<p>“I just think that many posters on CC have a very narrow viewpoint of black culture and urban issues due to their own lack of experience. I saw this in the Duke case, and now here.”</p>
<p>What does anyone’s views, or prior experience on black culture and urban issues have to do with their ability to clearly analyse the succession of events that occured in Jena, LA?</p>
<p>Are you saying that “black culture” and “urban issues” made white students hang nooses from the “Whites Only” tree after a black asked if he could sit under it? That it’s the black students’ “culture” that is at fault when the school board decided to make light of this action, and to disregard the emotional and historical implications of those nooses for the black members of the Jena community? Are you saying that it was “black culture” that made the DA threaten black students with “making their lives disappear with the stroke of a pen?” if they didn’t stop making trouble over an “innocent prank”? </p>
<p>Oh forget it. I know you’ve decided to pick up your marbles and go home. It’s probably for the best, especially since you weren’t willing to address any of the other circumstances that led up to the beating of J. Barker, and this case coming to national prominence. You and Razorsharp were asked very specific questions, pointblank, but haven’t thus shown the intellectual honesty to address them, or to acknowledge that this case has always been about much more than a group of black boys beating up a white one. It was about much more long before the Al and Jesse show came to town. But, one thing it was never about is anyone’s “narrow viewpoint of black culture and urban issues”. </p>
<p>There’s nothing “urban” about Jena, LA, btw.</p>
<p>Being as I’m a middle aged black women who experienced school segregation and Jim Crow first hand, I can assure you that my perspectives on black culture are probably more comprehensive than yours will ever be. I’ve never lived in a very urban setting, certainly never what people traditionally mean when they speak of “the ghetto”, but I fail to see what “urban culture” has to do with the goings in a small town in the deep south. </p>
<p>I can accept that you think the DA’s charges of Attempt Murder are Just. You’ve explained why you think that they are. What you haven’t done is address the case in it’s entire context, but sought to limit the discussion only to the things you deem important, and repeatedly accuse others (until very recently) of “excusing” criminal behavior.</p>
<p>It surprised a lot of us that you claimed to be both a lawyer, and to have been “in the trenches” advocating for “disenfranchised groups in various parts of the country”, because you seemed to arduously deny that any sort of disenfranchisment may have been taking place in Jena. And now, after making the claim to both, know more than most people here about “black culture” and “urban issues”, and work for those impacted by these things, you’ve chosen to go home, rather than fully expound on any of it.</p>
<p>Ok. Whatever…:rolleyes:</p>
After all, this whole thing in Jena is only about Mychal Bell, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson…Isn’t it?:rolleyes:</p>