September 22, 2007
Jena 6: civil rights ---- or bad adolescent behavior?
Almost 45 years, ago, Dr. Martin Luther King defined the civil rights struggle in one of the most memorable speeches in the history of English-language oratory. Below is an excerpt:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’
--Martin Luther King, speaking August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln memorial
Dr. King did not say anything about getting together with five of his friends to coldcock someone from behind, and then beat the victim half to death----all over an adolescent insult that occurred months earlier.
Could it be that the media (as well as Messrs Jackson and Sharpton) are a bit too eager to conflate bad adolescent behavior with the civil rights issues of 40 years ago?
Yes, the noose on the tree branch was inexcusable---and probably intended as a racial slur. But the concept of the “proportional response” still applies. If in the midst of a heated exchange, I call my Polish-American neighbor a "Pollack", he does not have the right to attack me with a baseball bat in the name of civil rights.
The time that lapsed between the original noose incident and the beating is also quite significant. What we have here may be not a civil rights case, but something much simpler: a group of unsupervised Louisiana teens (both black and white) who could have used a few more trips to the woodshed along the way.
