“If we don’t know our past, we’re bound to repeat it.” The national uproar over disparate prosecutions of black students in a Louisiana high school has deep, deep ramifications for social justice in America. For those who continue to insist that race no longer matters, and that justice is colorblind, they don’t really have to take a trip down south. But the South, as is its history, can always be counted on to return to its cultural traditions every fifty years or so. The South has always been the truest barometer of racial attitudes in this nation. What the North and the West think, the South does. For the last ten years (at least), race scholars (including myself) have been forecasting the shifts in racial attitudes and the fallacies of race neutrality. Even as conservative think tanks and neo-racial conservative pundits seek to use academic studies and talk radio to deflect concerns of the return of racial Americana, socio-racial attitudes have played out in national elections and state referenda, from California to Florida, from Texas to Michigan. Americans have even "dumbed down" the Presidency, and made a deal with the devil. They have orchestrated militarism and unbridled capitalism, in exchange for holding the line on the deconstruction of race equality, in a twisted “return to the ideas of the real racial South.”

The “environment” for white supremacy mentality and the return of Jim Crow justice have been laid. We’re living in the second “Redemption” Era (the first was after Reconstruction, from 1877 to 1896, that laid the groundwork for the Plessy decision, a Louisiana race case that brought forth 68 years of legalized de jure segregation). The first “redeemers” were mostly politicians and judges. The current redeemers are prosecutors and law enforcement. The resignation of disgraced U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, started with his effort to fire prosecutors who weren’t “aggressive enough” (codified language for not conservative enough). The redemption mentality has been set, nationwide. Enter the “Jena 6” case. Also a Louisiana race case.

The politics of racial prosecution the nation is witnessing, in a central Louisiana town of 3,000 (mostly white) residents, is setting the table for a larger discussion. The Jena (LA) 6 case has been in the national news for a few months now, but what does it really mean? Well, six black boys are being charged for second degree aggravated assault (a reduction from second degree attempted murder) and conspiracy to commit the assaults because they violated the “social space” of the white students at the high school, a tree under which the white students stood daily.

The white students “retaliated” by hanging nooses from the tree. When, afterward, the students (all of them) got into a fight at a local event, the white students were charged with misdemeanor assault charges (even though one white student broke a bottle over the head of one of the black students — an aggravated assault). The black students were charged with felony assault charges, and the local prosecutor has threatened to “take their lives with a stroke of a pen” if the black students “didn’t cut out their foolishness" (standing in the white kids' space). One of the black students is facing a 22 year sentence for his charge.

This is law-enforced segregation, a violation of the black students' federal civil rights - but clouded under the authority of state-sanctioned law. This is Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma all over again and the latest iteration of Bull Connor. This is State authorities seeking to enforce not the law, but socio-racial norms in the local culture. Trust me, this isn’t just happening in Jena, Louisiana. Selective prosecutions and sentencing disparities are happening all over the country.

The eyes of the world will be on Jena when the five other young men go on trial September 20th. But the abuse of state (and federal) authority, by those with disparate racial views, have now surfaced in a way that reminds us the return to yesterday is now upon us. Jim Crow, Jr. has grown up, and resurfaced in the South. That means it’s just a matter of time before the rest of the nation is “redeemed,” as the nervous tension surrounding race grows in a way that it didn’t during the nation’s “colorblind era.” Prosecutors see race every day in courts throughout the nation. Now we’ll see how the attitudes of prosecutors get in the way of giving equal protection under the law. If Jena, Louisiana is any indication, the new Jim Crow struggle has begun.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Click here to contact Dr. Samad.

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