America has a legacy of racial conflict and injustice. Discuss.
Many in the United States might respond to a prompt like this with a history lesson. However, if any lesson emerges from the events now unfolding in Jena, La., it is that racism is present in more forms than 1977 TV miniseries and a national holiday in January. Racism in America is still a pervasive, ever-present force in the justice system and society. The unacknowledged past has the power to divide a younger generation, the children of those who experienced the most violent spasms of racial equalizing.
As thousands march upon a fired-up town of 3,000 in rural Louisiana — where six black teenagers are being criminally prosecuted, originally on overblown charges of attempted murder, for a schoolyard attack on a white classmate precipitated by several events, including students hanging nooses on a tree outside Jena High School — it is clear that justice is absent when a district attorney can hurl murder charges at black students involved in an apparent battery case.
Racial unrest manifested itself at Jena High School last fall, and what may be most disturbing — for those who are in the same generation as the teenagers involved in the series of events that led to young adults being prosecuted on charges disproportionate to their crime — is where we actually stand in history. The Civil Rights movement happened in the 1950s and 1960s. Our parents cleared the conscience of a nation so we might never deal with the ugly reality of racism. The Deep South buried the Old South and began to make progress toward racial equality. Events like Hurricane Katrina remind us how an older generation continues to allow race to affect its worldview. Affirmation action reminds us how institutional racism still lingers. But, the shock of the Jena incident is that violent racism is salient in modern, post-Jim Crow society, even among those who have grown up in a world where racism is called a non-issue.
Those in Jena have failed to understand the history of racism in America, or to break free of its legacy. While nooses hanging from a tree — an undeniably intimidating form of symbolic speech — warrant punishment, the adults in Jena needed to step in not only to punish, but to instill the gravity of the symbol upon those who hung nooses, and those who mutely stood by. Those students who beat up their classmate likewise deserve punishment truly proportionate to the act.
In the racially charged atmosphere of Jena, symbolic speech and physical intimidation stand close together in the social psyche. Both warrant punishment and edification. The futures of the white and black high school students embroiled in the conflict in Jena should not be jeopardized, but they do need to be redirected.
The Jena situation raises many questions nationally: What racism is latent throughout the country, affecting communities in an apparently less harmful way than in Jena? Why did the national media take so long to cover Jena? What would happen if the racial identifications were reversed, if it were a six-on-one fight in which a black youth was the victim?
As a nation, we must reflect upon what hate crimes, hatefully enforced justice and racial hate mean today.
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