By now, I’m sure you’ve heard of the controversy surrounding the Jena 6 -- six Black high school students who were charged with attempted murder for attacking a White classmate. That particular attack was preceded by Black students sitting under a tree where only White students normally sat. The next day, three nooses were hung from that tree. Then there were several racially-charged fights among students at the high school, an arson fire, and then the beating.

The issue that has so many of us up in arms is the fact the “criminal justice” system surrounding this episode has consistently treated Blacks much more harshly than Whites. Whereas White attackers at the high school may have been merely suspended or charged with simple misdemeanor battery, these Black attackers were charged with attempted murder.

It makes me wonder, exactly where is the “progress” that we as a society have supposedly made in terms of racial equality, because it’s certainly nowhere to be seen in this case and in many other recent examples.

In this post, I really only want to point to a brilliant column written by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald, who sums up what many of us feel:

White men taking sledgehammers to the door of the jailhouse in Marion, Ind., intending to murder three African-American prisoners. The sheriff orders his men not to interfere.

White men hearing testimony tying two white defendants conclusively to the kidnap, torture and murder of a black boy in Money, Miss. The jury takes less than an hour to set them free.

White men with badges arresting three civil rights workers for an alleged traffic violation in Neshoba County, Miss. Forty-four days later, the workers’ bodies are dug out of an earthen dam.

There are other examples -- literally thousands -- but let three suffice to make the point. Which is that African Americans have frequently found the justice system to be about anything but justice. From the day slavery ended, that system has often been a tool used specifically for the suppression and control of black people.

There was no artifice about it. This conspiracy of beat cops and county sheriffs and DAs and judges and senators and attorneys general operated openly and with impunity. Everyone knew there were simply different rules, different enforcement and different punishment for blacks.

Maybe your impulse is to seal all that off in a mental box called history, interesting, lamentable, but hardly relevant. In which case, what will you say about Jena?

Meaning, of course, the tiny Louisiana town now infamous for a series of events that began a year ago when a black high school student asked the principal if it was OK for him to sit under a shade tree white kids claimed as theirs. The principal told him yes. But the next day, nooses were found hanging in the tree.

The principal wanted the white kids who did it expelled, but the superintendent overruled him, briefly suspending them instead. Expulsion, he felt, was excessive for this “prank.”

There followed weeks of racial brawls and even an arson fire. A black student, Robert Bailey, was hit in the head with a beer bottle by a white kid who was later charged with simple battery and released on probation.

After a white student, Justin Barker, supposedly taunted Bailey about it, six black kids allegedly jumped him, kicking and stomping. Barker was knocked out and had a black eye. He was treated and released at the hospital and felt well enough to go out that same night.

Yet the DA called it attempted murder.

Yes, charges against five of the six were eventually reduced. Yes, an appeals court just overturned the aggravated battery conviction of the only student whose case has been adjudicated.

But it is hard to be sanguine. This unjust justice is hardly unique. Consider Genarlow Wilson, 17, sentenced to 10 years for consensual with a 15-year-old. And Marcus Dixon, 18, who drew 10 for having sex with an underage white girl.

And Shaquanda Cotton who shoved a white teacher’s aide and got seven years from a judge who had earlier given probation to a white girl who burned down her family’s house. A 2000 study co-sponsored by the Justice Department codifies the obvious: People of color receive starkly unequal treatment in the ‘’justice'’ system.

As much as it hurts me to say it and as much as I want to believe otherwise, the simple truth is that racism is still alive and well today in 21st century America.