Hanging Hate: Backlash against the Jena Six case sparks an epidemic of public nooses

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Hanging Hate
Backlash against the Jena Six case sparks an epidemic of public nooses
By David A Love



The noose, that symbol of American racism associated with the Jim Crow South, is making a comeback.

Following the notorious Jena, La., incident, a rash of noose-related hate crimes has surfaced around the country, at times in the unlikeliest of places. These cases are not aberrations, but part of an endemic problem.

On Oct. 9, 2007, in New York City, a noose was found hanging from the office door of a black professor at Columbia University Teachers College. On Oct. 10, an NYPD officer found a noose hanging over his locker. On Oct. 11, a noose was found hanging from a light pole in front of a post office near Ground Zero. On Oct. 22, a noose was sent to a high school principal, a black woman, in Brooklyn.

For African Americans, the noose symbolizes racial intimidation, violence and death—and with good reason. “The noose is among the most repugnant of all racist symbols because it is itself an instrument of violence,” noted Judge Robert L. Carter, a black federal district judge, in Williams v. New York City Housing Authority. In this 2001 employment discrimination case, African-American public employees were subjected to a hostile work environment, including the hanging of a noose.

Lynching has been America’s own form of domestic terrorism, columnist George Curry wrote recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Far from being merely a prank, the hanging of nooses harks back to a shameful period in American history. It was not until 1952 that the United States went a whole year without a single lynching.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3443/hanging_hate/

[havocmom]

1. The willfully ignorant & those without courage to confront the real origins of their powerlessness

will get a fix of pseudo-power by scapegoating, hating, terrorizing innocents.

Standing back and taking a long, wide view of America now and in the immediate future, I sense such horrors will be on the increase.

The common (meaning both the average and the base) man is sinking and he will grasp at and drown others in the attempt to stay afloat in the storm. He will fail, but the exercise keeps a sick hope alive before the fall.

Humanity has always been an interesting concept. Great at times, rare at times.

[marmar]

2. A very eloquent expression of something that's so true....

"will get a fix of pseudo-power by scapegoating, hating, terrorizing innocents."


D'accord, havocmom.

[tom_paine]

3. Well said, havocmom. Have people changed at all in 1,000,000 years?

Or is is just the amount of energy and technology we have at our disposal, without which slavery, I now believe, would never have been abolished.

Further, as we travel the downhill slope BACK to the Olduvai Gorge, I expect that in a few centuries (if energy availability goes that low and industrial civilization becomes unsustainable...if somehow that doesn't happen, slavery may well continue to be viewed as wrong) slavery will be making a big and I mean BIG comeback.

I hope I am wrong, but just as if I lived at the dawn of the last Bushie Dark Time, 1933, I would be equally pessimistic about the future.

[havocmom]

5. Why, lad, I never knew you were an optimist

;)

Slavery in a few centuries? Better outlook than my tired old eyes have. I see it now or within two generations tops.

Corporations owning water and patented seeds? Subsistence farmers nothing more that serfs on their own land under those conditions. Workers? How do you compete against prison labor?

We are headed to a new feudal era, and dark age.

One hopes you are right and I am wrong. :toast:

[tom_paine]

6. well, actually we both agree about the Dark Age and New Feudalism

I guess I am more optimistic that slavery won't fully work it's way back until energy availability has gone waaaay down.

Although you are right, that could be within a couple generations, yet.

Here's hoping we're both wrong and that the head-in-the-sand-ers are right, our Democratic Leadership is GREAT and they are doing all they can. :puke:

Must have been something I et.

[havocmom]

7. Oh, and people have changed in all those years.

We're taller ;)

[flashl]

4. K&R n/t