Louisiana racism

Black youth faces 22yrs for minor assault in school playground - victim of attack was released from hospital on the same day.

It was in response to nooses hanging from trees.

blogs.abcnews.com...

Some of the comments are right on the mark about social/ racial injustice.

Wow... 22 years for a trip the the hospital and back in a single day? Are you kidding? I haven't heard of a fight like this even getting 1 year, maybe I'm wrong and this happens all the time tho.

The American "justice" system is a joke. Steal a TV, sell some pot, smoke some crack get YEARS in prison. Extort millions of dollars through financial fraud ? Get 6 months in "prison".

What would a proper sentence for these 6 young men be?
I will not deny that racism plays a part in this case and I think that 22 years is way excessive. The victims crime in this case seems to be the fact that he was friends with the 3 boys who hung the nooses in the tree.

"The victim was struck from behind in a school hallway, knocked unconcious and then beaten by up to 15 other students. The victim is taken to the hospitol and treated and released. While the victim is released he is still blind in one eye for several weeks and the victims face is severly bruised and swollen. The victim has recurring headaches from the beating he recieved. The victims crime in this case seems to be the fact that he was friends with the 3 boys who hung the nooses in the tree."

If the victim was your child what would you think would be a fair punishment?

The case of the Jena 6 is a gross example of narrow minded prejudice and blind ignorance. It began when black students from the school asked if they could sit under the big tree in the grounds, an area which only the white students would congregate. When the black students went to sit there, the nooses were hung up. This is evidently racially motivated, but even if it weren't, would you really take death threats lightly? And would you not be pissed off if you got jumped at a party by a bunch of kids, as one of the 6 did, only for all of them to get off with warnings? If I were them, black or white, I'd have gone after the bullies. And to say that the victim "was just a friend", well, maybe he wasn't a protagonist, but he was certainly involved.

The victim in this case from the court testimony wasnt involved in either incident either the nooses or the fight at the party. But since he knew the other kids involved it is okay to attack and beat him?

When 15 people beat someone just for being friends with someone who committed a wrong then yes they do deserve 22 years in prison.

- assault with severe injuries (the victim is partially blind + recurring headaches)
- riot
- inciting a riot

Those are not minor little charge buddy. They deserve every bit of those 22 years.

As for the racism, it took place in a very small town in a very rural part of the deep South. People will always be racist regardless of skin color, location, etc so learn live with it or ignore it.

[edit on 31-7-2007 by ChrisF231]

Louisiana, home of David Duke, a racist's state? No way. Not after the give-away to the "victims" of Hurricane Katrina.

BTW: They should have had hate crime charges also. I do hope there is more charges on civil rights violations against the accused.

Its more the inequality of sentencing that gets me.

Its worldwide and not just racist but wealth driven aswell - if you can afford a good lawyer you get off or much lower sentence.

Originally posted by johnb
Its more the inequality of sentencing that gets me.

Its worldwide and not just racist but wealth driven aswell - if you can afford a good lawyer you get off or much lower sentence.

If the victim was your child what would you think the punishment should be?

If it was one of my sons I would probably take the matter into my hands as they did and as I live in the UK I would probably get jailed for a few years.

My point is more the fact that sentencing is hugely unfair, one person can get a commuted sentence and the next person can get the maximum the law will allow.

However to try and answer your question I think we should bring the Birch and the stocks and possibly hanging for capital crimes.

Birching for those who don't know is when you are publicly beaten with Birch tree branch/twigs - would deter children and this might just stop them starting a life of crime.

The Stocks are a wooden block with three holes one for your head and two for your arms, you are then locked into them in say the Town/city square and the public get to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at you.
Again this might put some low level criminals off - even if only one person is deterred it would be worth it. You could even have the authorities selling the fruit thus making the taxpayer money and costing us money.

I know these were all outlawed years ago but society just keeps spiralling down, there's no respect for anything or anyone left anyway I'm starting to stray off topic.

Posted by DarkStormCrow:

If the victim was your child what would you think would be a fair punishment?

That is a very interesting question. Personally I don't have children yet. Don't plan on it in the near future. The world is just too corrupt, and I don't have the wealth to float above the effects of such. I don't want my children to have to struggle to maintain 'good standing' in the indentured servitude of our modern capitalist democracy. So until I am one of the 'haves', I will have no kids.

But not everyone is like myself. Some do not understand the real impact that 3 minutes of pleasure can have on your future. Or that how you raise the end result of that 'pleasure', has a direct impact on your community at large.

If you raise your children to throw candy wrappers out the window, they will do what you show them. If you raise them to respect, they will respect. Unfortunately, the children who hung the nooses were raised as racists. The children who seeked revenge for a hate crime were misguided in their assault, but are expected to turn their cheek to a racism that is almost treated as 'old time sport' and compounded in that region by the effects of Katrina. It is almost like everyone is so poor that the only thing anyone can afford to do is hate (poor in comparison to other Americans. Compared to other parts of the world, they are still way, way ahead)

So to answer your question, how would I feel as a parent? I would be distraught and outraged that my baby was hurt, and would want revenge. Eye for an Eye, but I am going to take your head. But then again, I also plan on raising my children to deny racism, to deny ignorance, so I don't imagine my child would be friends with kids that think it is 'cool' to put nooses in a tree, so hopefully my children will not be the target of misguided retaliation for hateful, racist acts.

In addition, although the whole incident is tragic, and I wish that those youths had not acted in revenge. I do wish that they had the resources to find more peaceful actions than the one they decided on, but I respect 100% them for standing up. The racism that they grow up under is as old as humanity, and the cards dealt them to escape it are slim to none. So without their actions, I don't believe we would be having this dialogue, and others like us all over. I also think that the proposed sentence is outragous, and a symptom of a deeper racism that Americans as a whole have to wear mental blinders to forget, if we just open our eyes, we can see it everyday.

DocMoreau

(edited spelling/grammer, some content for clarity)


[edit on 31/7/2007 by DocMoreau]

Originally posted by discomfit
The American "justice" system is a joke. Steal a TV, sell some pot, smoke some crack get YEARS in prison. Extort millions of dollars through financial fraud ? Get 6 months in "prison".

while this might be the case with the American Justice System, the system in Louisiana is not the same. Louisiana law is based on civil law.

en.wikipedia.org...

Add the corruption and racism that is rampant in the state and pray you never get arrested in the state.

And for those from The Pelican State, I am not knocking the state. I love it. I went to school in NOLA and would go back every year for an extended visit if I could manage to get away from the family and, more important, if my old man body could handle the pounding it takes when I visit the Big Easy

If you cant do the time...dont do the crime

Jokes aside.
Does seem a bit lengthy for somthing like that though.

making big news right now....charges getting reduced to aggrivated battery.

one mom saying her kid brought a gun to schol but it was an 'accident'....he didn't know it was in his truck

If it were my kid that got beaten and had a $12,000 hospital bill I'd want the book throughn at em no matter what color they are.

I've had black poeple try to intimidate me becuase I'm white. If I were to beat them down I'd get the same punishment if not worse.

Bottom line is no one has the right to put thier hands on another person. Just because thier black and someone racialy intimidated them don't give them a free pass.

twenty two years sound like a perfect sentence....justice is served.

The victim spent two hrs in an E.R., that's it, he was not kept in the hospital for any further treatment.

He attended a school function later that same evening as the incident occurred. This was talked about on Anderson Cooper's show on CNN last night.

If he had been hurt as badly as it is being implied then I doubt he would have been allowed to leave the E.R.. or would have felt like attending a school function the very same day.

Originally posted by DarkStormCrow
What would a proper sentence for these 6 young men be?
(snip) "The victim was struck from behind in a school hallway, knocked unconcious and then beaten by up to 15 other students. (snip)

If the victim was your child what would you think would be a fair punishment?

If the culprit was your child what would you think would be a fair punishment?

I'll tell you what it should not be. Twenty-two years for a teenager. Any teacher will tell you that fights are not uncommon in schools regardless of race and they should be dealt with accordingly. In this case the punishment seems extremely excessive.

The victim was released same day and ready to smile and pose with friends for the school photographers. If the injuries were sever enough to deserve the punishments the alleged culprits initally received then the victim would still have been hospitalized.

Also it was claimed that he used a racist term toward a black student, not that he was simply friends with some other antagonists that hung the nooses. Where they wrong in attacking him? Absolutely...you cannot put your hands on anyone regardless of what they call you...however the sentences they received show a glaring bias in a souther town that's 85% white.

There are even a few white residents who are leaving because of the claimed racism and segregation in the town. Now if even some of the white residents say that it exists too, then there may be a problem.

If any parent is unconcerned at the essential ruining of the life of a child then I weep for all of our young. Ideally it would be best to place ourselves in the positions of other parents and look at all children collectively as our own. A community that does not support it's youth (and we are all in the same community whether we segregate ourselves or not) is doomed to have major issues.

You all realize that earlier in the school year three white students attacked a black student and received suspension. That when a black student was beaten in a party by a group of whites using BOTTLES, among other things, those white students received simple battery charge. Initially the black students were charged with attempted second-degree murder.

The weapon? Tennis shoes.
Which in Jena, make for better weapons than bottles.

If most people are content mete out such harsh judgments and/or support them, then I say be consistent all across the board and not change the rules when you see a face that you can easily relate to. Racism is not dead, injustice is not simply a part of the past and certainly discrimination exists to this day. These issues we should face maturely.

Its a shame that I see so many people on these boards speak of "whining" and "complaining" when any person of color cries foul. Amazingly though...those same people have no problem placing themselves in a position of "victim" to discriminative/elitist forces within a government or any other player in the unproven world conspiracy game.

Perhaps there is more than simple bigotry or racism at play here. Perhaps the school itself is inept and to blame. Why do I think this? The school librarian was quoted as saying that she had no idea what the nooses meant or represented and brushed it off as a prank. A school librarian with no knowledge of the documented long history of southern lynchings?

Either she's feigning ignorance (like the school itself seems to be doing) or she actually doesn't have a clue, in which case the students are smarter than she is and she has no place in a position of authority at a high school. I bet she's never seen a swastika either and wouldn't know what those would mean painted on a tree.

Nice thread...deserves much more attention than the doomsday ones.

Originally posted by Who Dares Wins
If you cant do the time...dont do the crime

Jokes aside.
Does seem a bit lengthy for somthing like that though.

The average pedophile/rapist doesn't get that sort of sentence, and they should.

Don't you find that odd?