Jena: A long way from the garden
D. Anthony Everett, deverett@smu.edu
Issue date: 9/20/07 Section: Opinion
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"Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." Genesis 2: 9, 17 (NRSV)
On Sept. 10, "Blog of the Nation" on the National Public Radio Web site reported that on Thursday, Sept. 20, a court in Jena, LA will sentence a 17-year-old high school football player, Mychal Bell, on an adult conviction of aggravated second-degree battery. The report further states that Bell, a black male, was originally charged with attempted second-degree murder for his part in an assault on a white student at Jena High School, facing up to 15 years in prison.
Bell has been in jail since December of 2006. Black teenage males are often tried as adults in many of the judicial systems throughout the United States, especially when charges of assault are involved. Along with Bell, six other black teenagers have been arrested and charged, four of them as adults. They are now known as the Jena 6.
First reported in the Chicago Tribune on May 20, this case of juvenile justice gone awry began in September 2006. Incoming freshman high school students attended an opening assembly at the school. As part of the description of the campus life, an administrator described a tree on the high school campus as "the tree of knowledge," relating it to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil found in the Biblical scriptures of Genesis 2. Realizing the tree was on the "white" side of campus, a first-year black male student asked a simple question: "Can I sit under the tree?" The instant response was, "Sit wherever you want."
The school is predominantly white in an 85 percent white town. The town, with a population of 3,000, has a high school of 460 students of which 85 are black. Undoubtedly, the student already knew about the problem of racism that existed in Jena.
On Sept. 10, "Blog of the Nation" on the National Public Radio Web site reported that on Thursday, Sept. 20, a court in Jena, LA will sentence a 17-year-old high school football player, Mychal Bell, on an adult conviction of aggravated second-degree battery. The report further states that Bell, a black male, was originally charged with attempted second-degree murder for his part in an assault on a white student at Jena High School, facing up to 15 years in prison.
Bell has been in jail since December of 2006. Black teenage males are often tried as adults in many of the judicial systems throughout the United States, especially when charges of assault are involved. Along with Bell, six other black teenagers have been arrested and charged, four of them as adults. They are now known as the Jena 6.
First reported in the Chicago Tribune on May 20, this case of juvenile justice gone awry began in September 2006. Incoming freshman high school students attended an opening assembly at the school. As part of the description of the campus life, an administrator described a tree on the high school campus as "the tree of knowledge," relating it to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil found in the Biblical scriptures of Genesis 2. Realizing the tree was on the "white" side of campus, a first-year black male student asked a simple question: "Can I sit under the tree?" The instant response was, "Sit wherever you want."
The school is predominantly white in an 85 percent white town. The town, with a population of 3,000, has a high school of 460 students of which 85 are black. Undoubtedly, the student already knew about the problem of racism that existed in Jena.
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