Since the day of protest in Jena, Louisiana, there has been a flurry of interest in reporters from the mainstream press in contacting some of us in the Black netroots/blogging community about how and why the massive organizing and presence of Blackfolk in this small rural town represents a fulcrum for social media in Black America.
I've spoken at length to various reporters and academics since September 20th, and I have said many things no more eloquently as the many profoundly gifted activists and bloggers who have covered the Jena matter far longer and more consistently than I.
The reporters that have contacted me, all of whom have been White men, have appeared to express surprisingly nuanced and thoughtful approaches to covering this story and its much larger implications. However, from their laptops to their editor's desks is a treacherous journey that reinforces the need, beauty and power of social media like blogging which disintermediate the politics of the gatekeeping class from the writer and the reader.
The cogent vignettes that linked the visceral impact of the Jena trials for Blackfolk and the OJ verdict for many Whitefolk somehow were eviscerated before making it to print.
Then, just this morning, my wife handed me a draft of a writing project she's working on. And there at the top of Page 1 was this:
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing which we black are wise.
Her bandage hides two festing sores
That once perhaps were eyes.--Langston Hughes
Deep within the being of Blackfolk is a shared wisdom and maturity about what Justice feels like, and equally important, how Injustice wracks our centuries-battered collective soul. This sixth sense is borne of oppression and our cultural fortitude and improvisational gifts that allows our spirit to remain indomitable, even in this most adverse situations.
This sense bespeaks the clearly felt vulnerability of our citizenship and our intimate familiarity with living in a land of abundance and great opportunity frought with the complexities and paradoxes associated with how much of this abundance and opportunity was created on our backs.
Prophet Hughes wrote many years ago what I felt much of the time I was too paralyzed to write about the Jena Revolt: Jena has been in us long before protesters were in it.
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