Racists Gather In Jena

While millions of Americans of all races celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King yesterday, we were reminded that old-fashioned in-your-face racism still exists in this country.

The Mississippi-based racist group, Nationalist Movement, held a demonstration in Jena (La.) yesterday. About 50 supporters of the racist group showed up for the rally. Twice as many counter-demonstrators were there.

Evidently, the group thought they would have some support in Jena (which gained national notoriety because of the racial-insensitivity of their police and District Attorney in the case of the Jena 6). However, to their credit, the people of Jena did not show up to support the racists. In fact, they tried to prevent the rally by charging the group $10,000 (but had to back down when threatened with a lawsuit).

The racists have to be embarrassed at the pathetic turnout they had. The only thing they accomplished was to remind the rest of us that they still exist and must be opposed.

In a country that prides itself on free speech, these jerks have the right to meet and to speak. But the rest of us also have the right to label them as the scumbags that they really are.

Racists Coming Out Of The Woodwork

The plight of the Jena 6 has been big news recently all over the country. Last week, it resulted in thousands of people going to Jena for peaceful demonstrations to protest the unfair actions of the local officials there. However, the story is also having another effect -- one that is unwanted by most decent people.

The story is also bringing racists back out into the open. These racist kooks have been keeping a lower profile for the last few years, but this story seems to have emboldened some of them.

In Jena, while many of the peaceful demonstrators were waiting to board buses and leave after the demonstrations, two young white men tied a couple of nooses to the back of their pickup and kept driving past the demonstrators. It was an obvious attempt to intimidate those calling for racial justice.

Jena police stopped the duo and arrested them, after finding a gun and brass knuckles in addition to the nooses. It turned out to be an 18 year-old and a 16 year-old from the area. The 16 year-old claimed to be in the Ku Klux Klan, and actually had KKK tattooed on his chest.

In another incident, the FBI is investigating lynching threats on a Virginia-based website. The website lists the phone numbers of the families of the Jena 6 "in case anyone wants to deliver justice". The website also features a swastika and is full of racial slurs. It belongs to a member of the American National Socialist Workers Party -- a right-wing racist group.

I believe the prosecutor and judge in Jena don't think they are acting in a racially-biased way, but they're wrong. They just need to look at who their supporters are and who their opponents are. They would find that most decent people think they are wrong, while the racist kooks revel in their decisions and actions.

People aren't asking them to ignore those who break the law. They just want them to be fair, and treat white and black lawbreakers equally. Why is that so hard to do?

America - Still A Racist Country

There are those who believe that since our government has outlawed some blatant racist acts in the United States, we have solved our racial problems. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Racism will never be conquered as long as it resides in the hearts of many Americans. Consider the following stories.

You may have heard of the "Jena 6". Jena, Louisiana is a town of about 4,000 citizens, about 85% of whom are white. There is a tree at the high school called the "white tree". It is where white students congregate. One day an Afro-American student sat under the tree. The next day three nooses were discovered hanging from the tree.

The principal tried to suspend the students who put the nooses there, but he was over-ridden by the school board and the district's superintendent. They claimed it was just a "harmless prank", and gave the offenders an in-school suspension lasting three days.

Naturally, this created ill-feelings between white and black students and numerous fights broke out over a several week period. When one white student bragged in school about how a black student had been beaten, he was attacked after school by 6 black students. He was not seriously injured, and returned to the school that same night for a ceremony, but the 6 black students were arrested.

Throughout the semester of several fights, no white student was charged with anything more than a misdemeanor. However, these 6 black students were charged attempted murder. Even though the charges were finally reduced, they were still convicted of felonies and face the possibility of many years in prison.

They are now known as the "Jena 6", and their unfair treatment shows that racism is alive and well in America -- even in our educational and governing institutions.

But Louisiana is not alone. In West Virginia, a 23 year-old black woman was kidnapped and held for days by several whites. She was beaten, stabbed, sexually abused, called racial epithets, and forced to eat rat and dog feces and drink from a toilet. Fortunately, someone tipped the police and they rescued her, or she would have probably eventually been killed.

The FBI says they are considering charging the six white criminals with a hate crime. I don't know what there is to consider. Of course it's a racially-motivated hate crime! These cretins need to be thrown so far back in the jail that they never see daylight again.

These are just two cases among many, but they prove the point. This country doesn't just have a racist past, it has a racist present. Unless good and decent people of all races come forward to stamp out this evil, it will also have a racist future.