ARGGGGGG!

Pointless, stupid, moronic, idiotic, fuckwits.

Who would have though in this day and age that people can be so damn ignorant... No, wait, thats rather the whole point, we are being forcefed our opinions by 24 hours news, raised to trust corrupt authority figures based on the few shining examples of the past...

Stop the planet, I want to get off.

I actually don't think this is entirely racism. I think it's poor kids vs. rich kids.

Wait until Sicko comes out, you won't believe that can happen in the 21sy century either.

A year or so ago, a National Public Radio reporter and a British radio correspondent were travelling in Mississippi to cover new developments in a historic civil rights nurder case (I forget whether it was the Emmett Till case or the Mississippi Civil Rights Workers murders). The British reporter was black, and when they stopped in a rural area to interview locals about the historic case, they were told that no one would talk to them, epithets were shouted at them, they were wrned to leave before "something happened", and (if I recall correctly), they were threatened by men with guns (though they were not shot at).

This is the American Deep South. I don't think it will ever change.

I lived in different places around Louisiana for about 12 years: Metairie (a suburb of New Orleans), Lake Charles (SW regional city), Shreveport (NW regional city), Natchitoches (a very small college town in the NW) and Baton Rouge (the state capital).

Jena's in the middle of nowhere rural Louisiana, and it is very unusual for its racial mix: most places in the state have a higher ratio of blacks, and in many places white folks are the minority. That's not to say that the town itself won't be geographically split up by race.

But thinking that racism is confined to the deep south may be comforting, but it isn't accurate. Boston is even more segregated than anyplace I lived in Louisiana, and interracial interaction is far more tense.