I've refrained from discussing anything concerning the Jena 6 case primarily because I wanted to see how (or if) any mainstream media outlets would pick up on what's going on and give some accounts from the students, residents and law enforcement officials. Aside from NPR, most of the MSM outlets have been late to the game in their coverage, perhaps because of the outcry of injustice from members of the blogosphere on their preference to talking about Black celebrity goof-ups, like Michael Vick, Whoopi Goldberg and O.J. Simpson.

But aside from all that's going on with the case, I've noticed there's been a recent surge in the number of racial incidents, snafus, faux-pas, uh-oh's and other foolishment which have been reported. Here's just a small sampling from the past six months:

• A Black woman in Logan, WV was tortured and sexually assaulted for at least a week at the hands of six White people, forcing her to eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet.
  
• A noose was hung in a tree at the University of Maryland outside of the school's Nyumburu Cultural Center, which some students refer to as the Black Cultural Center.
  
• A cartoonist was forced from his post at the University of Virginia after depicting an "Ethiopian Food Fight" as loinclothed people in a brawl using chairs, boots and tree branches. Ironically, this story came out the same week Ethiopia celebrates their millennium.
  
• Rush Limbaugh creates and sings a song on his nationally syndicated talk show called "Barack, the Magic Negro". Unsurprisingly, he still has a job.
  
• A Christian academy celebrates their graduation with a big ol' Blackface party…with pictures on the web! How 'bout those Christian values?
  
• University of Maryland students host a Cinco de Mayo party where people dress up as gardeners, construction workers and cleaning people…then post the racist pictures on the web!
  
• White Harvard students, alarmed among seeing several Black people on the quad playing flag football, call the police on them. Only those Black people are Harvard students too. Oops, my bad!
  
• Don Imus. No link necessary, really.

If you're a minority in America, shit like this has to make you wonder if anything has really changed in the grand scope of race relations in the past forty or so years. For every link that's here, there are probably tens of hundreds of other incidents which haven't been reported that are going on every day.

Perhaps what's worse than this reality is the atmosphere of intolerance towards those who speak up against it. They're called race baiters or asked why they can't just "get over it" (the "it" being slavery/discrimination/getting called a racial slur, etc.). Well it's kind of hard to get over something when you're always under some kind of discrimination based on your race, either overt or covert. And it's not just a "Southern" thing, as evidenced by the links above; it seems the further removed the offenders are from the source of their offense, the more it's deemed "OK" and "not a big deal".

America seriously needs to have a knock-down, drag-out, 12-round honest discussion about race and race relations. Otherwise, incidents like Jena and Logan, WV and the countless college "race themed" parties are going to continue to happen, and people will keep wondering why.