Letters to the Editor | Injustice of Jena can't be ignored

As students of American incarceration, we feel compelled to address some of the issues raised by our peer, Nick Inzucchi, in his letter to the editor entitled, “No clear justice in Jena 6 case” (9.28.07). Although we took issue with several aspects of the letter, we are most concerned by how the author, like many in the news media, ignores the importance of social and historical context in the case of the six people being charged with attempted murder and other exaggerated allegations.

Though Inzucchi is worried that justice is not being served for white student Justin Barker, he ignores the gross injustice committed against black students Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey, Jesse Beard, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw. It is illustrative of ongoing biases and irregularities in the court system that despite an appellate court finding Bell’s conviction of attempted murder void because he was wrongly tried as an adult, he is still spending his days in jail instead of pursuing an education. What is troubling is that Inzucchi discusses these issues but does not acknowledge their implications.

Another point Inzucchi disregards is that of the nooses. He writes, “No one had to guess at the message being sent,” but further reflection is in fact desperately required. As Ida B. Wells and other anti-lynching crusaders show us, lynching was not simply capital punishment committed against un-tried, mostly innocent people. It was ghastly, prolonged torture and a widely attended spectacle for white men, women and children who would fight to collect the murdered person’s ashes and bones as mementos. News of lynchings was shamelessly reported in the media, injecting fear of bodily harm into all black Americans.

Like its historical precedent, it is clear that the display of three nooses was not one isolated expression of white supremacy, but a manifestation of a wider attitude.

As in the past, the government continues to condone such unequivocal acts of hate and threatened violence. The students who hung the symbols of violent death were hardly punished once their parents complained to the school board, displaying the entrenched racism of the system, which Inzucchi treats as trivial. It is hard for us to understand how one could believe that race should not “be at the forefront of this public debate.”

An important fact of the Jena 6 situation is that Bailey, one of Barker’s attackers, was badly beaten by several white students at a party a few weeks before this incident. Those who assaulted Bailey were never tried with any serious charges. Indeed, the motivation for Bailey to attack Barker was that Barker mocked him for having been beaten up at this party. While Inzucchi and others are comfortable calling Mychal Bell and the other boys “repeatedly violent criminals” acting out “juvenile gang mentalities,” no such accusation is made towards any white students or the adults who protect them. While we all agree that violence is not the correct way to solve anything, there were several violent actors and acts of violence, and yet none of the white people involved are called violent criminals or spending time in jail. The reaction to the case of the Jena 6 is not only a response to the injustice of this incident, but also to the biases of the criminal justice system as a whole.

The United States’ prison industrial complex, in which huge quantities of money are diverted from education and social programs into an exploitive prison system, is a system that overwhelmingly incarcerates people of color, especially Latino and black men. We see in Jena that what black students do is considered criminal, and what white students do is not. The wider historical trend at play is that those crimes most likely to be committed by people of color are those that carry the harshest sentences.

Inzucchi asks us to “resist the seductive rhetoric and think that placing time, money and effort behind repeatedly violent criminals might be totally impetuous.” In fact, there is little to no time, money, or effort to support people labeled as criminals—unless you count the vast amount used to keep them in cages.

—Students of Sociology 281: Imprisonment and the Prisoner