I noticed that John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute fellow and typically the arch-enemy of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton crowd, wrote a column in the NY Sun today in favor of the Jena 6 protests. It's here Link
The piece has McWhorter sounding almost like a Nation columnist:
If a white mechanic in Queens thinks black people aren't as intelligent as whites, black people can go on with their lives. However, when white officials act upon a sense that what merits a slap on the hand for whites merits decades of confinement for blacks, they contribute to the fact that almost half of America's prisoners are black. In stunting the lives of black men, they help create fatherless communities with young boys on their way to becoming statistics themselves. Furthermore, they feed the defeatist ideology that cherishes decrying racism over teaching black people how to thrive in an imperfect but negotiable world.
....
Half-black prisons pollute, distract, and constipate our national conversation on race.
To the Jena protesters today, then, please make noise.

Why are the Jena 6 not being charged with a hate crime... if 6 whites beat a black it would be.

there is alot moe to this story too..
look at the gag order the judge has put on defendents and families

oh and i'm going to home depot to buy a white only tree, lol thats so stupid

I read Ms Martin's piece and she has based her article on information that is not accurate.

The case in question is interesting because it shows that we want to relieve racism, but then when something like this comes along we use it as a crutch. In this article she states that fights broke out between the groups until it escalated to an unconcious end. Is this racism or bad education, and poor control of children. Maybe a little of both. Racism is going to be around, as she stated football games in the south are heated and each team pits different comments against eachother, much like racial slurs do today. Do we think that the racial bigotry comes from white america and is solely independent from other races. Classic example my friends, who happen to be black, call me white boy as a means of classification. Something different from them. If someone heard me call them black boy, I would be deemed racist. A follow up to this is that I am not white, I am half asian. It is just a racial classification, or scientifically concentration of Melanin and changes in DNA. As for the nooses, this is in bad taste for sure. Anything like that is really offensive, but if someone put up a sign on the tree called internment camp, or boat from asia, white supremacist hicks I would not automatically look for a fight. I would dismiss this as a person who is angry about something of which I cannot control. It would affend me, but not to the point to beat that person up to within an itch of his life. My point is that we can control our view point we don't need to make a political statement bringing to light the uneducated and historic views of people who are afraid of racial differences. We also don't need to make words or actions into a physical confrontation. Segregation is a classification factor, that is human nature to define something in order to classify it in our own minds what things are. In fact when we racially identify something it is in fact classifying something because we know that there is no other difference. Consider a black, brown, and white ball sitting next to eachother. How would you define the differences? Racial hatred through sharpton and others seems to create a larger divide. One of the largest groups is the NAACP. They stand for colored people, yet I have had run ins with them making racial statements against white, asians, etc. If you claim to be an association for the colors of the human race, you can't back that up by being racist. Should racism be abolished, it is a losing battle, because we need to define eachother. There are too many people to define by their personal characteristics. But we can learn to be disenchanted by someones actions or words and not physically attenuate those actions. So I think the Jena 6 should be charged and actions should be taken. Again if someone were to say things against other races, like the NAACP, that doesn't mean that I will go and beat them up. They are just an uneducated group that determines their own classification to understand. Sometimes it just takes time to comprehend that a ball, no matter what color, can bounce and roll just the same.

In my eyes all this is wrong. This a crude and unusual punishment. Only thing the boys did was fight for what they believed in... and it's about time. What was the purpose of Martin Luther King movements... nothing because nothing has changed. This is always going to be a problem but we have to stick together and fight for whats right.

Fact, Mychal Bell is a thug! Mychal Bell has been arrested multiple times for violent assalts, and was on probation when he and his friends beat the hell out of a classmate. Mychal Bell, like Michael Vick, has continued to skirt justice only because he is a football star.

Poor lemmings being led over the cliff!

Think for yourselves people!

Can only whites be racists? If a group of whites protested to release six white boys who beat a black boy, it would be seen as an egregious act. Do we really want to gap the racial divide? If so, start by holding everyone accountable for their actions. Stop listening to those is support of a political agenda rather than racial equality. Has anyone at these demonstrations asked for equity? No, the Reverends jackson and Sharpton are there to promote their agendas. What they should do is call for justice for the boy that was beaten and acknowledge that acts of racism by whomever, regardless of race, only lead to animosity.

The jena 6 makes my hair stand up. I have a whole different definition of racism...racism to me is when we start picking a color to name a person and then invite Sharpton to join. You hear it all the time, "a white man did this, a black man did this..." its sad, but those who cry racism are the ones who are portraying the very essesnce of it.
And what of the boy who was beaten unconscious and then kicked while he was out? Was he green and polka dotted, or does it really matter, after all.
the way I see it, a boy was beaten by six other boys. Viciously and animalistic. They should be punished accordingly. God help us all.