[Dean's World] Andrew Cory: Fortunately, Racism isn't a problem anymore

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Posted by Andrew Cory:
Fortunately, Racism isn't a problem anymore
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1183820906.shtml


   Strange fruit of a Peculiar institution:

     In a small still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an
     all white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white
     prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a
     trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who
     had been making racial taunts was hit by black students.

     The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents
     starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the
     "white tree" at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree.
     The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the
     white victim were all on one side of the courtroom.

   [...]

     The trouble started under "the white tree" in front of Jena High
     School. The "white tree" is where the white students, 80% of the
     student body, would always sit during school breaks. In September
     2006, a black student at Jena high school asked permission from
     school administrators to sit under the "white tree." School
     officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did. The
     next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the
     "white tree." The message was clear. "Those nooses meant the KKK,
     they meant 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang
     you till you die,'" Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students,
     told the London Observer.

     The Jena high school principal found that three white students were
     responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of
     schools over-ruled the principal and gave the students a three day
     suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt.
     "Adolescents play pranks," the superintendent told the Chicago
     Tribune, "I don't think it was a threat against anybody."

   I would bet that the jury members don't really think of themselves as
   racist. I would bet that friends would describe the school
   superintendent as a "nice guy". Evil is banal; injustice is
   unamerican...

   Read the whole, [1]terrible thing.

References

   1. http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/07/black-nooses-hanging-from-white-tree.asp