Crime & punishment in black and white

So the other day, the day of the Jena 6 protest, I didn't join in on all the posting about it, but I did wear black to work. Of course, no one asked me about it, because I almost always wear black. So, yeah, it was kind of lame in the 'show support for this issue' department, but I have had (and overheard) several interesting conversations about the whole thing. I'm really tired, I gotta tell you, of hearing white people wondering why this isn't being treated like a black on white hate crime. It just ain't one, so get over it.

On the other hand, I was quite happy to get on an elevator the other day in time to hear this middle-aged white guy with the facial hair of a Civil War re-enactor and the clothes of a biker -- the kind of guy who, around here, you're not surprised at all when you look at the pins on his leather vest and at least one of them has a Confederate flag theme -- anyway, he was saying to a group of worried-looking grandmotherly types, "I don't care, it's not funny. it's not 'just a joke.' You don't put nooses in trees." And so on.

And then other conversations about how surprised white people are that this kind of thing (i.e., the nooses) could possibly still happen. I haven't spoken to any black people who are even remotely surprised that it happened, only surprised that it got as much media attention as it did. With protests! And Rock Stars!

And then the story I heard somewhere about how, in Jena, while tensions were rising, a young white man had brandished a gun at a young black man entering a convenience store. There was a scuffle, and the black man took the gun, someone called the cops, and everybody waited for them to arrive. Whereupon the black man was arrested for stealing a firearm.

Which -- a little more clearly than the Jena 6 case itself, I think -- raises the obvious question "since when is it a crime to defend yourself?"

Which got me thinking I'd heard something about another case like this lately, in which some young women were harrassed by a man, then attacked by him and they ended up charged with assault on account of they fought back.

And behold: the New Jersey 7! [Well, there were 7; only 4 are still incarcerated.] The young women are lesbians, and African-American. The man (also African-American) started saying some of the usual, "hey baby, I want some of that" kind of shit as they passed, and the initial response from the women was along the lines of "no thanks, we're lesbians." Polite, friendly, hostile -- doesn't matter. But so the guy grabbed one of the women -- it was all caught on a security camera in a nearby store -- and her friends tried to help her. The guy spat on them, tossed a lit cigarette in someone's face, pulled out large clumps of hair, and got one of them in a chokehold. Another of the women took a cheap little steak knife out of her purse and attempted to hurt his arm to get him to stop.

There's no indication on the video that she succeeded, and no forensic testing was ever done on her knife. A couple of men stopped by and intervened; one of them apparently had a knife as well. And yeah, the harasser guy did get stabbed, and the gals all got arrested. Three of them I think served 10 months; four of them are definitely still in jail -- one of them was sentenced to eleven years. The men shown on the videotape were never even identified, let alone questioned or charged with anything.

Maybe you're wondering why you haven't heard about this before -- the information is out there: Brownfemipower, for one, has a round-up of posts from around the blogosphere. There are lots more mentions of it, but that's a good place to start to start. Most of the news articles about it (this happened in the summer of 2006) seem to have been taken down, but it wasn't covered with a great deal of vigor, mainstream media-wise.

But then I got to wondering whether this was one of the cases that got old Bill O'Reilly's knickers in a twist about the roving gangs of armed lesbians assaulting innocent men and attaching women and forcing them to go queer. Which, yeah, it was.

I mean, WTF? How many times have you or someone you know recounted a story about being harrassed on the street only to have some guy say "you shoulda kicked him in the nuts," or some such. Basically saying, "you don't have to take that shit, fight back!" But if you're successful, you're the one who's gonna get nailed -- that's the message I'm getting here. And if you fail? Well, chances are you're the one who's gonna get hurt. Or killed. But at least you'll be seen as the victim, not the perpetrator. Ask Sakia Gunn. Or Matthew Shepard.

[Note, this was re-posted (twice, now) to fix links and fix typos, etc. I posted the wrong draft, before.]