It's 2007, and we have a big problem in this country. When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in 1955, she had a goal. When Martin Luther King Jr. stood up before 250,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 to tell them he had a dream, he had a goal. More than 40 years later, we're still striving toward that goal with the case of the Jena Six in Louisiana.
It started when a group of black students felt they had to ask permission to sit under a tree where white students usually congregated. The next day three white students hung nooses from that tree - basically saying to the black students they were not welcome - and received just three days suspension.
Three months later the racial tension erupted. First, a fire torched part of the school, and many believe it was race related. Then a black student, Robert Bailey, was beaten with a glass bottle at a party. The white kid who started the fight was only charged with battery and received probation. The next day, a white kid from the party pulled a gun on Bailey at a convenient store. After Bailey wrestled the gun away, he was charged with theft of a firearm and disturbing the peace while the kid who pulled the gun got off scot-free.
When a white student, Justin Barker, made fun of Bailey a few days later for the incident at the party, he lost control. He and five other black students beat Barker unconscious (after being treated at the hospital, Barker was released that evening).
The Jena Six, as they've come to be known, were eventually arrested and charged with attempted murder.
This speaks to a larger issue than just racial tension - the fundamental flaws and inherent racism in our justice system. When a white kid beats up a black kid with a bottle, he gets charged with battery and receives only probation.
When a white kid pulls a gun on a black kid and the black kid fights him off, the black kid is the one charged with the crime. But then when a group of black kids, after several incidents of provocation, retaliate and beat up a white kid, they sit in jail for months and face up to 20 years in prison, effectively ruining their futures.
Many will call these kids thugs,"" and that could be true, but it does not excuse the white ""thugs"" who, on numerous occasions, attacked these students, and it definitely does not excuse the unequal distribution of justice and punishment dished out by the court system. Battery and probation for whites and attempted murder charges for blacks are the only messages we hear.
It doesn't help when people like Mark Belling of WISN, as reported on the blog Plaisted Writes, claim that ""by the mid-1970s, all the legal racism in America was pretty much done-away with."" Belling's statement could not be further from the truth. Our unjust justice system routinely favors whites on everything from drug charges - punishment for crack is much harsher than that for cocaine - to the death penalty. A 2005 study in California found blacks who kill whites are three times more likely to wind up on death row than blacks who kill blacks.
The excuses must stop. The Jena Six case brings to light injustices that have boiled under the surface of our country since its existence.
Injustices that went unheard when Thomas Jefferson wrote, ""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.""
Injustices Abraham Lincoln finally addressed when he wrote, ""Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.""
And injustices that were still unresolved when Dr. King spoke of his dream that ""one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.""
Now, 40 years later, King's dream of transforming America ""into an oasis of freedom and justice"" is still a long way off.
Cases like the Jena Six remind me every day that this dream too often turns into a nightmare.
Erik Opsal is a senior majoring in political science and journalism. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
