Jena One Plus Five -- And So It Goes

I heard it from another blogger on the telephone a couple of nights ago. Word is that Mychal Bell beat up his girlfriend, resulting in the prior charges he had on his record. Even if this is true, I commented that it's typical of the racist criminal "justice" system in this country that a Black man beating up a Black woman wouldn't be treated as strongly as it probably should be. For the longest time, a European-American woman who crossed the color line and was beaten up by her boyfriend was as good as told that that's what she got. And in his best-selling memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler, Nathan McCall points out the graphic sentencing differences between how Black-on-Black crime (even murder) was dealt with as compared to, say, Black-on-White crimes.

But for those who've been around the just-us system for a while, one of the slickest tricks commonly used (besides the plea bargain, which has turned into an art form) is the practice -- particularly against juveniles -- of "saving" charges for later. In other words, it's as if the prosecutors say, "We don't really care about this situation right now because, you know, this is just the way they are, so we'll just put this one up here on the shelf in case we need it for leverage later." Leverage. Such as in the case of the Jena Six, which may after all have really only been the Jena Five in the first place since there's reason to believe that one of the young men charged didn't even arrive on the scene until the deed was already done.

So the prosecution:

• slam dunks Mychal Bell,


• turns him from a victim into a weapon against not only himself, but against his team mates,


• destroys six young lives while protecting the White racist instigator who most certainly was supportive of the noose-hangers, if not a noose-hanger himself,


• circumvents and then neutralizes community support for the Jena Six,


• and teaches those who don't know better that The Man always has the power, just as he threatened the Jena Six from the beginning.

Carmen D. at All About Race tipped me to all of this. Check it out. And tuck this away for future reference: Carmen's right. We dropped the ball, high-fivin' each other for the march when we needed to be vigilent. This bob-and-weave strategy has been around longer than Br'er Rabbit. Better recognize. And don't be too quick to villainize Bell. If what he did wasn't worth locking him up over when it first came up, why is it worth locking him up over now? Given just the right circumstances, it could be any of us. Even the ones that look like me. If you don't think so, hide and watch what happens now that the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 has passed. The key word in that title is "Prevention" and just how do you suppose the Powers-That-Be intend to accomplish that...hmmm?