Whitey's tree

Ezekiel Edwards, DMI BLog: Some Things (like racism in our criminal justice system) Never Change

I am going to tell a brief story. Tell me whether you think it takes place in 1957 or 2007. There is a small town of under 3,000 people. There is a high school in the town. There is a tree at the school known as the "white tree", because only white kids sit under it. A black student asks school officials for permission to sit under the "white tree". The student receives permission. A group of black students then sit under the "white tree". The next day, three nooses, in school colors, are hanging from the "white tree". Three white students are found responsible. The high school principal recommends expulsion. The superintendent of schools, who is white, instead suspends the students for three days, seeing the nooses as no more than a "youthful stunt". "Adolescents play pranks. I don't think it was a threat against anybody", says the superintendent.
 
Black students organize a sit-in under the "white tree" in protest, believing that the students who hung nooses as race-based intimidation were given indifferent slaps on the wrists. The white District Attorney comes to the school. He brings police officers with him. At the school assembly, the District Attorney threatens the black students who had protested. He tells them he can be their best friend or worst enemy. He says that if they continue agitating about an innocent prank, he could "take away (their) lives with a stroke of (his) pen."

A few months later, a black student shows up at a white party. He is beaten. One white person is arrested and charged with simple battery. The next day, at a convenience store, a young white man pulls out a shotgun in a confrontation with young black men, including the youth beaten up at the party. The black youths wrestle the shotgun away from the white man. The black youths are arrested. No charges are filed against the white man...

And so it goes on... read the whole thing

Via Tom Watson