Imagine your sitting in front of an all white jury, sitting before white judge who just happens to agree with white prosecutor and all white witnesses and convicts you a black youth in racially charged high school criminal case.

Well that's what happened in a small, still mostly segregated, section of rural Louisiana, called Jena. According to Truthout.org. An all white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by black students. The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the "white tree" at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The black defendant, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other. The jury quickly convicted Mychal Bell of two felonies - aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other black youths await similar trials on second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

In September 2006, a black student at Jena high school asked permission from school administrators to sit under the "white tree." School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did. The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the "white tree." The message was clear. "Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant 'Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die,'" Casteptla Bailey, a mother of one of the students, told the London Observer.

Racism, the birth mark of the United States of America. I was sitting down thinking the other day, just looking at the world and i was like wow the racism is getting out of control. I believe it's b/c we fail to talk about the issues at hand i mean racism calmed down what? About 15 years ago, but even in the early 90's cops were racially profiling and still do. So I want to know why are we so scared to talk about race?