that they hung out in for the Black kids. Plus the white kids were always picking fights with these black kids and had done so right before this event - they had jumped one of the black kids and beat him up.

If the situation was reversed - if the white kids had beat up the black kid, (which had happened before) - If it was your black child that was injured would you still think the same thing. Would you want your white child sentenced as harshly as these black kids for what was essentially a fight?

This had been boiling for quite a while. This was a fight. I am not saying that the black kids were justified in beating the white boy up - but there was clear injustice here. Because the sentence they received for the fight (& as far as I know, the white boy was not kicked unconcious - as a matter of fact, he was at school the next day) was inappropriate. They received a harsher sentence than white kids would have received for the same crime.

Hannity, I had also not read anywhere about these black kids being hoodlums and being arrested. I thought as a Christian we were supposed to try to help people better their lives - not condemn them. I also think that all you heard was the "white" point of view. Because these white kids had been goading these black students for some time - and they had been picking fights with them too and were never sentenced for the same 'crime'.

Alan, I sincerely hope that you don't dignify that missive with a reply.

Bull Connor and George Wallace have been reincarnated.

Alan,

Your silence has given the unwelcome suspicion that an invitation to "Friends of Justice" might not be forthcoming. How can this be explained let alone tolerated? Is their error within me or sin unnamed? Is not your cause my cause? Do I understand any less than you that to examine the continuation of the beating past the point of consciousness would magnify the attackers’ culpability past the point where the current plea bargain could be rationally justified by the general public? Am I any less willing than you to subordinate principles of personal accountability to sympathies for a violent retribution against vile expressions of racism by an undisclosed number of individuals within the larger community? Am I any less enthusiastic than you to diminish perceptions of the viciousness and ferocity of the group assault against a lone individual in order to provide them a more lenient punishment? Could my references to the suffering of Justin Barker been any more perfunctory and less sympathetic? Do I not support an idea that punishment for the violence of the Jena 6 must be tied to the lack of punishment for the people who did not form a group to physically assault another human being but, instead, displayed a disgusting expression of their own racist attitudes? I say "no." I have given you what you want and, for that, I should be commended. To my critics within this blog, I say “to condemn me is to condemn yourselves.”

Truth2Power:
Thank you for your clever jibes. Some clarification is in order (when you're talking about the Jena 6, clarification is always in order). The assault was very brief--a matter of seconds. It largely consisted of one punch and a few friends getting in some licks as a show of solidarity. That's the way youth culture works. If a buddy is attacked, you rise to his defense. If a buddy initiates a violent encounter, you follow suit. It ain't pretty, but that's how it works. The same process worked in reverse when one of the Jena 6 was attacked at a social function a few days earlier. One kid took the lead and his friends piled on. The same phenomenon, in a more positive vein, occurred when some black students responded to the hanging of nooses from the tree on the white side of the schoolyard by symbolically "occupying" the tree. One kid took the lead, a few buddies followed his lead, and soon virtually every black student at the school (and a few white supporters) was gathered around the tree. Witnessing this event, the superintendent put the school on lockdown and herded the student body into the auditorium (white kids on one side; black kids on the other in accordance with local tradition). Several police officers were in the room in full dress uniform. The DA told the kids responsible for the demonstration at the tree that he could make their lives disappear with a stroke of his pen. Asked to explain this statement at a hearing, DA Reed Walters explained that he thought the kids should have to work things out on their own. Tragically, that's exactly what happened. Unless you grasp the full context of the story you are almost certain to draw false conclusions. There is no point weighing the relative sinfulness of the nooses vs. the beat-down. If the adults in the room had used the noose incident as a teachable moment the tragic denouement would have been avoided altogether. Reed Walters had a golden opportunity to nip things in the bud but he decided to get adversarial with the black students who were merely standing up for their rights. This is indicative of the environment the black students had to deal with. They didn't always handle the situation well. Sometimes, they handled it very badly. But the ultimate responsibility for what happened in Jena lies at the feet of the adults responsible for shaping the social and educational environment at the school. You can respond to this explanation with more sarcasm if you wish, but I would prefer a sincere attempt to understand the situation from a Christian perspective.

Alan Bean

Alan Bean,

Thanks for your post and welcome to this site. I really admire your experience as the lunar module commander for the Apollo 12 mission.

Though some here will distort your words to score points against Sojo, most of us understand and agree with your message. May God bless your work as you do His bidding on Earth.

Here's what baffles me about Sojourners, a while ago there was an article titled "Torture: What Part of ‘Do Not Repay Evil for Evil’ Don’t You Understand?" yet the Jena 6 repaid evil for evil and you celebrate their story. So its wrong to use non-fatal methods to draw information from terrorists to keep this country safe, but if the context is right, its okay for six men to beat someone within an inch of their life with the only end being payback for racial wrongs. The double standard of sites like this is mind boggling

Alan,

How do I join "Friends of Justice"? I, too, am an apologist for the Jena 6 and wish to combat all those who would suggest that the plea agreement was a miscarriage of justice. While I lack any formal credentials to serve as such an advocate, I believe my arguments below in support of the Jena 6 provide ample justification for my acceptance into your esteemed organization:

1) Given their vast medical knowledge and prior experience in the delivery of politically therapeutic beatings, the members of the Jena 6 had confidently determined that the victim's loss of consciousness posed no risk for enduring neurological trauma let alone loss of life. As Alan Bean has correctly noted, "Justin Barker's life was never in danger, he was beaten unconscious---probably the initial blow that dropped him." Consequently, any attempt by the public to assess increased moral responsibility regarding a physical assault prolonged past the point when the victim retains consciousness is unwarranted and, dare I say, politically suspect. The endurance of a beating or the victim's state of consciousness or ability to ward off blows is irrelevant, or at least, irrelevant to me. Should the attack have been suspended after Justin Barker lost consciousness, the Jena 6 would have been needlessly robbed of the satisfaction of vigorous beating of a person who shared the racist assumptions of the surrounding culture. I should emphasize "needlessly" because Alan Bean recognizes no additional moral significance to an assault that occurred during a victim's continual state of consciousness versus one that includes an extended state of unconsciousness. Unfortunately, the members of the Jena 6 live in a society where boxing referees routinely stop fights after one combatant has lost consciousness and can no longer defend himself.

2) The recourse of the critics of the Jena 6 to the enduring psychological effects of the beating on the victim obfuscates the issue on which we wish to focus: racist sentiments held by an undisclosed number of individuals within the community. We must only refer to the lingering emotional and psychological trauma in such a way that it prevents our opponents from suggesting that we ignore the issue completely but not so much that it would call into question the appropriateness of the plea bargain afforded the Jena 6. The monetization of politically therapeutic assault is questionable but only inasmuch as it was the Jena 6 that are responsible for payment as opposed to the racist community or Justin Barker himself.

3) I am willing to challenge the foundations of American parenting. Our children, well some people's children, are indoctrinated from childhood with the principle that regardless of someone else's verbal or symbolic provocation, the punishment for violent behavior should not be diminished. A mother may tell a toddler that he must go to his room without supper for hitting his sister despite his sister's repeated taunts calling him a "doo doo head". Such a ethical apparatus fails to set the stage for rhetorical assertions of equivalence, hitting with taunting, the Jena 6's violent attack with the racist assumptions of the surrounding culture.

I look forward to my invitation to membership or, at least, a subscription to your newsletter.

RedBishop, tmcool, JoannaCW, alanbean:

Thanks for steering the conversation regarding this topic back to a constructive vein.

Mr. Bean,

I believe you slightly misunderstand my post. I’m on your side. Like you, I don’t believe Mr. Barker suffered any trauma after he was rendered unconscious.

And a mea culpa is indeed in order. From my first perusal of your article, it was unclear to me that an actual “beat-down” at the hands of the Jena Six even occurred. I thought they merely pled "no contest" as part of a plea agreement (I'll admit, I'm not an expert on the law) and I wrote my post accordingly. But even if a "beat-down" did occur, I’m not sure it changes my stance on this matter.

Mr. Barker was an embodiment of the toxic environment that had been created when the DA and school superintendant refused to call a hate crime a hate crime. It’s a terrible thing, indeed, when hatred and violence are ignored or much worse, are excused or justified. What choice did these young men have?

Am I concerned about the slight overreaction of the Jena Six? Sure, I'm just as concerned as you are. Am I far more concerned about the bizarre overreaction of the prosecutors? Absolutely!

Like you, I look forward to the future contributions of all of these young men. And like you, I look forward to a future where racial tensions aren’t exploited by ideologues and hucksters who gravitate to such incidents to forward their own reputations and agendas.

And on that point, I think we can all agree.

"The decision to charge the Jena 6 with attempted murder was a bizarre over-reaction."

I agree. I don't think that anyone is trying to justify the beating on Justin Barker. However, White kids have done similar sorts of assaults on Black kids and were not charged or else got slapped in the wrist, whereas the Black kids were initially charged with attempted murder. The problem is the inequity of justice.

I just came back from Philadelphia, Mississippi. Here those of us in the 1960s civil rights movement had a memorial march for all of the martyrs who were slaughtered during that time and no justice was done; the murderers were let off scott-free due to racist justice.

Here is a website of the original notice of this event (the article was written before the event happened). We had the march and it went just as the notice said.

http://www.crmvet.org/anc/0906ms.htm

Red Bishop: I have never heard anyone associated with the Jena 6 case justify the beat-down at the high school. Although Justin Barker's life was never in danger, he was beaten unconscious--probably by the initial blow that dropped him. Christians can't justify violence without denying their Savior, and the Jena 6 have made no attempt to justify what happened to Mr. Barker. Some have claimed that they weren't involved, but that is another matter. Did Barker engage in provocative behavior? Probably, but that doesn't justify a violent response. Was Barker closely associated with the boys who hung the nooses in early September, 2006? Most definitely. What happened at the high school on December 4, 2006 was the culmination of several months of steadily escalating violence that would have been averted if the school superintendent and the local district attorney had called a hate crime by its proper name. The decision to charge the Jena 6 with attempted murder was a bizarre over-reaction. If DA Reed Walters hadn't been opposed by Friends of Justice, some of these kids would have spent over a decade in prison. Their lives would have been destroyed. Instead, they all have a chance to get an education and make a positive contribution. Hopefully Mr. Barker will do the same. The behavior of the noose hangers was reprehensible, but they were only reflecting the racist assumptions of the surrounding culture. The young men who assaulted Robert Bailey (one of the Jena 6) at a high school dance a few nights before the beat-down at the high school demonstrated that the social environment had become utterly toxic. No one behaved well. What makes the assault on Barker "necessary"? Can violence ever be redemptive? Is that what Dr. King taught? Is that the way of Jesus? The tragedy at the high school nearly destroyed the lives of six young men. But thanks to the efforts of community organizers, parents, supportive people across the nation, groups like Color of Change, Friends of Justice and the Southern Poverty Law Center and, finally, a team of skilled and dedicated attorneys, justice has been served and a measure of redemption has come to Jena, Louisiana. For that, I give thanks.

Alan Bean
Friends of Justice

Hannity,

BlueDeacon is right. In your naive obsession with so-called facts, you've overlooked something more important: narrative. We in the mainstream media have created a narrative that will help you (and your conservative bully boys who are still so fixated on your precious "facts") understand why these things happen in the first place.

And don't give me any of that "liberal media bias" nonsense. Like my esteemed colleague Blue, I've worked in the media for a very long time. And let me tell you, I would be able to recognize my own bias as easily as I could recognize a plank in my own eye.

The issue here isn't who violently assaulted whom. The REAL issue is who created the environment that made the actions of Jena Six justifiable, or if you ask me, necessary. The real enemy here is George Bush in his continuation of almost 30 years of Reagan-era policies that have forced young men like the Jena Six to take the defensive actions that they did.

To call what they did "violence" is to do violence to the word violence.

The only crime here is our failure to properly honor the courage of the Jena Six. Everyone here seems to forget how much damage one unarmed man can do to a group of six so-called assailants who are kicking him. Hasn't anyone here ever seen a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? Just a movie, you say? Well, you may see those movies as mere entertainment, but I promise you, they're as genuine as Alan Bean's concern for justice!

I don't think it helps to argue about whose violence was worse. I think that we're each responsible for addressing the cruelty and injustice shown by our own people, whoever we perceive those to be.

Blue,

As far as anyone knows, the victim didn't have anything to do with the nooses. Your logic has a dangerous conclusion. Basically you are saying that these six young men were justified in kicking their lone victim senseless because other people who shared his race committed offenses against other black students. Would they have been justified in killing him or just beating him?

Where were the nooses that black kids left for white kids in a tree where the black kids hung out? That was the impetus for the situation we're addressing.

Who are the 6 white students who beat up the one black student until he was unconscious, repeatedly kicking him over and over again in the face and head?

You thus answered your question -- you don't. In fact, the real story is the disparate punishment the black students received vis-a-vis white students who had committed similar acts.

Yes, I do know the entire story. It still doesn't justify the beating that the victim took.