Situation in Jena blown out of proportion by media, public outcry

I am so, so, so sick of hearing about this so-called Jena 6.

You can't get away from it. If you turn on the news, it's there. If you pick up a paper, it's staring you in the face.

I picked up The Student Printz Tuesday and it was on the front page. I turned the page and it was in the opinions section. Today, I am not going to practice what I preach, and I am going to put it in the paper one more time just to give a different viewpoint of this overplayed situation. I would love to believe this will be the last time I have to see it, but I know better than that.

I know when this article comes out I will probably be dubbed a racist or worse. I hate to think that's the case because nothing could be further from the truth. I just think it's a shame the human race is capable of hanging nooses in trees or jumping people six on one. But nobody seems to worry about exactly what happened. Everyone is too obsessed with the color of the parties involved to realize crimes were committed on both sides regardless of who is at fault.

First of all, people, please stop crying about how "it's not about race, it's about justice." You're right. It shouldn't be about race, but it has been all along because YOU made it that way. It shouldn't matter if any of those people were White, Black, Asian or Latino. But since these kids happened to be of differing races, YOU turned it into something more than it was. Some kids hung a noose in a tree. Some other kids jumped a kid six on one. These are both crimes and should both be dealt with according to the law, not by vigilantes.

Is it right to hang a noose in a tree just because someone wants to chill out there? No. Is it right for six people to beat one person severely? No. Who cares what color they were? Why does it matter? If all the parties involved were white or if all the parties involved were black, would this be going on? No, it wouldn't.

I went to high school in Petal. There were several trees on campus where different "cliques" of people would hang out. The cool kids hung out under one tree, the gothic kids under another, the loners under another and so on.

If a gothic kid tried to hang out under the cool tree, would he or she return there the next day to find a noose hanging from the tree? No. The cool kids might taunt the gothic kid the same way the gothic kid would tease the cool kids for trespassing on their territory. Unfortunately, these kinds of things happen all the time at high schools.

"It's not about race, it's about justice." On that rationale, then, is it right for six kids to take "justice" into their own hands and beat the hell out of another human being? Hanging a noose in a tree was a stupid mistake, and those kids were suspended from school for it. Maybe that is or isn't enough punishment, but that isn't my call to make - just as it wasn't up to the Jena 6 to extract their own retribution. But there are 20,000 protesters in the streets of Jena, La., blocking up streets and interfering with normal day-to-day operations apparently in favor of vigilantism.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was my last article for this newspaper because of the controversy it will cause. If it is, so be it. I'm tired of dealing with this ridiculous incident and others like it. So let the hate mail pour in. I'm ready to take my final stand on this.