Unfortunately, I do think there's something to it. It's sort of a long story, but here's the gist as I understand it:

A black student moved into the area and, during an all-school event, asked the principal, in front of everyone, if he could sit under the "white tree." This was a huge tree outside the school where white students apparently would sit and read. It was long understood that black students weren't to sit there. The principle told the student that he of course could sit and read anywhere he likes. The next day, there were three nooses hanging from the tree.

Just for background, this is another part of the country where race, sadly, is still a pretty prominent part of everyday life. I was actually in Louisiana just an hour south of Jena earlier this year to research a story for Reason on the use of drug informants. There are places down there where entire towns are still segregated. The town I was in still has separate black and white Mardi Gras parades, swimming pools, and cemeteries.

In any case, the nooses set off some minor altercations in the school. The principal found those responsible and had them expelled. He was overruled by the school board, who cut the punishment to a three-day suspension. More altercations followed. Some time later, someone burned down the school's administration building. They still haven't figured out who did it.

Finally, the school called another all-school convocation. They brought in the local DA, who then threatened to press charges unless the in-school fights stopped. He took out his pen and said something to the effect of, "with a stroke of this pen, I can ruin your lives." He admits he said it. The black students say he was looking directly at the section where they were sitting when he said it. He says he said it to the entire student body.

There were several more fights, some of them pretty serious. What's got everyone upset is the racial disparity in the sentences. In one case, a white kid pulled a shotgun on three black kids. The black kids wrestled the gun from him, and took off. The black kids were charged with stealing the gun, the white kid wasn't charged. There were then several incidents of white kids beating up on black kids, and the white kids were brought up on minor charges.

The final fight took place in the school cafeteria. The victim was among some white kids who were taunting a group of black student-athletes, including one who had been beaten up several nights before. The black kids got angry, and jumped one of the white kids. Six black boys then beat the white boy. It was a fairly serious beating. The initial fall knocked him unconscious. But after treatment at a local hospital, he left on his own, and attended an event that night.

The prosecutor initially charged the six black kids with attempted murder. After some public backlash, he dropped them to felony assault with a deadly weapon (the weapons, as it turned out, were the students' shoes). As I understand it, none of the six had prior records. The first to be tried--Mychal Bell-- had his charges dropped to felony aggravated battery, but still received a 15-year sentence. An appellate judge just tossed that sentence out, ruling he shouldn't have been tried as an adult. The rest have yet to be tried.

We don’t practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before he was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential “Jena Six” cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.