Posted by
Gamecock on Friday, October 19, 2007 2:43:19 PM
Remember who took the beating in Jena
Justin Barker, not his attackers, suffered a premeditated assault
MIKE DEVINE
Special to the Observer
"Look at the tape"!
Thus ESPN's John Saunders admonished those who bemoaned supposed racial disparities in NBA foul calls, based on a study of newspaper box scores by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
How does one stand in judgment of NBA officiating apart from visual examination of available video recordings of the events in question? That's what Saunders wondered, and so should we.
What if Justin Barker's beating had been caught on tape? Would Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been able to make the "freeing" of the Jena 6 into the 21st-century equivalent of Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"?
Not likely.
Last month, thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of the small town of Jena, La., to decry the supposed disparate treatment of blacks and whites by high school administrators and law enforcement. Why should the Jena 6 have been released? Because of rope nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree months before the beating, we are told.
Fight or lynching?
Most legal definitions of lynching call it a premeditated assault on one person by two or more others -- which is exactly what befell Barker. Yet press reports have described the beating as a "schoolyard fight."What about the supposed disparate treatment based on race?
The three noose hangers were isolated in an alternative school for a month. They were not expelled, but neither were those responsible for sending Barker to the hospital four months later. Barker was not one of the noose hangers, so his attackers apparently convicted him of a separate crime -- walking while white.
Protesters object that the Jena 6 were initially charged with assault and battery with intent to kill. They argue that Barker's same-day release from the hospital and attendance at a school ring ceremony that night ruled out intent to kill.
I don't know if there was intent to kill Barker. Prosecutors rarely have direct evidence of intent, such as a verbal or written confession, but circumstantial evidence is often presented.
A person can be killed from being kicked in the head. Being knocked unconscious is evidence of at least an aggravated assault. The fact that one person is assaulted by six can also be seen as evidence of intent.
That Barker was tough enough to survive the blows, and that he was so determined to receive a ring signifying his hard work to achieve his diploma, speaks volumes about his character and strength.
Indeed, Barker has much more in common with "Bloody Sunday" beating victim John Lewis than do his attackers. His attackers have more in common with the law enforcement officers who beat Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., during a civil rights march in 1965.
Projections of racism
Hardly a week passes that mainstream media outlets do not present academic studies of racial disparities as "news." These stories imply that white racism is responsible for mortgage loan turndowns, improper traffic stops, disparate educational discipline or excessive criminal charges.
Rarely are we presented with the name of any white person who actually unlawfully discriminated against a black person. No, we are told it's "institutional" racism.
This all occurs in a culture in which being labeled a racist is the greatest fear of most whites in the legal, religious and business institutions I am familiar with.
It makes me wonder if the purveyors of the racism charge are projecting their own racism, or that of their own institutions, onto others.
Mike
DeVine