Thoughts Prompted by the Jena 6

I posted some thoughts about racism in America today over on the DNWA site.

These were prompted by the case of the Jena 6 and the fact, made evident by this case, that the form of institutionalized racism we are dealing with in America today is a lot harder to identify and target with clarity, particularly when compared with forms of racism that existed forty years ago. We need new strategies of protest and change-making, new ways of seeking justice and new alliances with which to advance them.

You don't have to spend much time dealing with the justice system to realize that there is considerable racial injustice. But at the end of the day it was a lot easier to rally the world to the cause of the Greensboro 4, jailed in 1960 for peacefully refusing to leave the Woolworth's lunch counter, than the Jena 6, jailed in 2007 for beating someone up.