I’ve been reading articles and watching reports about the Jena 6. What has been stated over and over is how appalling it is that something like this was allowed to occur. However, I feel like this is an easy way out for not only the news journalists and TV reporters, but also for the people that read or watch the news. The reason being is that it is easy to condemn something after the fact, but much harder to prevent it from happening.

If you are like me and started following the Jena 6 a couple of weeks ago, you were probably na’ve at first and thought the Jena 6 was a current event. If you were like me, then you felt shocked to learn that these teenagers were arrested last December. While they waited for their court appearances in June, these six teenagers rotted in jail because they were denied bond. The reason was because they were on trial for attempted murder.

I can’t help but think what has gone wrong with our news journalists. Why the case of the Jena 6 immediately wasn’t brought to the attention of Americans on Dec. 4 of last year is as equally uncalled for as the charges brought against the Jena 6.

If journalists would have done their job and reported the facts as vigorously as they are now, maybe the Jena 6 would not have sat in jail waiting for an all-white jury of their peers to convict them in the deep South.

However, the media dropped the ball before what occurred on Dec. 4. Last September, nooses were hung under “the white tree” after a black student asked the principal permission to sit under “the white tree.” If you were like me, you either didn’t hear about it or looked over it because it was on the back pages of the newspaper. Instead of being charged with hate crimes or expelled, the three white students were only suspended for three days.

Leading up to Dec. 4, more racially unequally justice was shown. A black student was beaten at a “white party” on Dec. 1. The following day, he saw one of the white students who beat him up at a convenience store. The white student pulled out a shotgun but he wrestled it away from the white student. The black student was charged with theft. Once again, where was the national media?

The injustice that has happened to the black students and the black people of Jena doesn’t just stem back to the lack of concern by the media. Ultimately it starts with the authority figures and the community as a whole.

I do not know how the principal of that high school didn’t recognize he had a serious problem on his hand when a black student had to ask permission to sit somewhere that was understood to be whites only.

His response should have been more than, “Anyone can sit anywhere.” He should have been asking himself, “What is wrong with my school that there is a ‘whites only tree’?” He should have cared that his black students were still being treated as second-class citizens.

The bottom line is that the people of Jena and the media should have cared about these racially driven crimes from the beginning. But what they and all of us should care about isn’t necessarily the race of the Jena 6, but the fact that in some parts of our nation, black people still aren’t seen as people. I don’t know how the people of Jena sleep at night knowing they did nothing to help these teenagers who got their freedom stripped from them.

But more importantly, why did no one step up and speak out from the white community when the nooses where hung? It honestly hurts my head to think that the majority of people in Jena couldn’t see that hanging nooses are uncalled for.

What needs to be done in Jena and throughout our nation is something so simple that it sounds stupid when written or said. We need to look at ourselves and ask, “Why? Why does skin color, religion or sexual preference really matter in the long run?” This is what we need to learn from the Jena 6.

We need to learn that something so simple as standing up for people who can’t do it for themselves can make a difference. Something so simple as realizing that you were born and you will die, just like the next person, can make a difference. We need to fix this problem as a society rather than saying, “It didn’t happen to me.” We cannot ignore it or wait until it’s too late – when someone else must do the time for our own ignorance.