Current Stories of Race in the Media:

The Jenna 6
I first heard about the Jenna 6 when I was stalking...er...reading the news feed on facebook. I noticed that my roommate had joined a group: Free the Jenna 6. I clicked on the group to see what it was about and I was shocked. I didn't even know that places like this still existed. A place where even though they were "integrated" they were still separated and community members weren't even phased by it. I thought stories like this could only be found in archives of old magazines and newspapers or in movies on Turner Classic Movies such as To Kill a Mockingbird.

But here in the town of Jenna, six black students were being charged with attempted second degree murder by beating up a white student. The events started when black students asked the school's vice principal if they could sit under a tree that normally only white students sat under. The next day, hangman nooses were dangling from the trees. The students at fault were set to be expelled, but the school board over turned the punishment and changed it to suspension. Eventually, it escalated to whites assulting the group of six until the night that they beat up one student. That same student was later seen at a party that night, but the group of six men were charged with attempted second degree murder!

Don't get me wrong, the boys need to be punished for they did beat up the white student, but definitely not to this extent. They were charged with trying to kill the student and they were going to be tried as adults even though they weren't old enough. The main issue with the Jenna 6 is that the justice was unfair in that the white students barely got a slap on the wrist for threatening the black students with nooses from the trees; yet, the black students get sent to jail for fighting.

I am glad that people went to Jenna, LA to fight this injustice. Over 15,000 went to march in Jenna for the injustice. Many were people who were born in the wrong generation and only hear stories from their grandparents and parents about the Civil Rights marches and the great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. It was also interesting that people were donating money for bonds to free the final member. It was great to see people like David Bowie of all people donating $10,000 to the Jenna Six Legal Defense Fund. The final member of the Jenna Six, Mychal Bell, was just release yesterday with a bail of $45,000 instead of the original $90,000.


Ken Burns and the Latinos:

In a time where Latinos are growing in numbers, you would think that Ken Burns would include them in his 17 hour documentary about WWII. Somewhere? In 17 hours, not even 5 minutes? Nope. His original documentary included no stories or interviews about Latinos or Native Americans fighting for the war. I heard that somewhere that he didn't include them because he was having difficulty getting veterans of those cultures to come forward with their experiences. Seriously? My grandpa missed fighting for WWII by three years, but he is always very prideful about his experience with the air force. I even remember him taking me to air shows at the base and showing me the ships and airplanes in Copus Christi. How can his and other great men of the Latino community not be able to tell their story?

At first, members of Defend the Honor Campaign were worried that PBS would aire his documentary as it is for artistic indepence and because based on history with PBS, they normally didn't appeal to the Latino community's opinions. They did cooroperate with the Latinos and Native Americans by including two Latino veterans and one Native American veteran at the end of three segments.

"He [Ken Burns] doesn't know if that will mollify the critics, but he's put a positive spin on the brouhaha, on how they hadn't pressured Latino filmmakers to tell this story. "No, no, no - it has to be Ken Burns," he says. "In a way, all of this was an extraordinary compliment." (http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-fftv5382202sep23,0,2620347.story)

Are you serious? So should Latinos bow down and sing your praise because at the last minute we finally convinced the great and powerful Ken Burns to include our veterans into his 17 hour documentary? Excuse me if I forgot my kneeling pillow. I think he should have made sure that he got everyone's story from Latinos to Native Americans to Japanese-Americans (the way the article made it sound was it included only bad things about the Japanese-Americans and Japanese). If he's as amazing as everyone claims that he is, he needs to make sure he includes everyone story, especially if this is about history. You can't write someone out of history.

Look what I just found, Ken Burns. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/exhibits/ww2latinos/
A site from University of Texas at Austin that is all about Latinos/as in WWII. It includes a symposium they had in 2004 and four volumes of narratives from 1999-2004. Maybe you should have read these before you finished your documentary.