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Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 500
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 09:29 am: | 
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I am not sure if this has been posted. Black boys are going to jail for life for sitting under a tree.
The racial demons of the Old South have resurfaced in a rural Louisiana town where black students who tried to sit on the white side of the school yard were met by three hangmen's nooses dangling from a tree.
The students and their parents were outraged by the stark reminder of the mob lynchings which had terrorized Southern US blacks until just a few decades ago.
Months of inter-racial violence followed the decision by a white school superintendent to over-rule the principal's recommendation to expel three white students found to have hung the nooses.
The community became even more divided after a white prosecutor imposed significantly harsher charges on the black youths caught up in the violence.
The head of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union described Jena, Louisiana, as a "racial powder keg" primed to ignite, but some white leaders disagree.
"Race is not a major local issue," said Mayor Murphy McMillan. "It's not a factor in the local people's lives."
Mark Potok, director of the intelligence project for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama which tracks hate groups, said these types of incidents are still far too common in southern American states where racism is ingrained in the social fabric.
"Race is just below the surface in almost every aspect of southern life," Potok told AFP.
"There are a lot of places in the Deep South where (almost) nothing has changed aside from the fact that segregation isn't legal."
Jena's troubles started in September when a few black students tried to challenge the accepted state of things by crossing an invisible color line in the school yard.
They arrived the next morning to see three nooses hanging from the tree they sat under. And the students who hung them were suspended for just three days.
"Adolescents play pranks," said superintendent Roy Breithaupt. "I don't think it was a threat against anybody."
Inter-racial fights broke out at the school and then spilled out into the small lumber and oil town of 3,000, which is 85 percent white and 12 percent black.
Someone set fire to the central wing of the high school in November. Then a black student was beaten for showing up at an all-white party. And a white youth pulled a shotgun on three black teens at a convenience store.
Finally, on December 4, a group of black students jumped a white student as he was coming out of the school gym.
Even though the teen wasn't seriously hurt, six black students were expelled and were charged with attempted second-degree murder and other offenses for which they face up to 100 years in jail.
The white teen who beat a black party crasher was charged with simple battery. The white youth who pulled a shotgun was not charged at all.
In the convenience store incident, the three black teens were arrested and accused of aggravated battery and theft after grabbing the shotgun -- in what they call self-defense.
"There's no doubt about it -- whites and blacks are treated differently here," said Melvin Worthington, the lone black member of the school board.
"The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided."
Uneven delivery of punishment is common across the country, according to a recent report by the New York-based Urban League.
Black men are three times more likely than white men to face jail once they have been arrested: 24.4 percent of blacks arrested in the United States in 2005 ended up in jail compared with 8.3 percent of white men.
They also receive jail sentences that are on average 15 percent longer than whites convicted of the same crime.
The biggest disparity is among men convicted of aggravated assault: black men were sentenced to an average of 48 months in jail, which is 33 percent longer than the average sentence of 36 months received by white men, according to the Urban League's annual State of Black America report.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4862
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 02:54 pm: |
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I'm going to shock some people here.
I'm talking with my sister. She's hot under the collar. A friend of hers, who she has known 30 years (and who EVERYBODY in the family tried to get her to leave alone since the first day she started hanging with her) drove her car and had warrants out on her and didn't have a driver's license. Often time that means they go to jail, your car goes to the impound and you got to pay 3-500 bucks to get it out.
Did I mention that the "friend" didn't tell her that she didn't have a license? Did I mention she done did time in the pentitentiary?
So, I'm resisting the urge to say "I told you so" and she starts telling me about what some neighbors of this "friend" did. A woman neighbor barged into this guys house. He owed her some money or something. The guy assaulted her. The cops came. They found out the victim also had a warrant. The victim goes to jail on the warrant and for First degree Burglary (entering a house with intent to commit a felony) the guy goes to jail for assault.
I'm sitting there thinking-- "Hmmm. I just may have discovered one reason the jails are full of niggas.
I love my folks. But lots of them are into this street thang and are inviting this.
Face it--rarely does somebody go to the pen on their first try--mostly they been living the life.
I still hate Bill Cosby, though, and wish he had gone to jail for raping those women. When the street negroes see thatit doesn't encourage them to do good. |
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