Plum Crazy

At the risk of being too simplistic, it seems that the crux of the matter can best be summed as follows:

The white kid who threw the first punch was later charged with simple battery and given probation. The next day, Bailey ran into a young white man who was at the party. Bailey and parents of the Jena Six say that when the man pulled a gun on him, he tangled with him and stripped it away. He was later charged with theft of a firearm.

The charges against the Jena 6 are disproportionately harsh when viewed against this prism. They should be subject to the same level of punishment as the white teen who committed a crime that could have easily resulted in Bailey's death. Though I suppose the ideal is that all crimes in this case be dealt with equally and with the appropriate amount of severity, i.e., the white teen and his cohorts should also have been charged with attempted murder because their actions could have lead to Bailey's death almost as surely as the Jena 6's actions could have lead to Baker's death.
Respected and African- American sports columnist Jason Whitlock. of the Kansas Star writes an insightful and compelling column that looks at the deeper issues underlying the case: the failure to help and support Michael Bell long before he got into this kind of trouble. He readily acknowledges the injustice inherent in the charges against Bell:

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

Still, he doesn't absolve Bell of wrong doing in this case, noting that this is the third me in two years that Bell was charged with assault, but wonders where his absentee father, civil rights leaders, and others were earlier in Bell's life. Where was the daily supervision and parental and community involvement that could have helped Bell before he headed down this path? That if we wish to do true justice to the Michael Bells of the world that we intervene in their lives sooner rather than later.
That, of course, doesn't diminish the fundamental inequity in the charges in this case. It just serves as a reminder that we have a lot of work to do as a society before true justice and true right can be realized.