In the wake of the racial tensions in Jena, La., which was sparked by the hanging of three nooses at the local high school, it seems like the rest of the country (well, the white racist part of the country) couldn’t wait to play the copycat game. Nooses, emblematic of the era of lynching in America, when mobs of whites, often with the tacit acceptance or actual assistance of local white law enforcement officials, felt free to hang any black male they believed guilty of a crime (and occasionally whites believed to be sympathetic to blacks), are popping up everywhere since the Jena story was pushed into the mainstream media by African American bloggers. And the results are revealing the ugly underbelly of America’s cultural, racial and ethnic diversity:
An orange hangman’s noose reported nailed to a tree Friday in Ogle County, Ill., is the latest of several nationally reported cases of hanging nooses — which many consider to be a symbol of racist tension from America’s past. […]
“Such incidents are shameful,” said acting attorney general Peter Keisler in a statement to ABC News. “The message of fear and terror that nooses communicate is deplorable. Many of these cowardly actions may also violate federal and state civil rights and hate crime laws.”
But do the nooses reflect a resurgence of racism in America? […]
“It’s not different from the domestic terrorism we experienced during the civil rights movement,” NAACP CEO Dennis Cortland Hayes said, “and even in the early 1900’s, when the NAACP was founded to respond to lynchings that were occurring.”
Two things. I don’t see this as a resurgence at all. This is simply evidence of underlying racism which in today’s political environment many whites now feel enabled to express openly. If you are a white person, at some point in your life you are likely to have been regaled with racist jokes by a relative, friend or business associate, usually when the “jokester” thought it was safe to do so. I will readily admit having heard such jokes on many occasions in my lifetime, and it wasn’t until I married an Asian-American woman that I openly began to express my distaste for such “humor.” Before then I often remained silent, afraid to speak up while others laughed, some nervously, some with gusto, at jokes which employed racial slurs and stereotypes.
Many white people do not tell such jokes, and many do not express overt racist attitudes in public or in private. But neither do many of us protest those who do, and we all share some of the underlying prejudices which support racism. Indeed, it’s impossible for most of us not to have imbibed racial and other group stereotypes when they are so prevalent in the way our media represents minorities in the news and in popular culture. Italians are wise guys and wife beaters, blacks are stupid, lazy and “gangstas” (unless they are entertaining us as dancers, musicians, comedians or sports stars), gays are flaming, effeminate hairdressers who like to dress up in women’s clothes and have sex with little children, Latinos are drug dealers who can’t speak English well and drive old cars with poor suspensions, women who are raped were asking for it, Jews are invariably from New York City or work in Hollywood, Asians are good at math but calculating and emotionally repressed, and so on and so forth. Name a minority group, and our media will trumpet popular stereotypes about them.
Second, this is the direct result of the conservative movement’s efforts to change the discussion on race in our country. Their attacks on affirmative action and claims of reverse racism were just the opening salvo in a long campaign to make it acceptable to hold and express racist attitudes. They have funded sloppy and biased pseudo-scientific “research” into racial differences such as Charles Murray’s claims of inherent racial differences between the races in intelligence (The Bell Curve), attacked “political correctness” as the equivalent of “Stalinist repression” by liberals in academia, the media and government. Where opposition to hate crimes laws are alleged to be violations of their “first amendment rights” (as if terroristic acts against women, gays, blacks, Latinos, native Americans or other groups was somehow constitutionally protected speech of some kind). And they have been largely successful in negating the cultural narrative that briefly reigned during the late 60’s and 70’s that racism, discrimination or prejudice in any form should not be tolerated.
Over the last 30 years we have moved from a culture that officially expressed the need for racial tolerance, integration and the elimination of racial barriers in employment, education, mortgage lending, business opportunities and voting rights to one where openly racist “media personalities” such as Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh dominate our airwaves and nightly cable “news shows” with their no longer so peculiar brand of bigotry. A world where equal rights for gays are attacked as “special rights” that no one else has, and where gay marriage is decried as part of some nebulous “homosexual agenda” designed to destroy American values and corrupt our children. Where racial profiling of African Americans (they even have a name for it: driving while black) is a daily occurrence. And where unhinged demagogues like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter are given a platform to spout their insidious claim that Muslims in America should be rounded up and placed in “internment camps” if another terrorist attack on American soil should occur, the Constitution be damned.
So this isn’t a resurgence at all. It’s merely the end product of a long campaign to make racism, bigotry and prejudices of all kinds as “American as Apple Pie” once again. And it would help if the media would recognize that the purveyors of this hateful agenda are all card carrying members of right wing organizations funded by conservative extremists whose goal is to turn back the clock to the days of the 19th Century, when it was perfectly okay to use racial slurs in everyday speech, and to discriminate against people of color. When gays stayed in the closet and women stayed at home. When labor unions were outlawed and violence was management’s preferred approach to collective bargaining. And when strange fruit hung from trees all across this country as a warning to any non-white who dared to step out of line and protest their treatment by the dominant white culture.
Because nooses are not the problem, they are merely just the latest symptom of the disease the conservative movement has actively promoted over the last several decades, one which will only get worse unless good people of all colors, creeds and sexual orientations stand up and say “enough is enough” to the racists, bigots and bullies in our society. Until then, expect things to only get worse, and perhaps much, much worse.
Racism is a curious thing. It works with all groups. I am one of the few people who believe OJ Simpson did not commit the two murders back in 1994 (go over to Oliver Willis’ forum section and follow my comments on the autopsy evidence for further explanation). At the time I worked in the post office in San Francisco, one of the most integrated workplaces in the U.S. We had plenty of discussions about the case while it was going on.
I am still amazed how many people called me to the side, one on one, and explained their confidence in Simpson’s guilt because “that’s what black men want to do with white women,” or variants thereof. And it wasn’t just whites. A lot more Hispanics than whites expressed this, and also a number of Asians. I believe that one reason why there was such a racial divide during the trial was because the crime itself was presented along the lines of the deepest resonating, ugliest stereotypes against African American men.
Having worked as a union rep for decades in the post office, and as a race relations rep in the army back in the early seventies, racism is an easy method to explain away what you don’t know or understand or fear.
Racism is another poison fed to the working class to keep it divided. Poor whites, who are closer to the bottom, are a good target because an illegal Mexican who works construction IS taking away a job from a working class citizen. So racism is an easy sell.
I have often thought that by making expressions of racism and hatred gosh, we had advanced a small step towards dealing with the problem. When society openly accepts racist remarks then it is just the way things are and many people speak and act in a racist fashion without thinking about it. When people know better than to say it out loud then they obviously realize that whey may think or feel is wrong, or at the least not accepted by society.
I have seen that dynamic at work when someone makes a racist comment or joke and is called on it. Some people never think about the things they are told and believe, but when it is pointed out that what they said was wrong they stop and think about it. Hopefully those kind of events have a long term effect.
It is sad to see a resurgence of people feeling that it is acceptable to do things like hang nooses from trees. They do it in secret and with fear of discovery.
For now, much of the open racism in our society is coded and somewhat hidden, that which is direct is done anonymously. There is still a long way to go, but we have come a long way from when being a segregationist was a position that people openly held.
yes Luam, I agree.
While there is A culture of bigotry and racism, it is not THE culture. THE culture has slowly gotten more and more tolerant. It has continued to do so even with a republican resurgence that has used coded signals to feed on ‘beneath the radar’ feelings.
IMO what we have seen lately is a kind of ‘desperation’ as it becomes more and more apparent that such messaging is losing its power WITH THE MAINSTREAM. That does not mean that such messageing can be ignored. In fact, it’s likely the real racists will become more physical as they see themselves become more fringe (as is true for far far right wingnuts if congress and POTUS go democrat). It’s just to make the point that a turning point has been crossed.
Steven, your anecdote shows this. You used to remain silent, now you do not. I used to remain silent, now I do not. Jokes are no longer openly tolerated at work places. I can see with my own eyes how things have changed in the last 30 years.
The ground has shifted and some do not like it. But the ground HAS shifted.
nalbar
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Great quote
Steven D.
Let me first say, because I know what might come, that my roots in the Civil Rights movement go back before the Selma March.This was part of the intergrationist movement of Randolph, Farmer, King Belefonte etc.
But there has also as long a tradition of anti-white separatism going from Garvey to Black Power, Panthers and Nation of Islam. There was here often an excuse if not a glorification of “black rage”.
Now,If we take the expression “white m-fers” as a racial remark an equivalent to the N-word, then I must say in my everyday experience in NYC, then 90% of racist remarks come from Blacks ( I do not of course count Black use of the N-word)
With “Radical Chic”, Black Rage got formally accepted into the Left Pantheon and accepted as part of the Dogmatic Left New Party Line.
You do yourself no honor by adhering to the party line of the Left which supports such media sluts as Jackson and Sharpton. As a New Yorker I am familiar with Sharptons rise playing on black anti-Hassidic feelings in Brooklyn and anti-white feelings in the Tawana Brawley case (do you remember the results of his accusations?) Also ther false accusations by Sharpton et al in the Duke Lacrosse case.Oh yes and the Imus “electronic lynching”
Sharpton is the darling of the White Media as a Rastus
version of the Black Intellectual. He is as much a creature of MSM as is Paris Hilton .
I certainly do not know what happened in a little La. town. But I would harzard from his track record, Neither did Rev. Al. http://lonestartimes.com/2007/10/03/rev-alan-bean-responds-regarding-jena-6-statements/#more-7964
gives a very local account of what life is like there and what might have in fact happened
We live in a time when the Right has greatly weakened the respect for the rule of law. The Sharptons among us will try as hard as the Limboughs to destroy this respect. Its your choice to Light a Candle or Curse the Darkness.
Aeolius
Somehow I missed the part where I talked about Al Sharpton in this story, or my glorification of Black Separatists.