BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Why The Black Blogosphere Has Abandoned The Jena 6 Story
May 26th, 2008
[Preamble: this is not meant to be accusatory of my fellow Aphrosphere bloggers, so please don’t feel the need to be personally defensive]
I often do commentary’s where I ask a question in the title, and I normally have an answer; but I don’t really know why the Afrosphere has let the Jena 6 go in the last 4 months or so.
Being that the Jena 6 march and the reduction of Mychael Bell’s chargers from 100 years to a possible 20 year sentence to mere months; due largely to our efforts of shinning a light on the situation; you’d think Black bloggers would stick with this still ongoing story to the end.
As we are now upon about the one year anniversary of when bloggers picked up the story after Howard Witt broke it nationally with his May 20, 2007 article “Racial demons rear heads”; you can nary find a Black blogger that even updates on the Jena 6 periodically.
As proprietor of The Jena 6 Blog I know better than most how difficult it is to come up on new information in the last few months, as the mainstream news media has slunk back into almost no coverage; except on rare occasions. A google blog search of the term “Jena 6″ shows that since my May 8th, May Jena Six Update, there have only been 3 other post in the whole of the bloggosphere with a feed. And one of those was CNN and not an actual independent blogger; so actually only 2 post.
Searching Google news you only find 5 reports even mentioning the Jena 6 in the last 30 days, and only two of them were actually about anything happening with the Jena Six case itself; the others just contained references. Yahoo News search produces about the same results. It appears Black Bloggers who once forced the media to follow their lead in taking up the story; has now followed the media’s lead and letting the story disappear.
A couple of hypothesis:
1. I think there’s a “get a quick win and move on” mentality amongst blog activist. I saw this in a recent blog driven action where the other blog activist once getting some level of concession we’re eager to declare victory in stop all action; while I thought we were in a position to go beyond to address greater issues.
I think helping to bring about the level of awarness and incitement that lead to some 30 to 40 thousand to show up in Jena on September 20th was a pretty aggrandizing feeling of accomplishment for us all; and many saw it as the peek of what we can do. Then, not having fast victories on freeing or getting reduced charges for the six (though the victories have been coming), probably caused a lack of continued impassioned interest.
Particularly since some blog activist are not real world activist (not a put down, just an observation) and that we may not have all studied the history of activism and civil rights protest/agitation; there may be a lack of understanding and conviction about having to stick with an issue for the long haul to accomplish ultimate results.
Hell, the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for a year and three weeks of people walking everywhere and organizing car pools; with all the powers that be on their backs trying to break the boycott, before they finally got the victory. We can’t then think 5 months of blogging is sufficient and get discouraged.
2. The Obama campaign displaced the The Jena six as the cause de jure for many Black political bloggers. Once he surprisingly to most of us, won Iowa; that took over the Black socio-political blog worlds attention. Including mine; but I for one see no reason why it has to be one or the other. We have to learn to multi-task our attention.
I hope that the majority of the Afrosphere, who even Howard Witt told me recently, were instrumental in pushing this story out into the world; will get back on the story, at least updating the readers on developments periodically; and letting the authorities and our people know that this case in particular and the issues it raised, are still important to us.
Read about the hearing to recuse Judge Mauffrey that’s going down next week at The Jena 6 Blog
Please share your insights
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9 Responses to “Why The Black Blogosphere Has Abandoned The Jena 6 Story”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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first and foremost - Obama’s race for the White House pushed it aside.
Secondly, let me admit, I did not follow things closely as they unfolded. But I believe the other major factor was the behavior of some of the kids and their repeated problems with the law or less than role model behavior [I think I heard one posted a youtube vid posturing with $$$ raised for legal defense.]
As someone who did not invest time and action in the movement, those are just my outside impressions.
Interesting note about the bus boycott — I did not remember it lasting so long from my history lessons. Sadly can you imagine any us being that committed to anything today? Heck we don’t have enough sense to boycott these darn gas prices.
I understand how the individuals behavior might give rise to feelings of disengagement; but two things:
1. We have to understand that the issue is greater than the individuals involved, and
2. We have to realize aforetime that all advocacy situations are not going to contain Rose Parks, squeaky clean characters, but justice has to be defended regardless. The principle has to be defended.
I discuss this in detail in a piece called Why I’m Proud To Defend the Jena Six, Model Citizens or Not
I appreciate your thoughts from your perspective.
Yobachi, I’m kind of relieved to see your post. Because I’ve been stuck on this for months as well (I have some Jena Six work that I have not been following through on). For me, maybe the sense of a lot of people working on it, maybe that was part of the motivation.
It may not be the best kind of motivation to have, but there it is.
I began to tail off in my coverage of the Jena 6 when the stories kept coming up about the bad behavior of the students. I didn’t appreciate them showboating at the BET Awards. I didn’t appreciate the YouTube video with the money. I didn’t appreciate the youngster that moved to Houston being suspended for getting in a fight.
One of the key players accepted a plea-deal. The judge had to recuse himself. Everyone is in wait-mode for the juvenile trials to run their course.
I don’t want to blog about the bad behavior … and until their is a court-decision I’m uncertain what news you feel should be shared over the course of the past four months.
Anyhow, those are my thoughts…
peace, Villager
Villager, just for accuracy, the Judge has would not recused himself; actually my last two post at the Jena 6 blog are about that, including that the hearing on his recusal is at the end of this week.
I would say what I want to be blogged about are the underlining issues that led us into the Jena 6 affair in the first; and there have been developments regarding both the case and other related incidents.
I didn’t presume that the Jena 6 issue was solely about the 6 individuals, as I don’t know them and have no personal affinity for them. Again, I hope that next time, we go in understanding that social justice fights are not simply about personalities, and we don’t only fight for the Rosa Parks of the world (for the reasons I laid out in the link posted to Ruth) .
My greatest point would be though, why carry the water as far as we did to back off the pressure and allow things to settle as usual. I feel that’s a lot of work and effort for nothing, if we do that. A lot of missed opportunity to build from as well.
Tom, I definitely think that the excitement or influence of a fluid movement and numerous people involved can be a motivating or de-motivating factor.
I’d love to see you follow through on that info; notify me when you do.
This underscores how we have to be careful and thoughtful, not just emotional about how we reply to a stories of injustice when we first get in. Maybe instead of immediately going off about stuff, we have to do some more investigation, and use our now developed (mostly thanks to the Jena 6 situation) media contacts to fact check specifics.
We could have started out in how we addressed the Jena situation that these boys are not necessarily all model citizens; but nonetheless, they are not to be subject to malicious prosecution.
You can have some wrong facts that you use to build your case but still have a right point. The problem is while that may be the case in actuality; it doesn’t play well PR wise. And as I’ve been telling people a lot lately social activism is PR and marketing.
In the case of racial injustice you have to market your cause effectively to our own in a world where racism is not so blatant and many Blacks are given to thinking those of us who are conscious about it are being too sensitive or what have you, you have to market to the media to get stories picked up, and you have to market to whites and other groups where we can build coalitions to get things down.
All of this is why I would not immediately go full bore with a public attack on the DNCC concerning the Black blogs on the convention floor. Some of Afrosphere bloggers have already gotten caught claiming all the State Corp blogs were white run, when that’s not true, or that the number was higher than can be demonstrated, or that they were all male run. I simply said nearly 50 where white, though I believe it’s more than 50; but I left myself leeway until we can/could verify the exact number, and either way my point is same; but I don’t have to get caught up in factual inaccuracies.
Nonetheless, the Jena 6 story is our baby, and even if our baby grew up and went astray; it’s our job to guide our baby to the end. Don’t we lose some credibility by starting a fight and then going…uhh, well, maybe not so much?
To just walk away I think damages our footing going forward.
For me, the presidential election pushed almost everything else in the background.
As some of the other bloggers indicated, the behavior of some of the Jena 6 was a turn-off.
I do understand your points on commitment to the cause. Thanks for the nudge.
I’ve still kept my virtual march going at the blog for justice sake, but I did taper off of the reports when I saw the behavior of some of the students. I’m interested in the justice that still needs to be served, but I think their behavior alone disempowered the movement.
The two members who showed up to the BET awards were behaving as if they were rock stars and the youtube videos/photo slideshows where money was being thrown around were a great disappointment.
The seeming lack of awareness of how serious their predicament was, and the concern shown by the black community being taken so frivolously really injured the activism and truly contributed to my lack of motivation to update regularly.
In the spirit of truth
-PZ