While I don't dispute Mr. Kirchik's critique (though I found the attack on the American Prospect most interesting) I still can't help but admire the courage displayed in this video by Mr. Robert Bailey, one of the civil rights heroes of the Jena Six: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZQlgPO8qc

     Many thanks to James Kirchik and Craig Franklin(and to Thomas Sowell elsewhere as usual).With Al Sharpton(who should be making license plates after Tawana Brawley,the Crown Heights Brooklyn Pogrom etc.)and Jesse Jackson involved in destroying "the civil rights" movement my uncle marched in when Schwerner,Chaney and Goodman were murdered in Mississippi,what other conclusion could've been expected.Actually,rather than the"next Duke rape case",I gotta think considering the timing here,that this was an attempt...whoops a shakedown(read the Kenneth Timmerman book on Jesse Jackson)because of what happened at Duke.

Unfortunately, our media, and our nation, really, cannot handle subtlety.  There is nothing subtle about beating a person so severely he requires hospitalization.  But there is something subtle in recognizing that this case of race-based discrimination, intimidation, and violence--on both "sides"--is more complicated than "conservative" (read "racist") versus "progressive" (read "tolerant," whatever that means).  No one should have to tolerate being beaten.  The provocation to the beating was of course intended to be provocative: hanging mock black bodies from a tree on school property is a threat of violence, an endorsement of race-based lynchings in our nation's history.  It does not give the black students at this school carte blanche to seek "revenge" through violence. 

 But we're forgetting that the issue perhaps worthy of national attention is also the police response: when white students assaulted black students (also in this same high school case), there was little police response (at least according to most media coverage on the story), but this (admittedly severe, immoral, and illegal) beating of a white student resulted in six young black men being charged not with assault but with attempted murder.

Well put, Anon.  By the way, was anyone else really disturbed by Franklin's statement in the Christian Science Monitor that the kids who hung the nooses didn't realize they had any kind of historical significance?  That's a perfect example of the kind of subtleties at play here.  It's not a hate crime when a school fails to educate its students about the race-based atrocities of the not-so-distant past, but it's not exactly a good thing, either.

Unfortunately I can't find the link but i believe the guy who got beat up was not involved in hanging the nooses.  A lot of misconceptions have been spread around regarding this case (just like the duke case, in fact)

--Z

Izzy asked,

"By the way, was anyone else really disturbed by Franklin's statement in the Christian Science Monitor that the kids who hung the nooses didn't realize they had any kind of historical significance? "

 You must be joking. May I presume you did not go to an average American public high school?

but that's not really the point.  The whole Jena situation rests on the symbolism behind those nooses.  Franklin's saying the kids who hung them didn't understand how they would be seen by the rest of the world.  But obviously we're all assuming the black kids DID understand them as a lynching reference, hence the retaliation -- right?  Doesn't that highlight exactly the racial tensions at play here?  You've got part of a high school living with this knowledge of fairly recent injustice, and another part that's walking around completely clueless.  Again, that doesn't excuse any kind of violence, but it does explain where all the anger comes from.  

Unless maybe no one at the Jena high school understood the historical meaning of the nooses, and they were seen as a threat that had nothing to do with race?  Is that possible?

It would be pretty difficult for anyone growing up here in America not to know the symbolism which hanging a noose on a tree means.  The idea is omnipresent and one need go no further than the television for numerous examples of its use.

 That being said, there is no question that this whole Jena 6 thing is obscene and is being used by professional racists - Sharpton, Jackson, et al, to further their selfish agenda.

Certainly rough parallels can be drawn between the Duke Rape case and the Jena 6 incident; they both represent cases in which the specific facts of  a particular legal proceeding have been brushed aside to focus on broader issues of social justice.  The consequences were far more damning in the Duke Rape case, however, because the result of the rush to judgment was to destroy the presumption of innocence of the players, turning them into symbols for racial and gender injustice writ large.    

In the case of the Jena 6, at most the good names of Jena law enforcement community are being dragged through the mud (although clearly, the DA was guilty of at least non-racially biased prosecutorial overzeal in his charging decisions.)  But at least here, there's  some connection between the specific incident and larger societal problems.  There is no epidemic of interracial frat-boy rape occurring throughout our country.  On the other hand, the protesters in the Jena case are responding to very real problems, as Ford's essay noted - "racial segregation; racially disproportionate arrest, prosecution, and incarceration rates; and a pervasive societal racism that is passed from generation to generation." 

We desperately need to have a conversation about these topics.  That it may need to be more nuanced then a Sharptonesque rant doesn't mean it doesn't need to happen - before the next racially charged media event occurs.

"oh, I went to hippie school"

Gutsy of you to admit that in this context, Izzy. It makes me feel like a heel for throwing a low blow. Let me move on to your Neocon colleague.

Michael wrote, 

"We desperately need to have a conversation about these topics. "

No, we desperately try to avoid having a real conversation about these topics at almost any cost. The fear of being called a racist is paramount to the point of preferring to embrace dishonesty. It is impossible to have a large scale conversation under such conditions.