Boy Took Beating From Jena 6 Like I Did From The Jr. High 3

There's so much news and misinformation flying around the Jena 6 that it has served in the last few days as a painful reminder of something that happened to me when I was in grade school.

Under court order, the public school system where I grew up was forced to integrate the white and black schools not long after James Meredith was the first man with dark skin to enroll in college at Ole Miss (technically, The University of Mississippi).

Meredith and I have this in common: We view ourselves as individual American citizens with equal rights.

I understood that when I was six (started school when I was barely five, already reading at a fourth-grade level). Meredith had to force the then President of the United States to acknowledge that Meredith had basic rights to go to any college no matter what color he was. He did this by demanding the Kennedy Administration -- wow, figure that out...a Democrat who had to be forced into helping a black man get into a college -- provide that recognition to him in a public way by protecting him as he enrolled at Ole Miss.

Meredith's quote, "And my objective was to force the federal government – the Kennedy administration at that time – into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen," has been printed in numerous publications and books.

By the time I was in Jr. High, I was a pretty good athlete, only we'd integrated and a former all-black K-12 in an all-black neighborhood was now a biracial Jr. High. I made the basketball team. Only white girl to do so. Was a good point guard, made first string. Then the attacks started.

Up to that point in my life, I'd been taught that God loves us all. I have light skin and light brown-blonde hair but God did not love me more -- or differently -- than my friend Diane, whose skin was the color of crude oil with hair about that same color. He loved us both equally.

But girls the color of Diane daily hit me, pinched me, tried to knock me down in the halls between classes and jumped me outside one day after school had let out for the day. They beat me up real good.

Mother doctored the cuts and bruises and the dentist capped a broke tooth paid for out of Daddy's pocket because we didn't have dental insurance then. Daddy tried to reason with their parents and the school principal with no luck.

This is why you can't reason with terrorists and evil people. They don't care about right and wrong. They'd rather hurt or kill you to get their way and they have no respect for you or your rights.

If the majority of news accounts of the Jena story are correct, then:

The student who had asked to sit under the tree should not have asked unless he thought himself to be second class. He should have gone out there and sat down. He had the right to do that, especially if his parents are paying taxes in the community -- AND, without any retaliation from some people whose parents are bad people (because they obviously did not teach their children to be decent human beings rather than act like facist Nazis).

Those students who hung the nooses the next day from the tree should not have been dealt with so lightly. When there is no fear of a difficult punishment, there becomes no fear to make the next act a more heinous one. They should have been expelled from school for the entire year or allow me to pronounce punishment. I would have put them in day-custody of the sheriff's department on clean-up detail of everything and every place in that county and under house arrest at night seven days a week for the remainder of the school year and failed them for that year making them repeat the grade the next year.

Even if Justin Barker (the white boy that took the beating from the Jena 6) was mouthing off, it only showed that his parents had not taught him to be a civilized human being with respect for others and this fact did not give Mychal Bell the right to beat on him. Bell's criminal record prior to his beating of Barker simply shows he was not taught by his parents to be a civilized human being with respect for others, either.

Regarding my plight in Jr. High, I had to follow what I had been taught. This is what my parents taught me and why I did not retaliate that year for the beatings I received from those girls:

I will not strike back because the Bible tells me not to. Romans 12:19.

I will ask God to bless those who treat me unfairly or harshly because the Bible tells me to. Matthew 5:44.

I will forgive those who have hurt me because the Bible tells me to. Luke 23:24.

Too bad Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don't know enough about the Bible (they claim to be ministers but obviously are not since they don't know the Bible) to tell everyone -- black and white, resident and visitor -- in Jena to do what the Bible says.