If you were to lock up everyone complicit in the racially charged beating in Jena, Louisiana you would have to build a wall around the city. It has often been said that “Society is to blame” for various repugnant crimes. In many cases this is a hollow, baseless excuse. In this particular instance the outdated, segregated society of the Deep South is to blame. Just as no one gets a ticket the first time they exceed the speed limit, so too did a series of poor decisions lead inexorably to this violent end. The tradition of Tolerance for Intolerance was established and allowed to flourish. This cannot be permitted to continue.

The line of guilty characters begins with the school administration. They permitted an unofficial Zone of Exclusivity to exist on public property. College educated men and women should know better. This is the 21st century not the Jim Crow South. The Black citizens of Jena also share in the blame for tolerating such a divisive icon to last more than a week. Some one should have taken a chainsaw to that thing one moonless night. The White Community knows the role they played in perpetuating this provocation.

The only person with a passing grade in this scholastic exercise is the boy who began it all. He recognized the problem represented by this Zone of Exclusion and challenged it. Not in a confrontational manner, he did it the right way. He asked the school for permission to sit under the “Whites Only” tree.

Kudos to the administration for giving that permission, but hold on a minute. Why did they fail to anticipate the problem the tree caused in the first place? Why did they not foresee the fallout from giving a Black youth permission to violate that tradition? And why did they not take action to prevent violence or take down the nooses? The image of the National Guard at an Alabama school comes to mind here.

This is not an isolated case, but it is the first unambiguous glimpse of the the Great Racial Divide to hit the mainstream media in over thirty years. This has created an opportunity to shift the focus of the Black community from divisive political wrangling and to organize for political power in issues that actually concern US! The argument over Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan suddenly pale compared to the revelation of discrimination in our own backyard. I am less interested in CIA leaks than in finding out why these boys were treated so badly. Do we care more about Alberto Gonzales firing rich lawyers, or do we care if our sons can face criminal charges at our local school?

Black America needs to take away two things from this incident. First, this is not the fifties South. We have the Internet, we have digital cameras in almost every pocket. If any Southern small town has a policy of exclusion it should be exposed on the world wide web. Our Black organizations should quickly act to reverse the discriminatory act or at least expose the crime. Next Blacks should demand an answer from politicians courting the Black vote. Hillary and Barak are each counting on our vote yet neither has commented on the Jena Injustice. We need to hold ourselves, our children and “our” party responsible for ending Racial Discrimination in all public places, now.