Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Holding Out For a Hero

This is an unbelievably important post by Maryland Law Professor Sherrilyn Ifill on the idea of victims of racism as "heroes." Basically, the argument is that people challenging racism have historically been forced to be superhuman figures -- men and women with squeaky clean slates who didn't have a single blemish on their records. Because if they did, that would become the subject of the conversation, rather than the racism being challenged.

Tactically speaking, there's a lot to be said for this approach. But of course, it ends up abandoning the vast majority of people who aren't perfect, who do bad things on occasion, and sometimes deserve (reasonable) punishment. The question in the Jena Six isn't whether the Black kids deserve punishment for attacking their White classmate. Nobody disputes that they do. The question is whether they should be sent away to prison for multi-decade sentences. That, they most certainly don't. As Ifill puts it:
I don’t regard Mychal Bell or the other teens that comprise the Jena 6 as “heroes.” For me, they needn’t be mythic figures. The fact that they are ordinary black, southern high school students who acted inappropriately (seriously beating down a white student who they claim boasted about engaging in racist activity) makes them more powerful symbols. They didn’t respond to what they saw as provocation like “heroes.” Instead, they responded like thousands of 16 and 17-year old black boys would. That’s why the prosecutor’s response – overcharging the case — merits our scrutiny and condemnation. Because black teenagers, like white teenagers, should not be held to “heroic” standards. They should be punished for wrongdoing – in this case seriously assaulting a schoolmate — but the punishment should be proportionate to the crime, to the context, and to the age of the perpetrator and the victim.
The point is that heroes aren’t always or even most often, the victims of injustice. Mostly it’s just ordinary folks, making ordinary, (often) bad decisions. In 2007 we ought to be able to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time: that Wilson and the Jena 6 made mistakes for which they deserved some punishment, and that the prosecutors in Georgia and Louisiana used the law in a way that treated the lives of these black teenagers as entirely expendable.

To paraphrase a remark someone once made about women's rights, the goal now isn't to get a Black Albert Einstein admitted to a local state college. The goal is for a Black schmuck to be treated just the same as a White schmuck.


Anonymous said...

Although aggravated battery is a serious charged, it's unlikley that any membr of the Jena Six, if convicted, will spend "mutliple decades" in prsion. Iin a 2005 case similar to the Jena Six beating, five white South Carolina teenagers who beat up a black teenager were charged and convicted of "second-degree lynching and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature."(There was no actual lynching involved. Second-degree lynching is defined by South Carolina law as any act of violence on another person by a mob when death does not occur. A mob is considered two or more people whose purpose and intent is committing an act of violence on another person.) Like the Jena Six, the white teenagers kicked the victim, 16-year-old Isaiah Clyburn, as he lay on the ground. The attack left the black youth "on the roadside bruised and bloodied from the attack."

The white teenagers received the following sentences: One, who prosecutors said was the person most responsible for the attack, was sentenced to 18 years suspended to six years and 400 hours of public service. Two were
sentenced to 15 years suspended to three years and 300 hours of public
service. And one was sentenced to 15 years suspended to 30 months and 300 hours of community service. A sixth co-defendant, Amy Woody, 17, was also charged with 2nd-degree lynching even though she did not take part in the

In the Jena Six case, Mychal Bell, the person who police suspect is the person most responsbile for the attack, will be tried in juvenile court, where the sentences are less severe. Four members of the Jena Six who were over 17 will be tried as an adult. No charges are expected to be brought against the youngest member of the Jena Six because of his age.

PG said...

The original charges the prosecutor put up would have had Bell and the other students facing up to 100 years in prison. Bell first was tried as an adult, not a juvenile; the original sentence was appealed and overturned on the ground that he should have been tried as a juvenile. If you think the changes in charges and prosecution would have happened absent any concern from parties aside from the teens themselves, you're a lot more optimistic about the justice system than I am (and I'm fairly optimistic). The SC teens were 17 and 18.

Unrelatedly, David, I'm interested in what you think about FIRE's latest fuss. The University of DE does come off as a bit Orwellian...