Footnote to the preceding, Paging John Roberts Div.

It might be, it would seem at first glance, just another minor matter, just another case of the sort that rumble through the court system every day.

Mychal Bell, 17, the first member to be tried of the "Jena Six" - the name given to the six boys charged in a Dec. 4 fight at Jena High School - was convicted today[, Friday,] of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit the same.

Yes, at first glance just another minor matter - or it would be were it not for the background.

I first heard about this through a link to The Big Con, a blog at the website of the Campaign for America's Future.

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree. [Emphasis added.]

The white boys responsible for the racist threats were dismissed with a slap on the wrist by a school administration that treated it as a harmless prank. Not surprisingly, Jena's black residents didn't see it that way. Racial tension soared and fights began breaking out, with both blacks and whites being attacked by white and blacks.

Last December 4th, as reported by the BBC program "This World" a month ago,

racial tension boiled over once more at the school when a white student, Justin Barker, was attacked by a small group of black students.

He fell to the ground and hit his head on the concrete, suffering bruising and concussion.

He was treated at the local hospital and released, and that same evening felt able to put in an appearance at a school function.

In fact, the hospital report (visible at 2:13 into this video) describes a "R periorbital bruise" - a black right eye - and some abrasions. Despite that, District Attorney Reed Walters, who previously told black students at the school that he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen," charged the six black students involved with attempted second degree murder and conspiracy to commit second degree murder.

The charges were later reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy, both felonies. And now the first of the six has been convicted on those charges by an all-white jury. He could be sent to prison for 30 years.

For some added perspective, consider this: A few nights earlier, one of the other defendants had his head cracked open with a beer bottle by a white. His assailant was charged with simple battery - a misdemeanor.

So, Injustice Roberts. what precedent should be overturned to stop this sort of discrimination?