Justice.

Of all the words that have had any semblance of meaning since Black people were mercilessly brought to the United States, justice is the word that has had the most lasting effect. Not the n-word. Not racism.

Justice.

Black people have been searching for justice for hundreds of years. Sadly, we’ve yet to find any. The Jena 6 is a prime example of the lack of justice that America see’s fit to don upon Black people. Everything about that case just reeks of differential treatment and outright arrogance on the part of the prosecutors of LaSalle Parish in Louisiana.

It reminds me of the movie “Ghosts of Mississippi” where Byron De La Beckwith tells the Assistant DA Bobby DeLauder that “no jury in the state of Mississippi would convict a white man of killing a Black man.” Sure that was 1963 (initially) and he was acquitted of killing Medgar Evers at the time but for some reason those words just resound to me.

Those 6 young men were arrested for what amounts to a fistfight. The white student was up and running and attending events that very evening yet Louisiana is ready to put these young men in jail for damn near life? Mychal Bell, the first convicted, had his charges thrown out for battery and assault because the state claims he should have been tried as a juvenile.

Hmm…what about the people who put the nooses up? That’s a hate crime. This whole fucking country has issues. Hell, in Darfur, AMERICA was loathe to call what was happening genocide, because that means that we’d have to get involved. Sure, we can police the Middle East, but to hell with Africa.

Justice.

I’ll always contend that race relations in this country will remain the way they are now forever. Black people think everything is racism and white people think nothing is racism and that’s about as close to the middle as we’ll ever get. But what I’ve always wondered is why white people seem to ignore the impetus for our reasoning? Black people have been lynched for doing so much as looking at a white woman without even a hint of fear of paying for it.

In layman’s terms: for hundreds of years a white man could kill a Black man with reckless abandon because they had a justice system on their side. Not even just on their side; gleefully on their side. For fuck’s sake, any white man could walk into a courtroom with a smile and some sweetened tea and just wait for “justice” to prevail. That justice would be the white man getting acquitted for crimes he might actually have admitted to.

Justice.

How am I, a Black man raised to believe in people supposed to feel when I know that people can and will justify any and everything. A few weeks ago at the University of Maryland-College Park, Maryland’s flagship institution of higher learning, a noose was hung from a tree near the Black student union. Amazingly it allegedly stayed there for a week before it was taken down. I’d be willing to bet my life on it that for as many Black people who were offended and even scared that something like that would happen on a very diverse campus, as many white students claimed it was just a prank and not to take it so seriously.

A noose. A symbol of white power for hundreds of years. It symbolised the white man’s ability to get away with murder. It also symbolised the fear that Black people had to endure because ultimately, a white man could get away with murder.

Mind you, I recognize that the system was more to blame than merely the individuals involved. However, what kind of people could accept a system that devalued human life in such a manner. The problem is that in America, the system trumps all. Everybody can hide behind the law. Almost 600,000 people in the District of Columbia have no elected voting representation in Congress because of the “law”. Forget what’s implicity right. Nevermind that whatever advantage the addition of a voting member in the House for the District would totally be offset by an additional House seat in Utah. It violates the “law”. And that is what’s most important. Laws intended to protect and serve. However, residents of the district don’t get a say in the laws they are ultimately held accountable to.

Justice.

As a young Black man I have an unhealthy distrust for the justice system. I always worry that if I’m stopped for anything other than a routine traffic stop, I’m going to jail and I might never see the light of day again. Why do I think so negatively? Because it’s a real possibility. The stakes are so high for Black people, and men in particular, that achieving a certain age is akin to an actual accomplishment. I can actually brag on never having been to jail. That is a problem.

We live in a country where justice has two prongs: white justice as displayed in Jena, Louisiana (lest we forget that a gun was pulled on a group of Black students yet no charges were filed…let me try that on somebody and see what happens), and Black justice as displayed in Jena, Louisiana where six young men who got into a fist-fight were charged with attempted murder (later reduced to battery and assault).

Further, let us not forget that it all started because there was an actual “white” tree in Jena, Louisiana. A situation where until the status quo was questioned, all people were just as happy to live their lives in their own version of American reality. If anything, this entire saga just teaches us that as Black youth, if you attempt to challenge the status quo that the American way of life accepted, you just might find yourself staring down the barrel of a 25 to life.

I hope and pray that all of the demonstrating gets the message across. I’m proud of all of those individuals who made their way to Jena to protest and demonstrate. My hat’s off to them. I’m just sad that in 2007 in America, a nation that feels we can trumpet our way of life across the world as a paragon of the right way to do things, we still have a situation where a Black man’s life can mean so little.

And there are just way too many examples to illustrate that point.

Justice.