The Jena Dodge
City Journal | Heather Mac Donald | September 24, 2007
Demonstrators and the media avoid the stubborn truths of black social breakdown.
Let’s assume the worst about Jena, Louisiana, and the charges of attempted murder brought against five black youths for beating a white student unconscious last December: that the district attorney’s indictments were motivated by rank racism, and that the racial tensions in this town of 3,000 are exclusively the product of white animus against blacks. Does it follow that this latest object of frenzy on the media’s racism beat is emblematic of America’s judicial system or the state of race relations today?
That is certainly what the ever-expanding army of racial victimologists and their media enablers would have you believe. Since the Jena story became international news last week, the media, the advocates, and pandering politicians have erupted in an outpouring of seeming joy at the alleged proof—after so much diligent trolling for evidence—that America remains a racist country. Senator Hillary Clinton told the NAACP: “This case reminds us that the scales of justice are seriously out of balance when it comes to charging, sentencing, and punishing African Americans.” Senator Christopher Dodd declared that Jena reveals that “de facto segregation”—in the spirit of Jim Crow—“is still very real” in many parts of America. Britain’s Observer announced that Jena shows “how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America’s deep south.” The New York Times has designated Jena “a high profile arena in the debate on racial bias in the judicial system”—a debate that perhaps not everyone was aware that we were having. J. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said: “I think a lot of people recognize that the criminal justice system grinds down people of color every day. Oftentimes, it’s nameless, it’s faceless. . . . People see Jena as the tip of the iceberg and ask: What lies beneath?” Needless to say, the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have vowed with Biblical thunder to avenge the Jena innocents and force America to own up to its mistreatment of blacks.
. . . more
Wednesday 26 Sep 2007 | Jacobse | Popular culture |
This case reminds me somewhat of the Schiavo case, in the sense the cause of truth would have been better served had potential activists spent more time trying to ascertain the facts of the case before getting all het up over it.
Barker, the kid who was attacked by the six, was exiting a high school building, and was not armed. He posed no threat to any other person. Witnesses reported that Mychal Bell attacked him from behind. Barker fell unconscious. At that point the five others began to beat and kick him. At the time he was taken away by ambulance he was still unconscious, and bleeding from both ears. I have read that the attack was stopped only by the intervention of bystanders, but have not been able to confirm that.
So this was not a “fight” in any reasonable sense of the term. It was an ambush, followed by a beating of an unconscious and defenseless person.
In a situation such as that, the concept of disparity of force becomes relevant. Examples of disparity of force include an adult beating a child, a strong man beating a disabled person, or a much weaker man or woman. It also includes a beating by multiple attackers.
For example, just a few days ago a special ed teacher was charged with aggravated battery — the same crime Jena student Mychal Bell was convicted of — for his abuse of autistic students:
“At the bond hearing before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kay Hanlon, prosecutors said McCarthy appeared to lose control during the first month of school. They said he slammed one autistic boy into a brick wall and forced another to jump on a trampoline for more than half an hour while wearing a weighted vest. They also said he pushed one student into a metal filing cabinet and tied another one to a chair.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-il-teachercharged,0,4075039.story
In other words, from a legal perspective, not all beatings are the same. In the case of disparity of force, there is the real possibility of serious bodily injury or death. So it is not a trivial situation. Were six attackers to beat an adult who was armed with a knife or a legally-carried concealed handgun, the victim would probably be justified in using lethal force to stop the attack.
The fact that Barker did not suffer permanent injury or death was just luck, and does not in any way indicate that the attack was not serious and potentially deadly. (For example, just because someone shoots at you and the bullet just grazes you doesn’t mean that the shooting wasn’t serious.) The attack was serious enough that the victim was knocked unconscious and bled from both ears, which certainly indicates the possibility of serious disability or death.
What of the offender in question? Mychal Bell also had four prior juvenile offenses, including two incidents of battery:
“Bail for the Jena 6 was set at between $70,000 and $138,000. All but Bell posted bond. The judge had refused to lower his $90,000 bail, citing Bell’s criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses — two simple battery charges among them.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/14/jena.six/index.html?eref=rss_law
It was reported that one of the offenses was punching a girl in the face:
“Sources told ESPN that one of those cases was a battery in which Bell punched a 17-year-old girl in the face.”
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3030458
I don’t give a darn what color he is, Mychal Bell is budding predator who should be locked up for a long time. His crime is not mitigated because some white person somewhere didn’t get charged with a crime, nor is it mitigated by the fact that the victim was lucky enough not to die. Bell is a danger to people of all races, and he needs to be taken off the street. But somehow he has been turned into the poster boy for civil rights. Whatever the final outcome in this case, I think this will not be the last time that we’ll be reading about this predator in the newspaper. And it’s beyond me why anyone would shed a tear over this guy being locked up.
Hillary Clinton should go back and read the speech her husband, President Bill Clinton gave on November 13, 1993 at the African- American Mason Temple Church of God in Christ, in Memphis, Tennessee. It was at this church that the Reverend martin Luther King preached his last sermon before his 1968 assasination.
President Clinton:
http://www.clintonfoundation.org/legacy/111393-speech-by-president-in-memphis.htm