Hanging Nooses
Our hate crime experts and civil rights leaders argued that the nooses are a white racist backlash to the firestorm of black protests over the Jena 6 case involving black teens accused of battering a white student. Some have announced a fearful call suggesting that the nooses could signal a new rise of racist hatred in America.
But are we going way overboard with this? I could even suggest that some folks out there are putting up nooses just to get a negative reaction from blacks. Some can even conclude that the noose was an offensive racial dig, but not a sign of lust for racist hatred. Who knows if some folks are throwing a Halloween pirate party, and they put up a noose and a pirate, and they get accused of being racist. (Yep, it happened in Madison, NJ) I suppose they would ignore the historical fact that pirates are usually hanged if caught by the authorities. I would not even be surprised if the NAACP brought up concerns to the Disney executives about the use of the hanging noose in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
Could it even be a dumb prank orchestrated by blacks? From one perspective, it would be quite easy and by playing the race card, who would really believe a black person would do such a thing? You may believe it to be improbable, but it is not impossible to discount it.
In her book, the Color of Crime, University of Florida professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, found that blacks perpetrate one in six racial hoaxes. The reasons the blacks commit hoaxes aren't totally different than those of white hoaxers. Both are angry, resentful and play hard on stereotypes and fears--that whites are racist, and violent, and that blacks are menacing and violent. The hoaxes encase the worst of black and white fears about each other.
Are we forgetting about the events of the Duke University rape case? You got a female black college student screaming about being raped by white Duke Lacrosse players. It ignited angry protests. Everyone, including the media were hyping it up portraying the women as the victim and that the white Duke players were assumed to be guilty.
Eventually, the women's story unraveled into contradictions and lies. Then the racial backlash went back at the black leaders for accepting her story at face value. The prosecutor lost his job and was disbarred. Police and public officials felt they were played and may well be far more cautious about rape allegations made by blacks against whites.
The folks that believed that the three white lacrosse players were guilty refused to apologize. This includes the 88 faculty members who, without regard to the evidence, publicly adjudged as guilty the three accused Duke students, the entire Duke lacrosse team, and white America in general, and universty president Richard Brodhead, who did nothing to defend Duke's students even as their innocence became clear.
President Brodhead finally did apologize last week. He regretted the “failure [of his administration] to reach out to the lacrosse players and their families in this time of extraordinary peril.”
From the Powerline blog:
We can also take the behavior of one professor, Houston Baker (now teaching at Vanderbilt). The demagogic Baker excoriated the lacrosse team for their "silent whiteness" and their "white, male, athletic privilege." He called for the "immediate dismissals" by Duke of "the team itself and its players," to combat the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us." After the innocence of the accused players had become clear, Baker received an email from the mother of a member of the lacrosse team (who hadn't been accused) asking if he would reconsider his earlier statements. Baker responded, by typing "LIES" and indicating that his correspondent was the mother of a "farm animal." Eventually Baker, a post-modernist if nothing else, fell back to arguing that it didn't matter whether the rape allegations were true.
Al Sharpton and company quickly piled on the innocent students, playing the race card for all it wasn't worth. That's why it's almost comical to hear Sharpton railing against prosecutorial abuse in the Jena case. Sharpton wouldn't grant the presumption of innocence to innocent white students victimized by a rogue prosecutor, yet thinks its the scandal of the century that thuggish black students were overcharged in Jena.
Sharpton has not even apologize to the accused players after they were declared innocent.
Jesse Jackson even descended upon Durham to rally behind Crystal Gail Magnum — a lying pole dancer that was out to ruin three lives. The good “reverend” maintained that the issue was about “Black women; white men. A stripper; and a team blowout.
The Duke case was flung in the face of civil rights leaders as the danger of overplaying the race angle in Jena or anywhere else a black is victimized under muddled circumstances. City and school officials in Jena screamed that the infamous noose hanging incident at the high school was not racial since black students also stuck their heads through the noose.
Case in point, even folks living in Jena believe that the incident has been exaggerated beyond a reasonable degree.
The big hype in Jena is an incident before the beating where three nooses were hung from a tree after black students were seen standing under it. This resulted in the suspension of several students; it is worthy to note, however, that the principal recommended expulsion. Legal recourse could not be pursued because hanging a noose is not illegal, even if it is racist and dumb.
Thus, it provided an opportunity for black leaders to revitalize their following and again point to the undying hate called racism in America.
Reverend Jackson told the Columbia State newspaper, “Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment.” Jackson then criticized Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama for not being more vocal about the case saying that Obama was “acting like he’s white.”
While the Jena Six activists complain about excessive charges and double standards, we are faced with the facts that the six teens did knowingly beat up a fellow classmate severely. It is also true that one of the six teens, Mychal Bell, has a prior criminal record committing violent crimes in the past, including two charges of battery.
The activists know this as well, but they are using racism and their passionate emotion to show the Jena Six as victims, not attackers.
Will they stop following the likes of Jackson and Sharpton and stop using the privilege of being a "perpetual victim?"
* * * * *
More facts to consider...
Did you know that Mychal Bell's father was pretty much AWOL for a good part of his life, and only returned from Dallas after Bell faced attempted-murder charges?
Did you know that several black people were summoned to be on the jury for Bell's trial but all of them declined to respond?
Did you know that Bell's public defender was black?
Did you know that Bell's father and local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison at a bond hearing in August? But why did they not suggest this in the first place before the assault?
Did you know that the black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the "Jena Six" case and concluded that the attack on the white student had nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before?
Comments
Posted by: Blair
Posted on: October 20, 2007 10:36 AM
A few years ago, a revival of interest in the music of Billie Holiday and her song, “Strange Fruit," generated articles that drew attention to the “lynch law” era that predated the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, but these articles appeared mostly in scholarly journals, which most American don’t read. Copycat noose-hangings are now occurring across the country because few Americans associated nooses with racist sentiments until the Jena High School incident created national headlines.
Nooses can be racist or not, depending on the context. The hangman noose has been a symbol of dread and foreboding since the middle ages. It's the card you don't want to draw from a pack of Tarot cards. Hangman nooses have been incorporated into Halloween displays for decades. (Halloween Magazine even post instructions for tying nooses on its website at www.halloweenmagazine.com) A few years ago, a woman committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree in her front yard. Unfortunately, she chose Halloween eve to end her life. Her body dangled for days in full view of passerbys who thought it was part of the Halloween decorations. Today, she would be cut down and charged with a hate crime.
Are we to ban such classic western movies as Lonesome Dove, The Hanging Tree, and The Oxbow Incident simply because nooses play an important role in them. The hunt for nooses is turning into a witch hunt with often ludicrous results. The U.S. Army announced yesterday that it had ended its investigation into a noose-hanging incident at Anniston Army Depot. The "noose" turned out to have been a tie-day that had fallen from a truck delivering supplies to the depot.
The three Jena High School students who hung the nooses claim they did not realize that nooses have racist connotations. They claim they were merely replicating the famous lynching scene from Lonesome Dove, in which Texas Rangers string up with outlaws. This claim has been ridiculed by just about everyone, except those who actually investigated the incident. According to the Jena Times, state Welfare Supervisor Melinda Edwards said it might surprise everyone to learn that the three students did not have knowledge of black history in relation to that hanging of black citizens in the south during the civil rights movement.
“We discussed this in great detail with those students,” Edwards said. “They honestly had no knowledge of the history concerning nooses and black citizens. This may seem hard to believe for some people, but this is exactly what everyone on the committee determined.”
She also said that once the historical significance of the nooses was revealed to the students and how it was considered a tremendous insult to those of the black race, they showed great remorse. “When they were told about the historical relevance of the nooses and how others would interpret their actions, they really were very remorseful,” she said. “I can honestly say that these boys regretted tremendously ever hanging those nooses.”
Posted by: C. world
Posted on: October 28, 2007 11:08 AM
How do you go from nooses to the Duke Lacrosse team? Two different subjects. Believe it racism is alive and going strong in America. and no matter how we try to shift the tide it will forever be 1st nature in america. Until justice and equality is distributed the way it should be (equally), then we should look for the hate to continue , continue and continue to grow. Remember white america that tree in Jena, La should never had a sign posted on it's school ground saying for whites only. And please remember that provoctions by the whites in Jena, lead to the beating of this one white kid. So no matter how you try to turn things around, twist it up, burn it or even bury it Blacks have always been regarded as the lowest class of americans, by some americans. Here something to think about. Were you ever denied the right to be educated? were whites ever prosecuted for wreckless eyeballing (looking at a white woman wrong), had your mothers sister and wives raped, beaten to death, hanged, tarred and feathered, the list can go on and on and those things will never be forgotten because it is a true fact. the jews won't let you forget about the Holocust and black americans dare not let you forget about what their ancesters went through. You can use the Noose all you want but not around the neck of human being it is wrong, and if it continues to pop up all hell just might break out. And that will be sad
Posted by: James (Author)
Posted on: October 28, 2007 12:52 PM
Nah, the Duke Lacrosse incident and Jena are linked. There is always a rush to judgment, blaming the whites for your problems. Everyone including the media condemned the lacrosse players and sided with the black stripper. Then in the end, it turned out she lied. No one wanted to wait for the truth to come out, plus no one would apologize for regretting their actions.
Same goes for Jena. You are rushing to judgment saying that the six teenagers are innocent victims, but regardless if you talk about unequal justice or racism, they still did one thing that cannot be disputed. They severely beat up a fellow classmate. They still need to be punished for that. I agree that attempted murder is unfair, but to tell me that they should still go free is ridiculous.
How about the two of them that presented an award at the BET ceremony? Instead of being presentable gentlemen, they were dressed up as gangster thugs. How would that reflect to the rest of the nation? Black power? Thumbing at the law?
You talk about the Whites Only tree. There has never been a "whites-only" tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present – blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class.
I would not be surprised if you say the students are lying. Do the research instead of listening to the mouth of the leaders. Stop watching the television and go on the internet and make sure the truth has been told and is not disputed.
It has not been proven that the Justin Baker assault was linked to the nooses on the tree.
Yes, we do not want to forget history, but I find it annoying when you use history as an excuse.
Posted by:
Posted on: November 2, 2007 04:11 PM
HISTORY IS NOT AN EXCUSE, BUT HISTORY IS A TOOL TO LEARN FROM. RACISM IS STRONG IN AMERICA IT IS SO STRONG THAT IT IS VERY MUCH APART OF AMERICA AS APPLE PIE. SO TO THINK THAT RACISM WILL EVER END IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. THERE WILL PROBABLY BE ANOTHER JENA 6,DUKE LACROSSE INCIDENT,RODNEY KING,O.J SIMPSON,DON IMUS,BOUNTY HUNTER "DOG" CHAPMAN,MICHAEL RICHARDS AND EVEN MORE RACIST SCENARIOS BOTH WHITE AND BLACK, SO IF YOU'RE NOT USE TO IT GET USE TO IT BECAUSE IT IS APART OF OUR AMERICAN CULTURE..."NOT MY AMERICAN CULTURE" SOME OF YOU WILL SAY,... BUT REALLY... THINK ABOUT IT. WE'RE ALL INDIVIDUALS REPRESENTED TRULY BY OUR INDIVIDUAL ACTS ALONE NOT OUR RACE NOT OUR PARENTS NOT OUR GENDER NOR OUR AGE!! THE ONLY WAY I SEE THAT WE COULD POSSIBLY COME TOGETHER AS A COUNTRY WE WOULD HAVE TO BE INVADED BY ALIENS FROM ANOTHER WORLD, THEN MAYBE WE WOULD UNITE TO FIGHT OFF THE ALIENS, AND EVEN IF WE SUCCEEDED ONE TO TWO YEARS THE RACISM WOULD REEMERGE...SO LOVE AS MUCH AND AS MANY!
Posted by: brandy
Posted on: November 16, 2007 04:04 PM
thank you james. get over the past. there is a reason why its called history. c-world, all that stuff you mention from the past was a different generation. yeah there are racist people today, BUT blacks have the same rights as everyone else in this country. just because a white man and a black man have an altercation doesnt mean its racist. hey guess what, maybe they just dont like each other!!!! and as far as the nooses, last i knew white people were hung with nooses also.