Jena 6 and Rutgers

I've not written about this before because I did not want to add to the noise. But I believe that this nation is not being very reflective of its identity and problematic racial relations.

Let's get one thing straight. The US has - for hundreds of years, much longer than it's been an independent nation - profited extensively from racist (as well as classist, no doubt, but we'll focus on race in particular here) strategies, deployments, ways of life and economies. The classically Anglo supra-culture of the US has been towering and lording over the Others in order to be towers and lords, whether that Others may be defined in ethnic terms (as in non-Anglo Europeans) or strictly racial terms (the dark-skinned people of Asia, Africa and the Americas). Slavery and subjugation for advantages is not, of course, relegated to the White man. It's a part of human nature, and not just limited to the English or Western European culture.

Alas, but, Western European culture (and in no small part thanks to the writings of Machiavelli) is best at subjugation for profit and has had the ownership of much of the suffering in the world for these last several hundred years. Although one may look at the present carnage of, say, a Rwanda or a Liberia or an Afghanistan or a Darfur and exclaim that that situation is Black-on-Black violence, the troubling account for us White people is that we have 1) exasperated any ethnic or tribal battles by raping the country for valuable 'goods' and leaving the natives in more desperate need than before we arrived, 2) expanded any tribal warfare by lending, buying, selling war machines to totalitarian warmongers (Lords of War) and 3) created ethnic and tribal warfare that was never there in the first place in order to create an environment suitable for the colonists raping, pillaging and subjugating of the country.

So, this series that I hope to do is written partly out of frustration with how Whites are now backlashing against the so-called "Politically Correct climate" of our nation that won't - seemingly - allow them to speak about race in any meaningful or engaging way (because most of us have not walked a mile in a non-White's person's shoes) or to even ask the questions that tug at their hearts, that may be considered rude, arrogant or ignorant but indeed need to be brought to the light in order that this country can begin to heal itself.

There won't be enough time to deal with anything more than an iceberg, but here are some stories that I'd love to at least touch on:

A professor who questions the academic and racial merits of athletic scholarships at top NCAA schools, such as his own Rutgers (and remember the Imus flap? Are they related? Only tenuously, methinks.) He is later called a racist by his own athletic director.

The painfully slow increase in minority (and female) headship in pro sports, an arena dominated by multi-millionaire Blacks and Latinos, yet almost exclusively run by multi-billionaire white males, with fewer people-of-color the higher you go. And what is more damaging (hey, I'm not crying over millionaires here) is how this affects the mindset of lower-class African American males.

And yes, the Jena 6.