The Blog of toussaint

People who know me and where i am from keep asking me why i have not blogged about the Jena six.  They ask that because they know that i grew up right down the road from Jena in Monroe,La  and that i am black/indian.  We used to play Jena in football and i bet you that most of the protesters that are down there today will be staying in hotels in Monroe because Jena is a no horse, dying cotton town with very few rooms for rent. 

i did not want to write about this story partly because i did not want to divulge my race and gender on this blog because i feared that people would read my words through the lens of race and would conclude that i think a certain way because of my race.  But then i thought that most of the people that think that way probably would not be reading this blog anyway. But ask yourself, what did you think my race was before i told you?

Let me set the mood for a second so you will know where i am coming from on this story before i lay out what i think.  My first crush on a teacher was a lady that i thought was white and she was from Jena.  She is beautiful, she has the whitest skin i had ever seen, like porcelain, piercing blue eyes and fire red hair.  She is more than six feet tall and had a butt like a black woman and breasts that made you just want to lay on them and take a nap.  She was also one of the smartest women i have ever met to this day.  She has her doctorate in special education, a masters in biology, a masters in economics and her b.s. in math.  But for some reason she was teaching the gifted and talented class at Jefferson Jr. High in Monroe,La.  i did not want to be in the gifted class because everyone teases the smart kids so i gave her hell every chance i got to try to get kicked out, but she would never get upset or send me to the Principal's office.  She just kept being sweet as punch and working with me.  One day we had an assignment to write a poem, and me being the radical that i am, wrote one about being black in the south and how racist i thought all white people were at the time (i now know that most people are decent and don't care what your race is but at the time i was very bitter because of the treatment i had received after moving to Monroe from Los Angeles).  After she read my poem she called me in to talk to me about it.  She told me something that made my jaw hit the floor, she said "Toussaint, believe it or not, but I know how you feel because where I am from I am considered black." She explained that she had a great great grandmother that was black and in Jena that made you black because they believed that if you had one drop of black blood in you that you were contaminated.  She told me that at school she was made to check the black box on the forms for free lunch and when the other kids found out about it they teased her relentlessly and she had never had a date until she got to college because all the boys were afraid that they would be called a "nigger lover", the fate that befell any white boy that so much as looked at a black girl in Jena.  She told me that she was beat up several times just because her great great grandfather had nerve enough to have kids with a black woman and actually give them his last name.  Well, as you might imagine that story broke my heart and made me love her even more and explained why she taught at a school on the black side of town and why i later found out that she married a black man.  i love her to this day and on the very, very rare occasion that i go home to Monroe, i always stop by to she her.  She teaches at the university in town now but she still teaches at my former school too.

 Just one more thing on background,  up until a few years ago Jena still had separate proms for black and white students and when they had elections for student presidents, if a black candidate won he/she would only be allowed to be vice-president.  Now that i have given you a little flavor of Jena, let us get back to the matter at hand. 

This whole mess started because a black student had nerve enough to sit under the "white people's tree".  There is an old tree on the campus that the white kids call their own and they hang out there during lunch and during a period called t.a.(this is a 15 min. break, and to this day i don't know what t.a. stands for).  The next day someone thought it would be funny or a warning to hang some hangman's nooses on the tree.  Well, times they are a changing and when 6 football players found out who did it they kicked his butt.  The story should end here with suspensions or being kicked off the football team or something along those lines, but the racist prosecutor in town charged the 6 with attempted murder.  Come on, if you don't think that is racist, you should at least think that it is going over board.  Kids have fights at school every day and most of the time no one is arrested.  While this type of behavior should not be tolerated, this is a part of growing up and should be dealt with by teachers and parents.  If this had happened when i was in school the asst. principal would have waited until you were dressed out in gym class in those thin little shorts, called you to the office, and paddled your behind until you understood what you did was not such a good idea.  Now, the asst. principal would be facing charges himself if he did such a thing.

Let me conclude this ugly episode with this message: there is a reason why i don't live in Monroe anymore. (By the way if you ever find yourself in Monroe, it is pronounced Munroe). i decided long ago to let the racists have their little dying towns.  There is nothing going on in these towns worth fighting for, and i suggest any non-white people who live in them to move and join us in the real world.  i would never let my children grow up in such an ignorant, backwards environment for fear that they would think that this is how the world operates and that it is acceptable to treat people different from you as being less than you.  These decaying towns should be left to there own vices and the people should be left to inbreed with each other until their genes become so recessive as to go extinct.  In short, it may surprise you to know that i have little sympathy for people who put themselves and their children through this nightmare of an experience.   It is only ignorance and the fear of the unknown that makes black people stay in these places and they have only themselves to blame when this kind of crap happens.  The parents of these kids undoubtedly grew up in Jena and know what kind of people they are dealing with, and have no one to blame but themselves for helping to perpetuate this atmosphere.  And, the protesters that are down there now should know that they are wasting time and money fighting a situation that is never going to change.  While you are there the Mayor and people on the street that get interviewed by the media will undoubtedly say this is a terrible situation and does not represent what they are all about.  They will say we get along down here and nothing like this ever happens, just like they said in Jasper,Tx.  But as soon as the lights are turned off things will go right back to the way things have always been.  Whites on one side, blacks on the other, and never the twain shall meet.  And as long as whites feel like they have the power and are in control, life will move along at its usual snail's pace until someone else gets the bright idea they are going to change something.