Race in America: Where Do We Stand?

Television bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman is apologizing for repeatedly using the "n-word" during a private phone conversation. But his son taped the phone call and reportedly sold it to the National Enquirer. Chapman was encouraging his son to break up with his black girlfriend. "It's not because she's black, it's because we use the word n----r sometimes here," Chapman said in the taped call. " I'm not going to take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for thirty years, because some ****** n----r heard us say 'n----r' and turn us into the Enquirer Magazine. Our career is over." The controversy is just the latest in a series of racial incidents in the news recently. So where does America stand on race relations today? Jena 6 The civil rights movement ended years ago -- but charges of racism have not -- as seen in the case of the so-called Jena 6. News of the case has made national headlines, with many calling it the beginning of a new civil rights movement. The Jena 6 incident began with a symbolic gesture: a black student sitting under what had been seen as a "whites only" tree at Jena High School. The next day, three nooses hung from its branches. Action taken by the school board was viewed as insufficient. And as the racial tension grew, a white student was beaten unconscious by six black students. An uproar followed when the six were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy, facing up to 100 years in prison without parole. Civil rights activists argue the case is one of racial inequality, highlighting the stark contrast between the way black boys and white boys in the same town were treated. But some in Jena disagree. "I believe that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are bigger racists than any of us," Jena resident Jason Brooks said. "A lot of this has been taken out of context," said Isaac Squyres, also a Jena resident. "All the blacks and whites here from what I've seen get along terrifically." But Fox News Contributor Juan Williams suggested that some may be suffering from a case of denial. "One of the things I always found surprising was the level of denial in the white community where people would say 'We've got good colored folk down here,' 'You know we've got good relations, I don't know what you people are talking about,' and 'You're just stirring up trouble coming from the North and coming from the big cities you civil rights people.'" Don Imus and Other Race Controversies But before the Jena outcry, there was the Don Imus controversy. Back in April the radio talk show host made a racially derogatory remark about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Imus later apologized, but a grass roots movement led by civil rights groups eventually led to his firing. And then there was Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's alleged racist remarks about a black owned restaurant in Harlem. He said, "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, '@#$%^&, I want more ice tea!'" Williams defended O'Reilly's take on blacks -- something that led to the following comment by author and Professor Boyce Watkins. "The fact of the matter is that when Bill O'Reilly gets Juan Williams - the eternal happy Negro - on his show to congratulate him on his racism, that's like Hugh Hefner getting a stripper to come on the show to tell him he's not a sexist," Watkins said. Williams responded, "This is unbelievable to me given who I am and what I do, and the histories I've written about the things I care so passionately about, somebody says 'You're just a happy Negro supporting Bill O'Reilly,' basically calling me an Uncle Tom." Symptoms of a Deeper Problem? While most would agree that America has made great strides in the equality for all regardless of the color of their skin, some say recent racial incidents are symptomatic of a deeper problem -- one that never healed. "We've made tremendous progress, there's no question…Look at the level of representation, participation in mainstream American politics, economics and every aspect of American life," Williams said. "At the same time, you have throw back situations like Jena 6 when you have to say 'Why does anyone think it's okay to hang a noose off of a tree." Eddie Thompson is a pastor in Jena. He says that the noose incident has grown bigger than "just those six boys." "It's touched something deep down in the heart of America that's kind of a phenomenon. There's still some tender nerve endings out there right now that we're having to deal with," Pastor Thompson said. Williams said, "If you're white, race doesn't have to be a paramount concern for you. But if you're black or Hispanic or a woman, you have to be very aware of what it means to be a black person, a Hispanic person in relation to white people, a woman in relation to a white male power structure." 'I Have a Dream' CBN News spoke with Alan Bean of the non profit organization Friends of Justice. As his organization investigated this incident, he told CBN News that what most believe is a problem of racism in the country may instead be a problem of ignorance surrounding our differences. "People tend to move toward communities and gather in churches to express their points of view," Bean said. "And I don't think most folks are forced on a daily basis to come to grips with people who are very different, who don't look like them, who don't think like them, who don't talk like them." "It's got to be something that God is trying to show us and trying to tell us something," said Pastor Bryan Moran of Antioch Baptist Church in Jena. That 'something' may be the same message Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. received when he wrote in his "I Have A Dream" speech -- that we not judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.