Holding Out For a Hero

This is an unbelievably important post by Maryland Law Professor Sherrilyn Ifill on the idea of victims of racism as "heroes." Basically, the argument is that people challenging racism have historically been forced to be superhuman figures -- men and women with squeaky clean slates who didn't have a single blemish on their records. Because if they did, that would become the subject of the conversation, rather than the racism being challenged.

Tactically speaking, there's a lot to be said for this approach. But of course, it ends up abandoning the vast majority of people who aren't perfect, who do bad things on occasion, and sometimes deserve (reasonable) punishment. The question in the Jena Six isn't whether the Black kids deserve punishment for attacking their White classmate. Nobody disputes that they do. The question is whether they should be sent away to prison for multi-decade sentences. That, they most certainly don't. As Ifill puts it:

I don’t regard Mychal Bell or the other teens that comprise the Jena 6 as “heroes.” For me, they needn’t be mythic figures. The fact that they are ordinary black, southern high school students who acted inappropriately (seriously beating down a white student who they claim boasted about engaging in racist activity) makes them more powerful symbols. They didn’t respond to what they saw as provocation like “heroes.” Instead, they responded like thousands of 16 and 17-year old black boys would. That’s why the prosecutor’s response – overcharging the case — merits our scrutiny and condemnation. Because black teenagers, like white teenagers, should not be held to “heroic” standards. They should be punished for wrongdoing – in this case seriously assaulting a schoolmate — but the punishment should be proportionate to the crime, to the context, and to the age of the perpetrator and the victim.
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The point is that heroes aren’t always or even most often, the victims of injustice. Mostly it’s just ordinary folks, making ordinary, (often) bad decisions. In 2007 we ought to be able to hold two thoughts in our head at the same time: that Wilson and the Jena 6 made mistakes for which they deserved some punishment, and that the prosecutors in Georgia and Louisiana used the law in a way that treated the lives of these black teenagers as entirely expendable.

To paraphrase a remark someone once made about women's rights, the goal now isn't to get a Black Albert Einstein admitted to a local state college. The goal is for a Black schmuck to be treated just the same as a White schmuck.

Genarlow Wilson is Freed!

It was a close call (4-3), but the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that Genarlow Wilson's 10-year prison sentence for receiving oral sex from a 15-year old, when he was 17, was "cruel and unusual punishment." As a result, Wilson shall be freed immediately.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law ''represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.''

Sears wrote that the severe punishment makes ''no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment'' and that Wilson's crime did not rise to the ''level of adults who prey on children.''

I can't say it any better than TalkLeft: "If you believe in justice, the best news you are likely to hear today is this." The Wilson case was a travesty from day one, merely amplified by the state's dogged pursuit of keeping Wilson behind bars for as long as possible -- even as public outrage grew. It is fortunate that justice appears to have finally won out.

Also worthy of note, Chief Justice Sears is rumored to be on the short-list for a potential Democratic Supreme Court nomination.

The opinion (and dissent) of the court is available here.