A black student at San Jose University in California was subjected to continuous harassment his freshman year at the University. Had it not been for a visit from his parents this treatment more than likely would have continued.

In 2013, when the harassment occurred Donald Williams Jr. was a 17 year-old freshman. When his parents stopped by to visit, they saw a confederate flag hanging on his roommate’s side of the room along with the word “three-fifths” written on a board in the room. What his parents didn’t know was his roommate and two other white male students forced a U-shaped bike lock around Williams’ neck and tried to lock him in a closet.

Joseph “Brett” Bomgardner, 21, and his accomplices, Logan Beaschler and Colin Warren, both 20, got off with misdemeanor battery charges, dodging the hate crime charge. The odds of the men being charged with a hate crime would have been better had the jury been a group of Williams’ peers, instead the jury consisted six white men and six white women.

Of course the defendants’ attorney argued that thugs were exercising their first amendment rights even though they wrote three-fifths, a swastika and other Nazi symbols on a dry erase board in Williams’ room.

Judge LaDoris Cordell said, “I am saddened that 12 jurors could not agree that calling a black male ‘Three-fifths’ or ‘Fraction,’ or forcing a lock around his neck, or creating an environment promoting racism with Confederate memorabilia, or hearing how this young man was humiliated, amounted to a hate crime. This verdict demonstrates that we are a long way from living in a post-racist America.” Not that this is a surprise to us.