Unbelievable. Associated Student Government passed legislation this week to condemn charge of aggravated second-degree battery brought against the Jena Six. First, regardless of the issue, Northwestern’s student government should not be passing politically weighted bills that have nothing to do with our campus. There are lots of problems in the world that ASG could be rallying behind, but that is not ASG’s purpose. They are supposed to be concerned with problems on our campus.
Secondly, the Jena Six case is hardly one that deserves attention from the student body. Don’t gasp at me quite yet, you probably don’t know all the facts.
The Jena Six is a group of black males who attacked a fellow white high school student, Justin Barker, in a gym on Dec. 4, 2006. They barricaded the exit from the gym, knocked him unconscious from behind and proceeded to stomp and kick him in the face as he lay defenseless. One attacker was sent to prison, not just for the attack, but because he had violated his probation from four prior violent crime arrests.
But weren’t they provoked? Jesse Yang, a sophomore in the ASG meeting made sure to take note of the “three nooses (that) hung from that… tree.”
But in statements from the witnesses and defendants of the Jena 6 case, there was not one mention of the nooses or the tree (also, there were only two nooses). The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, Donald Washington, further confirmed that the nooses were unrelated in the attack. This is probably because the nooses were unrelated to Barker, and because the noose incident occurred three months before the attack.
Furthermore, independent investigations by the school, the police and the FBI all confirmed that the motivation behind the nooses was actually a prank aimed at the school’s rodeo team, an idea they had gotten from watching episodes of “Lonesome Dove,” an ’80s television series about Texas rangers. Although they were ignorant of the prank’s racial implications, they were still severely punished.
Beyond the irrelevancy of the nooses, however, is the question of why people would want to make the Jena Six martyrs. With the passing of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott that MLK himself led. This prolonged act of civil disobedience was non-violent and ultimately succeeded; no whites attacked, no busses burned, no riots.
By rallying support behind the Jena Six, ASG is supporting violence as an appropriate response to racial tensions, undermining the nature of MLK’s legacy. Justin Barker was not involved with hanging nooses. He was maliciously attacked due to his skin color. Is it proper to celebrate this act and vindicate those who committed the crime?
ASG needs to question whether or not they want the icons of the civil rights movement such as Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges to be replaced with criminals like the Jena Six. We should follow MLK’s belief that violence is not the answer.
Weinberg freshman Cody Kittle can be reached at r-kittle@northwestern.edu.
