I see where the City Journal [1] has written a reasonably good breakdown of the malcontents in Jena, how that whole situation was mismanaged and a blown out of proportion. It’s actually a good read, saying in part ;
Does it follow that this latest object of frenzy on the media’s racism beat is emblematic of America’s judicial system or the state of race relations today?
That is certainly what the ever-expanding army of racial victimologists and their media enablers would have you believe. Since the Jena story became international news last week, the media, the advocates, and pandering politicians have erupted in an outpouring of seeming joy at the alleged proof—after so much diligent trolling for evidence—that America remains a racist country. Senator Hillary Clinton told the NAACP: “This case reminds us that the scales of justice are seriously out of balance when it comes to charging, sentencing, and punishing African Americans.” Senator Christopher Dodd declared that Jena reveals that “de facto segregation”—in the spirit of Jim Crow—”is still very real” in many parts of America. Britain’s Observer announced that Jena shows “how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America’s deep south.” The New York Times has designated Jena “a high profile arena in the debate on racial bias in the judicial system”—a debate that perhaps not everyone was aware that we were having. J. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said: “I think a lot of people recognize that the criminal justice system grinds down people of color every day. Oftentimes, it’s nameless, it’s faceless. . . . People see Jena as the tip of the iceberg and ask: What lies beneath?” Needless to say, the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have vowed with Biblical thunder to avenge the Jena innocents and force America to own up to its mistreatment of blacks.
But, not so fast:
This is an old complaint, for which no proof has ever been offered, Hillary Clinton’s irresponsible statement notwithstanding. The usual evidence in support of the charge that the criminal laws discriminate against blacks is the far stiffer sentences for selling and possessing crack cocaine compared with powdered cocaine. But that colorblind sentencing regimen, which dates from 1986, was a heartfelt effort to protect the overwhelmingly black victims of crack, not to penalize them. Black liberals such as Congressman Charles Rangel were loudest in sounding the alarm about the effects of crack in the black ghetto. Not even the most deluded racial apologists have ever explicitly suggested that racial bias motivated Congress’s efforts to combat a drug that results in much higher rates of violence among dealers and users, quicker and more onerous addiction, and more emergency room visits than its powdered cousin.
The reason that the black incarceration rate is the highest in the country is that blacks have the highest crime rate—by a long shot. Don’t trust the police, prosecutors, or judges to give a fair picture of black crime? Then go where the bodies are. Los Angeles is representative. In the first seven months of 2007, blacks in Los Angeles were murdered at a rate ten times that of whites and Asians. Who’s killing them? It’s not whites and Asians.
The bottom line here is, and the reason I say this is mismanaged, the race baiting hucksters have had a chance to come in and ply their trade. And as the article says:
No one in the Jena stampede dares whisper a word about black crime, because it undercuts the portrait of a victimized race. You can listen to every protest across the country glorifying the “Jena Six” and you will never hear an acknowledgement of the massive social breakdown that is the black crime rate: no mention of the violence in inner-city schools that black students commit overwhelmingly; no mention of the rising homicides in midsize cities that young black males commit when they feel “disrespected.” It is not racism that is putting black men in jail; it’s their own behavior.
Precisely so. The fact of the matter is that every time the subject is, since the sixties, this is been precisely the answer after all the investigations and all the table pounding and all the false charges are dealt with.
And let’s look a little more closely at the political angle on this. The usual suspects, including Hillary Clinton, are as the article suggests, trying to project that the false, distorted image they decry is not only prevalent in Louisiana, but in white America as a whole. Here again we come to the politics of division. This is part and parcel of the politics that led Bill Clinton so famously to lie about church burnings in the south. Remember that nonsense?
The claims of leftist politicians to the side, I’m going to tell you point blank that there is not an institution in the country that is not going well overboard to favor African Americans. Not one. Yet the crime problem is getting worse.
You know, we’ve all seen the kid who got every advantage. He was perceived by adults , particularly his parents, as having a rough time of it for some reason beyond his own control. And so, everyone’s bent over backwards for him, all his young life. Yet, he still acts up. He’s got an attitude that he can get away with anything. Mostly, that’s because up till now, he has.
The phrase most commonly associated with such an individual, is “spoiled brat”. Is it possible we’ve gone too far in our wanting to “help”?