Current mood:

bitchy

Today in Civics the Jena Six were brought up yet again (so that the dumb white kids in the class could sympathize with teh poor, opressed white people in Jena, I guess), this time in the form of Jena District Attorney Reed Walters writing a piece for the New York Times OP/ED section. How a racist, backwater sleazebag like him got into the New York Times is a mystery, but his denial and dodging is quite, quite obvious. And the worst part is, after Jason read the piece aloud to the class, nearly half of the white students said that they weren't feeling so hard against him. Which appalled me, because if anything all the bullshit flowing out of that OP/ED should have made them more angry, if they had the ability to not believe everything that comes flying out of the orifices of every white straight cisgendered Christian man.

Walters took his time painting Justin Barker, the white student who got beat up by the Jena Six, as the victim. And no, I don't think he "deserved" to get beat up. But I do think that, given what has already happened to them, the Jena Six should be pardoned of all charges. I don't know about you, but I think having your Big Ten college chances erased almost completely is a pretty crappy punishment. He also conveniently left out the parts where (1) a black student was attacked at a gas station by a white guy, who got a gun out of his car and had it wrestled from him by the black student. The black student got charged with theft of a firearm, and the white guy got off; (2) a few black students were attacked outside of a party by a bunch of white guys who weren't students. The white not-students got off on probation, and; (3) Mr. Walters first charged those kids with fucking second-degree murder when Justin Barker only spent two hours in the hospital and went to a ring ceremony later that night. That kid was nowhere near death, and the prosecution has yet to present evidence that those guys were trying to kill Barker or even came close to it. Mr. Walters also said that he couldn't find any law that would constitute hanging nooses from that tree as a crime, which I think anyone with common sense knows is bullshit.

Here, look at what the fricking FBI has to say:

"[a hate crime/bias crime is] a criminal offense committed against a person, property or society which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin."

Yeah, asshole. Hanging nooses from a tree is a hate crime. Also, look at this:

Institutional vandalism

A. A person commits the crime of institutional vandalism by knowingly vandalizing, defacing, or otherwise damaging the following:

[...]

(3) Any school, educational facility, or community center.

Emphasis mine. That is a Louisiana law. And if you go to the ADL page on hate crimes and click the "State Hate Crime Laws" link on the left sidebar, you'll find that Louisiana has laws covering "Bias-Motivated Violence and Intimidation".

It's high time people realized that this guy is full of shit. He is not doing his job, he is not being fair, and he IS a racist. Yes, he is. Get over it.