Any vicious attack is a crime. Period

The "Jena 6" moniker is part of the hype to keep the racial waters roiling, and without such incidents, those who have co-opted "civil rights" as a way to make a living would have to find real jobs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have claimed a moral high ground almost comical as the ultimate pair of moral midgets.

One need only examine FBI crime statistics to quickly determine most interracial violent crime is committed against Americans of European descent. I, for one, am too busy to take a day off work and join a protest rally every time I read about them.

So what is this incident, really? This is a classic example of kids behaving very badly. The behavior of the surrounding adults reveals the apples still clinging to the trees. The nooses were insensitive and provocative, and the retaliatory beatings crossed the line into crime.

We can shake our heads and "tsk, tsk" as Ruben Navarrette seems to be doing. He trots out the same tired rhetoric about the South possessing a monopoly on racism, which is patently false as reverse migration demographics clearly demonstrate. Blacks are abandoning their northern paradise and returning South in record numbers.

In the end, this is another chapter about how media and their own race obsession fuel these stories by giving them all the oxygen they need to rage. A vicious attack by six people, regardless of their color, against a single victim regardless of their color is a crime. Period. End of story.

As to "lingering racism," it is time for everyone to turn the microscope on themselves. We can never repair what we cannot admit. I submit there is more than enough to go around.

Steve Quick

Arlington Heights