Tales of segregation, nooses and bigotry in Jena are distortions

To Ben Reid, 61, who set down roots in Jena in 1957 and lived here through the civil rights era, "this whole thing ain't no downright, racial affair."

Reid, who is black, presently serves on the LaSalle Parish council. He reads the papers. He hears the talk outside of church on Sundays about how the Jena 6 business is dividing his hometown down racial lines.

He doesn't buy it. ...

Consider:

• The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, say teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.
• Two nooses — not three — were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students "were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them," according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.
• There was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.
• The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days — they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.
• The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African-American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up. ...
  

Most townsfolk, he says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much the same way — that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white, got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark. ...

And they say that though their town's race relations are not unblemished, this is not the cauldron of bigotry that has been depicted.