| If the Aryan Nation plotted to develop a media property designed to denigrate and destroy black culture, could they do a better job than Black Entertainment Television (BET)?
This question occurred to me after learning that BET executives invited two of the "Jena Six" to present the award for Best Hip-Hop Video last week at their annual hip-hop music awards.
The answer ossified into the indisputable after hearing one of BET's newsreaders actually compare the Jena Six to the "Little Rock Nine" from a half century earlier.
Let's explore this comparison.
In Little Rock in 1957, nine black students were systematically victimized by unprovoked attacks for seeking out an education.
In Jena in 2007, six black students committed an unprovoked assault against one of their white classmates ostensibly in response to three other, unrelated white students who had hung nooses from a tree on the grounds of the high school.
In Little Rock in 1957, nine black students endured state-sponsored racism and the torments of their white classmates while coming to symbolize the end of the disgraceful "separate but equal" era in this country in the process.
In Jena in 2007, the white students responsible for hanging the nooses were suspended by the school board and referred to the Office of U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, an African-American gentleman, for hate crimes prosecution.
In Little Rock in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower intervened to protect the students, enforce desegregation, and uphold the principle that all are to be treated equally under the law.
In Jena in 2007, Al Sharpton intervened to do exactly the opposite, advocating essentially that the law may be disregarded if one has a racial grievance.
Nine students who held fast against institutional racism in the name of racial empowerment and individual enfranchisement versus six students for which the contended moral imperative is that they be charged with the lesser included offenses.
The courage of the students in Little Rock is blasphemed by BET's comparison.
BET and the hip-hop culture it propagates exalt being a thug. What a community exalts, it begets.
And so it begot two, remorseless members of the Jena Six strolling the red carpet at BET's award show like they had accomplished something.
What the BET brass did not tell the kids from Jena is that the thug lifestyle works out a lot better in a three minute music video than it does in the real world.
What BET's cultural mavens should have told the kids from Jena is that, "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."
An old school lyricist named Martin Luther King, Jr. penned those words. Or maybe it was Fat Joe? Ah, well, what's the difference, right, BET?
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