As I said about a month and a half ago, everyone would find out the truth about what happened in Jena, La., and they would see all the protesting and posturing was because people ran to action without knowing (or in some cases disregarding) the actual facts about the case [“In Jena, not all has gone wrong,” Sept. 26]. The problem is this type of situation happens again and again, yet many (some willingly) still get caught up in the firestorm without questioning the facts.
Since I was not able to tackle many of these issues in my first column due to lack of information, let’s dig right in. The nooses weren’t a hate crime: The FBI investigated and concluded while the three students used poor judgment, being mean isn’t against the law. We then heard about how Justin Sloan, the kid who started the “Barn Fight,” was charged with battery after the fight. The Jena Times tells us the “sign your life away with a pen” comment was aimed at three girls using their cell phones during the DA’s speech. We hear from CNN that when the 40 actual and material witnesses were interviewed about the assault on Justin Barker, none of those questioned mentioned the noose hanging incident. Furthermore, if the Six were that mad about the nooses, why did they wait four months to seek reprisals against someone not involved with the nooses? It doesn’t matter what he said: The response was an uncivilized and barbaric reaction for someone’s words. How many of you know Mychal Bell is in jail for violating probation for his prior two counts of battery?
I had read quotes from people claiming this event was somehow equal to the monumental Bus Boycott or the Selma to Montgomery Marches. Those brave people fought for the civil rights of the oppressed, not for six men who brutally beat a student for no apparent reason. The problem is a great and noble event like the marches of nearly 40 years are degraded by ignorant people who get their information out of someone’s blog or a college newspaper, and then take them as facts as though they came from God. I know many of you out there are thinking “I got my information from independent sources!” I ask you to check out the article “Media Myths about the Jena 6” by Craig Franklin, and compare the facts.
The questions put forth in discussion by students and society about the situation were posed as though if you questioned the support of the Six at all you were some kind of ignorant hilljack-racist member of the Ku Klux Klan. Then many tried to portray the town of Jena as though it was Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964 in the middle of the Freedom Summer where three true heroes were murdered.
This “bandwagon effect” is further evident in Facebook groups (around 482) I searched for that dealt with “Freeing the Jena Six.” There were nearly 322,965 people (based upon a rough count) that were on the first page of the search. I wonder how many of these protesters know the facts or simply believe what they are told?
This leads me to be not disappointed in those who disregarded the facts about the situation and lied to everyone, however I do hold disdain and disappointment with those who are willingly ignorant, towing the line of “No Justice, No Peace,” without even bothering to find out the truth. This was all done by people who had no knowledge of about what was happening in Louisiana. If MTV can print retractions about reporting wrong facts it shows anyone can be wrong; and that’s OK. Everyone messes up from time to time, it’s human nature. What matters is how the aftermath is handled, and how people “own up” for what they said and did. Nobody has said, “Oops, our bad. We reacted without knowing all the facts. It looks like the situation in Jena was handled properly.”
A significant number of people were not willing to wait for the facts to come to light and because of that, they made a mockery of America and all she stands for. They defecated on liberty, equality, truth, and justice because they thought, “It can’t be anything else than racism.” Those that protested, inflamed, and exacerbated the events simply by using the context of race have done as much good for race relations in America as David Duke. This recent action forces the real victims of civil rights abuses to suffer and become marginalized since I no longer have the ability to discern fact from fiction. Those telling supposed “facts” have shown once they will lie and tell “half-truths,” how can I trust them not to again?
