My Sunday Feeling

Let's get something straight, beloved. The 6 young men that got charged by the State of Louisiana with various and sundry violent crimes after beating up a white classmate are not freedom fighters. They do not represent something eternal and noble as did the Little Rock 9. They do not represent a criminal justice system gone amok as did the Scottsboro Boys or the Duke Lacrosse team for that matter. Their actions were the acts of thugs. Pure and simple.



Let's get something else straight while we are still discussing last week's events in tiny Jena, Louisiana. As was stated in this space earlier this week, putting those nooses in that tree on the school grounds was despicable, cowardly, moronic and intentionally provocative. It merited the highest penalty the school system could levy against the perpetrators of such meanness. The fact that such a penalty was not swiftly meted out to those involved was a mistake of colossal proportions that caused a predictably incendiary response from the black patrons of the school system.

But to draw a moral equivalence between the thuggish acts of these young men and the racist acts of idiots or to suggest a cause and effect concerning the two is wrong-headed. These kids didn't get arrested for boycotting the school in protest. They didn't get arrested for disrupting a school board meeting. They didn't get arrested for marching in the streets. They got arrested for beating the living hell out of another person. And for this they pretty much get what they get in my view.

Were the charges leveled against them "overcharged? No doubt. This comes as a surprise? When the prosecutor gets you in the gunsights he or she will typically charge you with anything that might stick. They do this in order to induce you to plead to a lesser included offense. This is called stacking charges and it happens everyday that the courthouse is open. If you don't believe me, you can ask the woman who is coming over to watch football tonight. Figuring out ways to keep knuckleheads in prison for a very long time is how she earns her living. She will be more than happy to explain it to you. That very real fact should have been part of the risk calculation that these young men should have taken into account before they decided to put a whuppin' on somebody.

But, it must be said that a whuppin' is just a whuppin'. And not every fight between black kids and white kids are racial incidents. I once got the hell beat out of me by a really nice black guy named Sylvester Loving who was an All-State lineman on the football team. He had just come back from beating up some guy fresh home from boot camp who came to the gym where we were playing a pick up game because he thought I was fooling around with the "girl he left behind." Sylvester kicked my ass for getting myself in that fix in the first place. I just took it as an exceedingly painful object lesson.

But all kidding aside, it is my hope that these guys can get past all of this and become productive, law-abiding citizens just like the majority of the folks in Jena. It would be indeed tragic if their young lives become defined by these relatively low-level offenses for which they have been charged. That will only happen if they acknowledge that they screwed up and resolve to move forward in peace. But that is not likely to happen if they are told repeatedly that they are the victims here or that their struggle with the justice system is somehow noble.

And now for a quick program note: I will be back on " Tales From The South" next Thursday night at 7:00 pm CST. Those of you in the Central Arkansas area can hear the broadcast by tuning into Public Radio station KUAR at 89.0. Those of you from out of town can listen to the broadcast on the Internet by going here Thursday night at the appointed hour. Those of you who have better things to do Thursday, and I would hope that you do, can go here and listen to it at your convenience once they put it in the archives. I hope you enjoy it if you get the chance to listen.