Blinded By The White: OJ Simpson vs. The Jena Six

By Sally Kohn, AlterNet. Posted September 20, 2007.

Why is it that mainstream white media and white folks in general are so obsessed (once again) with OJ's guilt but paying little or no attention to the innocence of the Jena Six?

Of course, we all know about OJ's recent arrest. It's been all over the news. But if you don't know about the Jena Six, you're not alone. On USAToday.com, for instance, there are four times as many recent news stories about OJ as there are about the Jena Six.

As I'm writing this, the town of Jena, Louisiana --- population 3,000 --- is having a civil rights rally today with an expected 50,000 demonstrators from across the country. But OJ Simpson is on the front page of USA Today site.

In the small town of Jena last fall, two black high school students sat in a schoolyard under a tree. The tree was known as the "white tree" because only white kids are allowed to sit under it. The day after the two black students defied this unspoken rule, nooses were hung from the tree. The school principle dismissed it as a "prank". Black students protested by sitting under the tree, in growing numbers. The District Attorney came to the school and threatened them, saying, "I can take away your lives with the stroke of a pen."

There was a series of violent incidents were white students attacked black students. The government and school administrators ignored those. But when a white student was beaten up by six black students in a schoolyard fight --- after provoking the black students with racist taunts --- the District Attorney charged the black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They were charged in adult court. Meanwhile, the white student they beat up suffered only minor cuts and bruises. One of the black students, Mychal Bell --- age 16 --- has been in prison since December. Last month, an all-white jury decided that Bell was guilty --- not guilty of beating up a student who racially taunted him, but guilty of attempted murder.

It reminds me of the African American five-year-old in Florida earlier this year who was acting up in kindergarten so the teacher called the police and the little girl was handcuffed and arrested and taken to jail. Or countless other examples. How is it that white folks are so predisposed to presume that black folks are sinister and guilty and yet equally as quick to deny the pervasiveness of racism in every crevice of our society and rail against affirmative action and other remedies to structural injustice?

At the time of OJ Simpson's trial for allegedly murdering his ex-wife and her friend, polls showed that most white people thought Simpson was guilty while black people thought he was innocent. Another poll conducted 10 years after the Simpson verdict found the same thing.

What gives? Why in case after case do blacks and whites see things so, well, black and white? Racial profiling is a documented phenomenon; studies show that African Americans are far more likely to be arrested and convicted of crimes than whites who commit the same offenses. People of color recognize that the system is biased. Why can't whites? And why can't whites recognize their own role in perpetuating that bias --- not only directly but also indirectly by denying that that such racism even exists?

See more stories tagged with: racism, justice, jena six

Sally Kohn is the director of the Movement Vision Project of the Center for Community Change, which is interviewing hundreds of activists across the country to determine the progressive vision for the future of the United States.

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