For the last several weeks my head has admittedly been up my ass in the sand when it comes to what’s going on in the world. If it isn’t discussed on WABE between 5:45 and 6am on my way to the office, I know nothing about it. 12 hour work days and the busy social season are providing unwanted shelter from reality.
Case in point – yesterday at lunch I bumped into a few girls from the office in the lobby of our building. One of them joked as I passed about how she called and told me to wear black, and I agreed, but then paused to dig in – since they were all wearing black.
One of my colleagues went on to tell me about the Jena 6, and I quickly turned into a mouth breathing, astounded and disgusted by the behavior of my countrymen.
For those in the same position I was yesterday, The Jena 6 are young men in the town of Jena, Louisiana. At the high school there in Jena, there was apparently a tree on campus. A tree called The White Tree, beacuse only the white kids at the school could/did gather around it. One day, some young black men stood under it, and the next day there were six nooses hanging from its limbs.
You might think this happened in 1956, but it didn’t. It happened in 2006. Here. In our backyard.
So the young men went back to the tree. I would have. They waited. They challenged the backwards thinking redneckness of it all, and it came. Those white boys came back, and what ensued was a school yard scrap. Nothing worse than what you or I saw in our days of lockers and letter jackets, but with much better cause than the justification for the fights of my youth.
The next chapter is where it gets really mind boggling and perverse: the black youths were arrested and charged with Attempted Murder. One of them, 17-year-old Mychal Bell; remains in jail.
Link love to stories about it on CNN here.
I continued on my day more and more aware of all the folks I crossed paths with wearing black. I was inspired by the unity and the support they presented without saying a word. I heard that Morehouse and Clark sent busses of folks to Jena to participate in the protests. I also hear that since Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was tied up here in Atlanta, he sent representatives to Jena.
Now it’s your turn. What are your thoughts on the situation? Based on a CNN.com online poll, most CNN readers see this as an issue of race, though some of the folks in Jena say otherwise.

Did you wear black yesterday? Did you notice it but didn’t know why? Tell me. I wanna hear.