Booboo619 this is what someone else posted in response to a forum member on a another board who expressed similar sentiments to yours.
OK let me pick apart your statements bit by bit:
YOUR STATEMENT: "Guess I'm one of the few people who thought these kids actually deserved SOME punishment."
Had the proper action been taken by authorities in the first place, there would have been no retaliation from the Jena 6 in the first place. Let me ask you a question. How many times is it acceptable to you for someone to be a victim of racist terroristic threats, beating, racial taunting, being threatened with a deadly weapon (while authorities turn a blind eye to it) before taking action yourself? Should they have waited until someone was killed? Would you then think they had the right to defend themselves? Let me remind you this was not once isolated incident. And while you may claim that the white kid got beat up after taunting the black kids and not physically threatening them, the taunts were only the straw that broke the camel's back. It is unfair to those who take this stance as it was an accumulation of many crimes committed against them.
YOUR STATEMENT: "The sad part is people are acting as if it's acceptable to counteract ignorance with violence."
No, people are acting as if when the authorities are not protecting citizens whose lives are being threatened, as they are sworn to do, then there comes a point when one must defend themselves. You are greatly minimizing things to call what the white kids did as only "ignorance".
YOUR STATEMENT: "It only helps to reinforce others perceptions of us".
I am assuming by this statement that you are also black, which upsets me even more. Whose perception are you concerned about, people like this?:
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2007/0...remacist-rage/
No reasonablly intelligent righteous person would look at defending oneself (when the authorites won't) as being a negative thing.
YOUR STATEMENT: "The charges that were levied against them were far too harsh, but these aren't 6 little kids who got picked up and railroaded."
They are six minors who were railroaded by a racist DA while the white perpetrators got a slap on the wrist by the school and no criminal charges from the police. Do you remember the remarks from the DA? After doing nothing about the racist terroristic threat of hanging nooses from the white "tree of knowledge", after a peaceful protest of the blacks student who only sat underneath the "white" tree, the DA then decided it was important enough to give it attention and came to the school accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the black students end their protest. He said, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." Seems he conveniently forgot the criminal acts that precipitated the peaceful protest in the first place.
YOUR STATMENT: "They stomped the shit out of that kid."
I would hardly say they stomped the shit out of him. He was taken down by one punch and kicked a couple times. He was seen at the hospital and released and later that evening attended a social function.
Why no charges when the black kid was beaten up?
How do you arrest someone who takes a gun away from someone who pulls it on them and not charge the person who threatened their lives with the gun at all? And even worse, then charge the victims for taking away the gun!! Had the Jena 6 been truly looking for trouble, they'd have shot that punk right then and there. If anything, we should be applauding the restraint of the Jena 6 after all the BS they went through
