Yes

by robertsloan2

Created on: November 08, 2007

Let's look at the context of the noose for whether it's a hate crime. I'm familiar with the recent case in Louisiana that prompted this question. A particular shade tree was used for congregating by white students, some black athletes decided to use the tree and deliberately break an unspoken segregation line. There were no rules in place saying those kids couldn't stand under that tree. The tree, on school property, was allowed to students. So the students stood around under it and conversed. No rules broken. Only a social line.

When six black kids took shade under a forbidden tree, retaliation was a noose hung as a message to them, a reminder of the bad old days in the fifties and sixties when the Ku Klux Klan used to hang uppity black people who dared exercise the rights they had as citizens. There is no Jim Crow law in place any more to stop the black kids from standing under the tree. Those boys were living in the 21st century.

That noose was an attempt at intimidation, one that worked in provoking a fight. Now, throughout history, high school boys have fought over this and that. The kids got into a brawl over it because that was a real threat, a death threat in fact.

I've had death threats before in my life. Young men don't respond well to death threats, least of all when they were already aware that they were fighting the same discrimination their fathers and grandfathers did. They chose to stand under the tree. They faced the racial conflict in a nonviolent way when they did - and their opponents replied symbolically.

No, I do not think displaying a noose should be rendered illegal, considered a hate crime whenever it's done. In that context with the Jena Six, it certainly was. Because of what the Jena Six had done, because it was an answer specifically to black kids doing something that theoretically any student could do and crossing a line that's only social, not legal, that threat should be taken seriously as a real threat.

Symbols mean what they mean in context. If I display a noose outside my house on October 31, no one is going to take that as a death threat. The reaction to that symbol is going to be that children will accurately interpret it to mean that I probably have some buckets of candy to give away inside the door. They'd be right. That's what I'd mean by it.

But if my black neighbor's kids cut across my yard and the night after it happened I went and hung a noose on the fence, I would be telling that neighbor and the world that I was a supporter of the Klan's attitudes, that I would overreact to kids trespassing on the basis of what color the kids are, and it would be a hate crime. Not that I would do this. In reality I'd open the window and yell at the kids, like any sane person.

A hate crime is an act that deliberately provokes discrimination and stirs up violence against a group that's discriminated against. If I painted swastikas on garage doors, it would be a hate crime. If I painted swastikas on a stage set and put it up for a play, that's not a hate crime. It's context and intent. The noose was a death threat to the Jena Six.

Some kids grow up knowing that death threats have to be taken seriously. Jewish kids grow up knowing this. Black kids grow up knowing this. Gay kids grow up knowing this, a lot of them stay closet because they know this and hear the hate language. In context, that noose was a death threat for their stepping over the social line.

There is another element in the trial of the Jena Six. When it turned into a brawl, it turned into something else - a schoolyard fight. Not a murder attempt. It brought it back down to the level of kids on kids, and no one got killed in the fight. This has happened in school fights all the time, it's been going on since there were high schools. But they are being unfairly penalized for the brawl because they were black and defended themselves from a serious death threat.

The best thing any authorities could do handling something like this is to take it in context and keep it from escalating. There needs to be a clear message to teens and adults that you can't go hanging nooses and burning crosses at black people, that you can't deliver death threats with impunity. The situation needs to be defused, right now it's turning into a major cause because it's the defending black kids that are getting the railroad for being black, if the issue on both sides was racism that's one thing, but the fight was just high school boys in a brawl. Let's de-escalate it. Give them some detention and maybe suspend them from a game, teach them that lesson in the scale of that lesson, don't turn it into something that takes the social line of racism and reinforces it. The white kids aren't getting any penalties for making a death threat, the black kids are getting treated like murderers for getting in a high school brawl, the courts are supporting the noose.

That is wrong and it's turned a high school problem into a big racial conflict that may provoke still more incidents and still more violence on up the line. Stop it. You can't sanction the noose and still expect to have a decent country.

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