Protesters converge on Jena, La. amid racial tensions

Sharpton: Congress should grill Jena DA - Yahoo! News

So many things to comment on about this story. I don't know where to begin, so let's start at the top and work our way down.

The crowd broke into chants of "Free the Jena Six" as the Rev. Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens.

Any story or issue with Al Sharpton involved is bogus. Sorry to say, the man has cried "race" too many times. I think that when the sky does finally fall, he should bear its weight for he brought it down.

Sharpton told the Associated Press that he and Reps. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and William Jefferson, D-La., will press the House Judiciary Committee next week to summon the district attorney to explain his actions before Congress.

William Jefferson? The guy who put $90,000 in his freezer for safekeeping? This guy has zero credibility.

"What we need is federal intervention to protect people from Southern injustice," Sharpton told the AP.

Did he just slander the entire South?

The six black teens were charged a few months after three white teens were accused of hanging nooses in a tree on their high school grounds. The white teens were suspended from school but weren't prosecuted. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder. That charge was reduced to battery for all but one, who has yet to be arraigned; the sixth was charged as a juvenile.

Finally, we get to the story!

The beating victim, Justin Barker, was knocked unconscious, his face badly swollen and bloodied, though he was able to attend a school function later that night.

Sounds like attempted murder was over the top, if the victim was able to attend a school function the same day of the "beating."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke to one crowd. Dennis Courtland Hayes, interim president and CEO of the NAACP, was also there.

Jesse Jackson? He's in the same league as Sharpton.

Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, described the scene as reminiscent of earlier civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people."

Has there been a dumber statement than this on this topic?

Walters said he didn't charge the white students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no Louisiana law under which they could be charged. In the beating case, he said, four of the defendants were of adult age under Louisiana law and the only juvenile charged as an adult, Mychal Bell, had a prior criminal record.

"It is not and never has been about race," Walters said. "It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions."

Um, I think the DA did his job. The attempted murder charges may have been ridiculous (though, if one tries to kill another with a baseball bat and misses, it's still attempted murder, right?), but the story of the nooses? Not sure that ranks as anything other than -- albeit sick and twisted -- a threat. Did anybody try to put anybody else in the nooses? Some of these same people decrying the noose display would have a hard time reconciling their reaction to this and their reaction to displaying other symbols as a freedom of speech, guaranteed by the US Constitution.

"We all have family members about the age of these guys. We said it could have been one of them. We wanted to try to do something," said Angela Merrick, 36, who drove with three friends from Atlanta to protest the treatment of the teens.

Seems to me that this argument only holds water if at least one of the "Jena 6" was falsely accused. Are we sure that any of the six youths weren't a part of the battery (and, in fact, it was a battery, even if the white boy "deserved it" which is not clear either. Did he hang the nooses? Did he threaten anybody? Nobody's talking about that)?

Race has been and always will be an issue. Sorry to say. People always target differences and race is one of the most obvious differences. So is weight. Some fat people dislike thin people and vice versa. Some blondes don't like brunettes. Some women hate men. Some people are stupid. Since we can't "cull the crop" of stupid people, racism and other "-isms" will always exist.

We can only hope that there are less racists tomorrow than there were today. This type of thing doesn't advance that cause, it worsens it.

Until the world stops seeing color, people are going to focus on it.