Jena

Today found me in the now infamous town of Jena, Louisiana, the same locale as the notorious Jena 6.

There’s nothing particularly notable about the town, except perhaps for its pleasantness. Jena is the seat of LaSalle Parish, although there are only about 3,000 residents. Like most of small-town America, there’s a WalMart just outside of town with a now-closed local department store across the street. There’s no Starbucks, but there is Jena Java, the only coffee shop and only internet café in town (hours 6-9 am and 3-10 pm). We had lunch at the Brisket Barn, a friendly family-operated barbeque. Everybody we met were extremely open and polite to us, there was no sign of any overt red-neckery, no evidence of a corrosive racism simmering beneath the surface.

Demographically, Jena is 85% white, but the cashier at the friendly, family-operated barbeque was a very pleasant young black woman (obviously not a member of the same family as the rest of the restaurant staff). She seemed to fit right in with the others, and I saw no evidence of any racism, either subtle or overt. Occasional black customers sat side-by-side with the more numerous white customers without any signs of tension. I saw no bigotry anywhere on display.

In my discussions with townspeople, the subject of the recent current events occasionally came up. The residents of Jena seemed genuinely embarrassed by the attention they’ve received. All in all, if I hadn’t read the media coverage of recent events in the town, if I hadn’t read about the civil rights marches of last summer through Jena, if I hadn’t been told that the kind people I had met were some sort of “stealth racists,” such thoughts would never have crossed my mind.

Now, I’m not so naïve not to recognize that some of the hospitality I received, and much of my impressions of the town, hadn’t been colored by the fact that I happen to be white. Were I black, maybe my experience would have been different.

But I also know that an actual identity, be it that of a town or a person, is often very different than the symbol that it might have become. I know better than to confuse the two.

Jena is not an evil place.