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| Yes | 56% | 198 votes | Total: 352 votes | |
| No | 44% | 154 votes |
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Add to FavoritesLet'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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No
Currently, it is not a crime in New York State to display a hangmans noose, but proposed legislation, already passed in the Senate, seeks to make it one; and similar legislation is in the works for other states. The proposed New York law states that a person is guilty of aggravated harassment in the first degree if he or she "Etches, paints, draws upon or otherwise places or displays a noose...on any building... without express permission of the owner...of such building." Such a display will not be considered a crime unless it is done with the "intent to harass, annoy, threaten or alarm another person because of a belief or perception regarding such person's race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation..." Theoretically a person could still legally protest against Al Sharpton by hanging him in effigy, but I wouldn't count on not getting arrested for doing so.
If the above proposal is made law, it most likely will withstand any constitutional challenge. In 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Virginia v. Black that "a State, consistent with the First Amendment, may ban cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate." It's not difficult to see that placing a noose on a Black professor's door is not much different than burning a cross on her lawn.
New York's proposed law is not actually a new law. Rather it is an amendment to Penal Law 240.31 that already bans the display of swastikas and cross burnings if done with the intent to intimidate.
This law, along with many others, is part of the New York State Hate Crimes Act of 2000, an act which primarily adds prison time to crimes in which the victim is targeted because of race, color, etc. For example, Caleb Lussier pled guilty on October 29, 2007 to torching a church in Warren County. He burned it because he did not believe the parishioners were following the teachings of the Bible. Since his action was a hate crime, he will serve a longer term than the typical arsonist.
Even though the proposed amendment to the Penal Law appears constitutional, I have many concerns with New York State's ever expanding catalog of hate crimes, and I believe the proposed legislation is unwise. First, the potential for expanding the law to prohibit actual speech is very real. This has already happened in Europe. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Austria, to publicly use racial slurs in the UK and to insult a person publicly because of "race, colour, national or ethnic origin, or sexual inclination" in Denmark. Similar laws have been proposed in the United States.
Another problem with New York State's hate crimes is the corresponding punishments. A person found guilty of hanging a noose in a co-worker's locker with the intent to harass, for example, will be sentenced to two to three years in prison. Prison is most appropriate for crimes like arson and murder, whether or not bias was the motivation, but not for displaying a noose with the intent to intimidate.
There are already too many people incarcerated in the United States, creating a huge financial burden. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies located at Kings College in London (www.prisonstudies.o rg), the United States leads the world in number of people incarcerated per 100,000. While New York State's prison rate is lower than some states, it's annual cost per prisoner is third highest at $42,202.
New York's hate crime legislation has put more people in prison for longer periods of time at great expense to taxpayers. But what are we getting in return? Does it make us safer? Do extra years added to a murder or arson sentence do anything to eliminate hate and prejudice. If we have failed to teach tolerance in the classroom, do we think it can be learned in prison?
Violations of Penal Law 240.31 cry out for alternatives to incarceration, particularly for first time offenders. Fines, with some of the money going to crime victims, probation, and educational courses in which the perpetrator has to confront, through film, books and other means, the horrific legacy of hate would likely do more good than prison.
The NY State Hate Crimes Act has also created several anomalies. For example, if you burn down your ex-girlfriend's house, even though motivated by intense hatred, you cannot be charged with a hate crime and will do less time than Caleb Lussier. All rapes are potentially hate crimes since rapists generally only target one gender, but few rapists have been charged with hate crimes. A pedophile cannot be charged with a hate crime even though he targets children because the Hate Crimes Act defines age as sixty years or older. Groups that hate Catholics have disrupted worship services on several occasions but no state legislator has proposed that the disruption of worship services be made a hate crime.
I feel deeply for people who have had a cross burned on their property or a swastika painted on their synagogue. Unfortunately, we have no proof that hate crimes legislation has or will do anything to stop biased thought or behavior. Indeed, because our approach to hate crimes is exclusively punitive, it may well create a rebound effect and at some time in the future the noose we are banning today will come back and hang us all.
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