American Journal Review gives an academic assesment of race and media – Dallas South, AfroSpear bloggers featured

Posted on January 24, 2008 by Shawn Williams

The America Jouralism Review recently published an article by Raquel Christie that takes an extensive look at how the mainstream media covered the Jena 6 story. Raquel spent a lot of time pulling this story together and examines it from a number of different angles.

There are a few AfroSpear blogs, including Dallas South, that were featured in this report. Click here to see AJR's entire story titled Double Whammy.

All this awful bait, but the national media didn't bite. The story, instead, was the property of black bloggers and radio hosts, two local papers and activists. Only after they had interpreted it, only after they had dissected it, only after they had decided the right and the wrong of it – and dedicated a movement, the Afrospear, to it – only after big names like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson stepped into the fray last summer did the news media give it to us.

Soon, the blogs were afire with cries for justice in Jena – and for media respect.

"I make a final plea to the American media," wrote black blogger Shawn Williams on the day of Blogging for Justice, created by dozens of black bloggers who latched on to the Jena movement. "I'd ask that you raise your right hand and admit under oath that you just don't give a damn about black people. Your non-coverage of missing black women and children, your demonization of hip hop culture, your initial labeling of Katrina survivors as 'refugees' and your daily lynching of black athletes called sports talk radio is evidence of this fact. The Jena Six deserve justice." ( dallassouthblog.com/2007/08/30/jena-six-deserve-justice/)

(Did I write that? Yeah I guess I did)

Wrote D. Yobachi Boswell on The Black Perspective: "The Afrosphere Jena 6 Coalition 'ask that the mainstream traditional media step forward and discharge their duty to provide coverage of this vitally important event to their viewers and readers and act as "the fourth institution" of governmental "checks and balance" that constitutional framers intended the press to be.'"

Says Wayne Bennett, who wrote about the lack of national media coverage on his blog The Field Negro: "I don't think it was a sexy story. Stuff like that happens all the time, especially in Southern towns. That's not something the mainstream media would chase… They got on the story because Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton got involved, then the big march, then it became sexier." ( field-negro.blogspot.com/)

"I think it goes back to the difference of how the general media feels about an issue and how African Americans might feel," says Williams, author of Dallas South Blog. "It's because the media is made up of non-African Americans in general, and because of that they cover the stories from their personal point of view and that point of view is not shared by everyone. That's why I've really enjoyed what's happened lately with the blooming of bloggers. People can use their own spin to report what happens and how they feel about it."

At a "Covering Immigration and Race" discussion at the Poynter Institute, dean of faculty Keith Woods wanted to focus on Jena. So he spoke to the Town Talk's Carty and Williams from Dallas South Blog. What he found was a serious disconnect – two very different perceptions of the Jena story.

"The most profound realization coming out of those two conversations was how utterly differently two people could see the same story," Woods says. "To essentially paint it as the participants did, in the case of Paul [Carty], a story about overblown and incorrect media coverage, as much as it was about Jena, and to Shawn [Williams], it was a story about injustice."

Which is it about? The media should tell us, he says.
(Woods) "But here is the thing: If we are a nation of paranoid people, we need to know that. And so if it is pure paranoia that's driving the busloads of people that drive down to Jena, some of us need to report that, and if we believe it's paranoia, our belief needs to be taken to the journalistic test of reporting, and not simply dismissed, while we go off and cover O.J. And if it's not paranoia, who but journalists to help us understand it and see the injustice? Either argument deserves national attention before [the first story appeared] May 20."

Howard Witt returns to Paris, Jena, and Linden looking for signs of change

Posted on December 26, 2007 by Shawn Williams

Chicago Tribune senior correspondent Howard Witt has returned to Linden and Paris, Texas, as well as Jena, Louisiana to discover whether the fundamental racial dynamics of the towns were alterned in any meaningful way after the TV cameras departed and the headlines faded away.

Click here for Witt's extensive story.

Some highlights from Witt's Chicago Tribune article:

Plotted on a map, the towns of Paris, Linden and Jena line up neatly along a 300-mile diagonal that falls across the Texas-Louisiana border. But to many African-Americans, that line looks more like a gash across the beneficent face that the New South tries to present to the rest of the nation. In many ways, Linden no longer resembles the starkly divided town where many white residents once closed ranks around the four white youths who in 2003 assaulted a mentally retarded black man and dropped him beside a garbage dump, unconscious and bleeding in his brain. Instead, many here say that over the last year a new spirit of interracial cooperation has infused the town of nearly 2,300 people, 78 percent of whom are white and 20 percent black.

Little has changed in Paris in the nine months since the town was thrust onto the national stage over the case of Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black girl sent to youth prison for shoving a hall monitor at Paris High School.

Joe McCarthy, a prominent African-American leader, joined a recent lunch with several white businessmen who called on him to endorse their view that there is no racial discrimination in Paris. And to a point, McCarthy agreed.

But then the discussion turned toward allegations of racial profiling by the Paris police. And McCarthy, a middle-age man who drives a luxury car and served on the City Council from 2001 to 2004, suddenly volunteered how he was pulled over while driving through downtown Paris early one morning.

"I was the only one out at that time of morning, there was only one way you could turn, but the police officer said I had failed to use my turn signal," McCarthy recounted. "It just rubbed me wrong. Do I look suspicious? He only stopped me because I was black."

Smack in between the whites-only barber shop and the all-white bank sits Jena's white mayor, Murphy McMillin, behind his desk at City Hall. Yet the retired oil industry executive says he's baffled at why tens of thousands of African-Americans journeyed here in September to protest alleged racial discrimination in the town he's always known as quiet and contented.

"There seems to be harmony among all the races here, so you can see why I've been surprised that the nation doesn't seem to think that's true," McMillin said. "There's a story being told by the national media that says we are very racist. I don't believe that. But I also don't believe we are perfect." Many of the black residents here — they constitute 12 percent of the town's population of about 3,000 people and live mostly clustered in blighted neighborhoods — say they long ago learned to keep their heads low and not ask for much from Jena's dominant whites.

I'd suggest reading the article in its entirety. Although it's a short time frame to expect much in the way of change in Paris or Jena, I think Mr. Witt's points are well taken. Paris, Texas is my hometown, and I think whites there like in most American cities have no understanding of black life.

Their view of whites on top blacks on bottom is their only point of reference. The suggestion that that is a bad thing makes many folks become defensive. Project living, poor educational achievement, and segregated communities are evident there in the same degree as my current home in Dallas. People spend more energy defending their position than searching for out of the box strategies to overcome the realities. Excellent work as always by the ultimate outsider sticking his nose where they say it doesn't belong, Mr. Howard Witt.

White separatists sue Jena, Louisiana over planned rally

Posted on December 19, 2007 by Shawn Williams

There's more news out of Jena, Louisiana as a white separatist group has sued the city over a rally they plan to stage next month.

According to the Associated Press, The Nationalist Movement which is planning a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Jena, is suing the town claiming officials are violating the Constitution by asking participants not to bring firearms, changing the parade route by one block and requiring the posting of a bond.

The Associated Press also reports that the group filed the federal lawsuit Dec. 14 and is seeking a temporary restraining order to keep the town from interfering with the Learned, Miss.-based group's "Jena Justice Day" rally. Group officials claim the town's rules violate their 14th Amendment rights to due process.

"When a group of, say, minorities or homosexuals want to have a parade, they aren't usually required to put up a bond or pay for police or pay for cleanup," said Barry Hackney, a spokesman for the organization.

Click here to read the entire AP story.

The Associated Press goes on to say that this is not the first time The Nationalist Movement has filed suit over a rally. They successfully sued York, Pa., over fees the city tried to charge it for a rally the group held in 2003. That rally drew a total of five members.

Thanks to the Associated Press and Slant Truth for the heads up.

USA Today article by Yolanda Young latest to attack black folks for their discontent; James Ragland uses Belo Blog to blast Mike Davis letter to the editor

Posted on December 9, 2007 by Shawn Williams

There seems to be a lot of hateration in the universe towards black bloggers these days. First it was Michael Biasden, then Stephen A. Smith. Now locally James Ragland has taken on Mike Davis at Dallas Progress. I thought I'd combine my thoughts on two events in one post.

The USA Today posts an article on their website by Yolanda Young titled Blacks' protests lack unity of purpose. In the brief article, Ms. Young speaks on black leadership, the need for cohesion and transparency in the civil rights movement, and protest overkill

She devotes 1/3 of her short piece to discrepancies surrounding money donated for the legal defense of the Jena 6. Ms. Young says that pictures have surfaced of a defendant "with $100 bills stuffed in his mouth and two others posing like gansta rappers." How do you pose like gangsta rappers?

She also talks about Bell's lawyers not being paid. What does that have to do with the civil rights movement?

Imagine that, 1/3 of all funds allocated for rebuilding Iraq are unaccounted for, and a few thousand dollars at odds in Jena, Louisiana continues to make headlines. This is what I mean when I talk about images in the media disproportionately twisted against black folks. It happens every day.

I do agree with Ms. Young's assessment that after the Rally in Jena, "several protests fell flat." It seemed like all of a sudden people wanted to protest and march because it was the in thing to do. There were marches all up and down the east coast, I think in part by folks who wish they had been able to attend the rally in Jena and wanted to find another way to support "the cause."

However that is not in and of itself a knock on leadership as much as it is a learning process among the people. Anything done too often tends to lose its effect, so is the case with the protests. It is an issue of diminishing returns.

What did the Jena rally have that the rest of these (including the March on the Justice Department) did not? The support of the black blogging community. The collection of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of web readers is beginning to be portrayed as a bad thing.

As much as Mychal Baisden, Stephen A. Smith, even Ms. Young, want to diss and dismiss black bloggers, I think we are the only ones who get it. There is coalition building, idea sharing, and best practices (I hate that term) that are swapped among these bright minds that for some reason forces are eager to diminish.

Young's article says "…it seems that bloggers, radio personalities and rogue activists have hijacked the movement." First off what movement is she speaking of? There was no movement before a fledgling network of websites began to form after the ShaQuanda Cotton case. And by the time a movement took shape behind the Jena 6, with "national" leaders and radio personalities, the situation was old news to bloggers.

Black Webloggers have lead the movement, not hijacked it. And to that end, we didn't get into for that purpose, it has just happened that way. Even the voices of black journalist have become louder as a result of the web. Mainstream media has examined itself in ways that were unheard of even this time last year. Critique the movement if you shall and lament the leadership if you must, but leave bloggers out of it.

That moves me to the scrum my man Mike Davis of Dallas Progress has found himself in with James Ragland of the Dallas Morning News. I hate to even reference the original article (Mayor's party at Perot pad does raise some concerns) because I, like Mike, didn't think it was a big deal. But look at how Ragland responds on the Belo Blog to a letter Mike wrote to the news (Ragland's words are in bold, are in regular text).

Who cares about the party? That's the question that Michael Davis, a blogger wrote in a letter published today.

I may be taking this totally out of context, but the way the word 'blogger' is placed in the sentence seems a little condescending to me. I think it's mostly because I know that blogging is only part of the civic contribution Mike makes. I wonder if Mr. Ragland knew when he wrote this (because I'm sure he knows now), that Mike Davis is a member of the Dallas City Plan Commission? This is the panel his paper reported voting unanimously Thursday to allow the Day Resource Center downtown to open temporarily as an overnight homeless shelter.

Let's see, I've been reporting on this city for the better part of two decades. I've covered Dallas City Hall and came to know many of the major players there now when they were aspiring to greater roles.

Why do journalists feel the need to whip out their credentials all of a sudden? We get it. You guys went to school to learn how to write and we didn't. You guys write for a living and most of us don't? What does that have to do with Mike Davis and the work he's doing? And my guess is that Mike knows 95% of the folks Ragland listed as attending the meeting in question personally. You don't do that by sitting in an office all day.

Not sure what Michael Davis' credentials are, (except) that he has a penchant for taking some cheap shots. When he demonstrates a capacity to connect the dots vis a vis government and politics, I may give more credence to what he has to say.

Cheap Shots? Come on Brother Ragland do you even know this dude like that? Have you read one post this cat has written? Did you know that he wrote an article in this month's issue of D Magazine? For the last year and a half at Dallas Progress, Mr. Davis has connected the dots vis a vis government and politics and received praise from all over, including the Dallas Observer and your paper. But in the end, he doesn't need anyone to "give more credence" for him to do what he does.

Mr. Davis might consider getting out of the office himself a bit more, and expanding the universe of people with whom he chats.

Talk about cheap shots. I guess Mr. Ragland didn't see the piece Channel 8 did on Mike's work shutting down "hot sheet" motels in Southern Dallas. What about how he has worked with the mayor and Dwaine Caraway to bulldoze drug houses? And who chats anymore now that Skype is available?

He might also consider picking up the phone and giving me call if he a question about something; that's what a real journalist does, especially if he's lacking understanding and context.

This is the blogosphere man! Mike D. is not, nor has he claimed to be a journalist. I'm sure he didn't lack from understanding or context of the original article.

Mike Davis doesn't need me to fight his battles, he's has written his own response to Mr. Ragland – This is Me Laughing at You . But I couldn't pass up the chance to catch Mike's back, because that's what we should all do for one another. Especially when someone who's worked as hard as Mike D. is questioned as he was at Belo.

AfroSpear Press Release on Jena Six Plea Agreement

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Shawn Williams

The following is a press release from the AfroSpear. The AfroSpear community now includes over 90 blogs, each demonstrably furthering the goals and objectives of the AfroSpear in ways both common and unique.

The AfroSpear has developed into a think tank with Diaspora-wide influence. It focuses on the discussing issues, exchanging ideas and creating strategies, with the objective of developing concrete and viable solutions to tackle the concerns relating to those of African descent worldwide.

1). “AfroSpear bloggers and our audiences will continue to assert our role as forceful advocates of equal justice for Blacks in the American justice system.”

2. "Although the charges against Mychal D. Bell have been reduced, it still is not equal justice when a Black student receives an eighteen month prison sentence while the white students are not penalized at all for their offenses."

3). "We will continue to insist that ALL ADULT AND JUVENILE CHARGES AGAINST ALL 6 DEFENDANTS be dropped and foreclosed for the future, and that de jure and de facto segregation be ended at Jena High School."

4). "This victory shows that Blacks armed with blogs can confront injustice and win. Our readers, those who marched to Jena, oppose unequal justice in Jena and everywhere such outrages occur."

5). "We have to ask ourselves whether the final result in this criminal case is what it would have been if Mychal D. Bell were white. We know that it isn't. Black young people in Jena should not go to jail while white students commit the same acts with impunity."

6). "This is still not equal justice, because white students who committed armed assault, and terroristic acts in this case still have not been charged at all." (One white person confronted Black students with a firearm at a variety store, and white students hung three nooses on school grounds and were not criminally charged at all.)

Mychal Bell plea agreement may herald conclusion of Jena 6 cases

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Shawn Williams

I'm going to post this Howard Witt story from the Chicago Tribune in its entirety. It was posted to the Tribune's website minutes ago.

By Howard Witt

Tribune Senior Correspondent

Chicago Tribune

The district attorney in the racially-charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana agreed to a plea bargain Monday that sharply reduced the charges against the first of the six black teenagers who was facing trial, while attorneys for other defendants said the prosecutor appeared eager to avoid taking their cases to court as well.

LaSalle Parish District Atty. Reed Walters, whose initial decision to charge the black teenagers with attempted murder for beating a white youth was condemned as excessive by civil rights leaders, dropped a conspiracy charge against Mychal Bell, 17, and agreed to let him plead guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery, with a sentence of 18 months and credit for time he has served in jail over the last year.

District Judge J.P. Mauffray approved the plea agreement Monday afternoon, just three days before Bell's trial in juvenile court was to have begun. Bell's attorneys said Walters offered them the plea agreement last Thursday, a week after a coalition of U.S. media companies successfully sued Mauffray to force him to open the trial to the public and the press.

"This case has been a very difficult chapter in the town's life and for the individuals involved," said David Utter, an attorney for another of the Jena 6
defendants who was charged as a juvenile. "My sense is that the district attorney would like to close this chapter now."

Utter and attorneys for several other Jena 6 defendants confirmed that they were engaged in plea negotiations with the district attorney, heralding a potential conclusion to the controversial case that drew more than 20,000 civil rights protesters to Jena in September and earned the town a portrayal in the national media as a racist backwater.

The decision to reduce the charges against Bell was the latest turnabout for Walters, who had vowed to aggressively prosecute the six black youths for their alleged roles in jumping Justin Barker as he emerged from the gymnasium at Jena High School on Dec. 4, 2006, and kicking him while he lay briefly unconscious.

The incident capped months of racial unrest in the small Louisiana town set off when three white students hung nooses from a tree traditionally used by whites at the high school after black students sought permission to sit beneath its shade.

Black students and their parents regarded the noose incident as a hate crime and demanded that the white perpetrators be expelled, but school officials dismissed the incident as a prank and issued lesser punishments. A series of fights ensued between black and white youths, both on and off campus. But civil rights leaders asserted that the schools and the courts in Jena treated black students more harshly than whites for similar offenses.

After the Jena story gained national attention last spring, Walters backed away from the attempted murder charges and instead charged the six black teenagers with aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. He tried Bell on those charges as an adult in June and won a conviction, but a state appeals court reversed the verdict in September, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

Since then, Walters has come under growing political pressure to conclude the Jena 6 cases. Local leaders had been dreading a drawn-out series of criminal trials that would have kept Jena in the spotlight throughout 2008. And Louisiana's outgoing governor, Kathleen Blanco, directly pressed Walters in September not to pursue an appeal of the decision that struck down Bell's adult conviction.

Walters said in a statement Monday that he hopes to have the remaining Jena 6 cases resolved "early next year."

Before Walters made his plea bargain offer, Bell's attorneys said they had been preparing pre-trial motions seeking to recuse both the prosecutor and Mauffray from the case. The attorneys said evidence contained in those motions would have embarrassed both men.

"A trial would be very bad for the town, very bad for Reed Walters, very bad for anybody in Jena associated with the process, and it could turn out very bad for the defendants as well," said Alan Bean, head of a small civil rights group called Friends of Justice who was the first activist to call attention to the Jena case. "It had the potential for being a perfect storm in which everybody lost." Parents on both sides of the case agreed.

"If the district attorney makes an offer to us and my son doesn't have to do any jail time, that would be fine," said Tina Jones, who insists that her son, Jena 6 defendant Bryant Purvis, was not involved in the school attack. "I'm ready to get this all over with."

Plea bargains "would be the best solution, as long as they don't get away with no punishment at all," said David Barker, father of Justin Barker, the school beating victim. "This case has taken its toll on everybody. Justin has ulcers now. Letting it drag on for years would just be additional stress for him."

Bell's attorneys said they agreed to the plea bargain to spare the former high school football star the danger of being convicted of more serious charges and also to win early release from juvenile custody.

In October, Mauffray sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility for four prior juvenile convictions for battery and destruction of property. But under the terms of Monday's plea agreement, that time will be served concurrently with the new 18-month sentence for the Dec. 4 attack, and Bell will get credit for the nine months he spent in jail while awaiting trial. His attorneys said he could be released by June.

Chicago Tribune and other media win suit to open Jena 6 case to public

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Shawn Williams

See News media win suit to open Jena 6 case, an article that appeared in Thursday's Chicago Tribune.

Some of the highlights from the Howard Witt article:

A judge ruled Wednesday that the public and the news media should have full access to all legal proceedings involving Mychal Bell…whose prosecution had been shrouded in secrecy on orders of the trial judge.

…Rapides Parish District Judge Thomas Yeager ordered that Bell's upcoming criminal trial, as well as any pretrial hearings, must be open to the press and the public. Yeager also ordered that the court record and transcripts of any closed proceedings held so far be made available to the news media, and that attorneys for Bell be released from the trial judge's gag order…

It was the second major setback for Mauffray in the Bell case. Last June, Mauffray presided when Bell was convicted as an adult on the battery and conspiracy charges. An appellate court later vacated that conviction, ruling that Jena District Attorney Reed Walters and Mauffray had improperly tried Bell as an adult rather than a juvenile.

"It's not discretionary, it's mandatory," Yeager said. "[Mauffray] should open the proceedings and he should open the court records. It's not a confidential case."

There is no doubt that the justice system in Jena is trying to railroad these young men.

Dallas South Blog inteviewed at Let’s Talk Honesty regarding Black Bloggers reaction to Michael Baisden

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Shawn Williams

George Cook of the website Let's Talk Honestly did a special report in which he interviewed myself and other bloggers. The interviews revolved around Black Bloggers' reaction towards Michael Baisden and comments he made by towards the organization Color of Change .

Click here to listen to the interviews. Other Bloggers who were interviewed include:

Dwight Hunter Exodus Mentality

Yobachi Boswell blackperspective.net

Garlin Gilchrist II thesuperspade.com

Gina McCauley What About Our Daughters

NAACP and others must rethink its “mission” or risk futher obsolescence

Posted on November 18, 2007 by Shawn Williams

Obsolescence – the state of being which occurs when a person, object, or service is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order.

I was president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the NAACP from 1994-1996 and I count Dallas President Casey Thomas as a friend. The organization is quite dear to me.

With all that said, I see the NAACP, especially the national organization, as losing touch with the very people it is charged to serve. As the realities of race in America has evolved, the NAACP has changed very little in how it addresses the issues of the day.

If the NAACP is not leading (I said leading) the effort in cases like the Jena 6, Genarlow Wilson, and Tyrone Brown that what are they doing? The group is really trying to find its way right now, that's evident in the change in leadership that occurred earlier this year.

It was a surprise to say the least when the NAACP broke with conventional wisdom and hired executive Bruce Gordon to lead the organization. Only 19 months into the job, Gordon resigned his post as president (last March).

Gordon's vision as president did not lineup with the NAACP's 64 member board . The former Verizon exec realized the NAACP was a civil rights group, but thought they could benefit from broadening their scope. He wanted to address more of Black America's pressing needs.

Julian Bond, chairman of the board said at the time, "Put simply, we fight racial discrimination and social service groups fight the effects of racial discrimination. Service is wonderful and praiseworthy and fabulous, but many, many organizations do it. Only a couple do justice work, and we're one of those few."

NAACP Mission

The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

As the NAACP et. al. focus on hate crimes and discrimination, both of which need dealing with, who speaks for the other ills in the African-American community? We most definitely need to address the bias in the criminal justice, but the very soul of our communities are at stake here.

Take for instance the fact that from 2003-2005 a disproportionate number of African-Americans died in police custody. In that time period 2002 people died in police custody with 31.9% of those being black (appx. 639). African-Americans make up roughly 12% of the population. If your son or daughter made up that number, you would want answers.

But at the same time, if your black son or daughter died as a result of homicide at the hands of a black assailant, you would want answers as well. In 2003 & 2004, 16,276 African-Americans died as a result of homicide. More than 12,000 of those deaths were a result of firearms and if figures released earlier this year can guide us, then 9 of 10 of those deaths occurred at the hand of another African-American.

According to reports , the NAACP doesn't get involved in black on black crimes. I can understand that to an extent, but does that mean that the group is now predicated on the actions of others against us even at the expense of actions against ourselves? Take for instance the NAACP STOP Campaign. Will the NAACP go after Don Imus and Michael Richards, but ignore the Ying Yang Twins and Soulja Boy?

The NAACP needs to move forward, and by all estimations that is what Bruce Gordon was trying to do. The NAACP is working, but I hope that work is not in vain as the group spins its wheels waiting for the next national outrage. As the organization nears its 100th birthday, an audit of the way they do business is in order. Groups like Color of Change seem to have taken the NAACP's claimed mission and run with it.

The good thing is that the NAACP is not going anywhere. But as the founders of the Niagara Movement took a fresh approach to civil rights, so should its legacy organization. If the national leaders won't be moved, I have no doubt the young blood like Casey as well as the college branches will help them make the transition into the 21st Century. I count myself as part of that legacy.

Dunbar Village assault examined by Clarence Page; counterprotests held on Friday

Posted on November 17, 2007 by Shawn Williams

Somebody else from the Chicago Tribune is picking up on the web movement. This time it's columnist Clarence Page. Page focuses on a Chicago resident who staged a counter protest to Friday's hate crime rally. See Focus on hate crime is far too narrow .

Some of the highlights from Page's column.

Shane Johnson, 32, a social worker by day and Weblogger on the side, staged a nearby dissent with a few sympathizers. He supported the prosecution of hate crimes, he said, but thinks Sharpton's definition of "hate" is too narrow.

I share Johnson's outrage. Why, I often have wondered, do we black folks get so much more agitated about white-on-black insults than the black-on-black assaults that constantly terrorize certain neighborhoods?

Sharpton wants tough federal prosecution of hate-related crimes, like the hanging of nooses. Fine, says Johnson. But Johnson also asks why national black leaders have paid so little attention to a more recent campaign in the black netroots: the beating and rape of a 35-year-old Haitian woman and the beating and sexual assault of her 12-year-old son by up to 10 assailants in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Instead, civil rights leaders and those of us whom they purport to represent often seem to be too benumbed by black-inflicted terrors that we have given up trying to fight. As another mother at Dunbar Village told an Associated Press reporter: "So a lady was raped? Big deal. There's too much other crime happening here."

I truly believe that were it not for the internet movement, the Dunbar Village case would be nowhere in the public consciousness. Through the efforts of What About Our Daughters and the Afrosphere, the light continues to shine on the horrors committed in West Palm Beach.

That Page has picked up on the story is huge for those of us who want to take a more wholistic approach to the deliverance of our people. We as a people need to look at the conditions of Dunbar Village and the condition of the perpetrators that would allow them to commit such a crime.

Residents in project complexes throughout the country are living in fear. Who's advocating on their behalf? Well black bloggers are, and Clarence Page has furthered the cause.