With liberty and justice for all presumably echoing somewhere in the background yesterday, Rep. Dan Lungren yesterday cut to the real concern in the Jena 6 case:

“Whether or not attempted murder is appropriate under that jurisdiction, I don’t know. I’ve never prosecuted under that jurisdiction,” says Dan Lungren (R-Calif.). “We need to talk about justice being done [to] all of the victims.”

Now, I would quibble a bit with Politico adding the “to” because that changes quite a bit the inflection of the statement.  Justice to and justice for would carry pretty different connotations.  Given that “justice” has only been applied to some of the people involved, Lungren’s attempt to paint over the racial issues involved in prosecution is an insulting and willful ignorance of the forces at play outside of the direct incidents involved.  In fact, it seems that Rep. Lungren would rather try focusing on broken families and delinquency than actually acknowledging racism.  Over we go.

During yesterday’s hearing, Lungren tried to get around to race without actually bringing it up, using tried and true proxy insults.  Anderson@Large covers his thoughts:

Rep. Dan Lungren asserted a relationship between “family structure” and juvenile delinquency. Lungren used “single parent family” as a proxy for race.

Prof. Ogletree flatly rejected Lungren’s claim:

It’s not the structure of the family. It’s the structure of the criminal justice system. It’s too easy to say “family structure” is the cause and consequence of the problem. It’s bigger than that. You must also look at disparities in punishment and charges.

Exactly.  Professor Ogletree by the way is Charles J. Ogletree Jr., the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.  So he didn’t exactly fall off a turnip truck and into this hearing.  He doesn’t spit it right into Lungren’s face like he could have, but he still hits the real issue here.  Trying to find a backdoor into justifying the over-prosecution of African Americans by claiming that their family structure is inherently more likely to turn them into criminals is really a pathetic way to couch latent racist tendencies.

Professor Ogletree, also via the post at Anderson@Large, clarified later in the day on NPR:

A noose is a hate crime. The government chose not to prosecute them…That’s what makes people so upset. Why is it that one set of conduct which violates the law was prosecuted. And another set was handled within the school system. It’s a disparity. It’s based on race and it’s hard to justify under these circumstances.

Lungren’s comments are directly aimed at suggesting that race isn’t the issue here.  It’s misdirection and non sequiturs and the enabling of perpetuated racial violence.  It’s his nothion that nobody involved is getting the justice they deserve regardless of race.  It’s his notion that the children being charged with attempted murder over a swollen eye and a concussion were just raised to be problematic.  And it sets the table for removing the notion of hate crimes from this and especially future prosecutions.

Thank goodness the committee and its witnesses aren’t sitting around and taking this from him.  But clearly Rep. Lungren wants to avoid and deny any role of race in this issue if possible.  Time to start asking why.

Bill Durston is running against Dan Lungren for Congress.

RaceTracker: CA-03