But, of course, I think that the answer is that people are ignorant of history. And it’s not all the fault of people who get their history from the movies either. We don’t really teach the history of racism in America in our high school history classes. Things which make America look bad don’t find their way into our history books.

Keith

Fury was based on the hanging of two whites by a mod in California but was made at a time when the VAST majority of lynchings going on in the United States involved blacks in the deep south. While Fury is a powerful anti-lynching film, it nevertheless obfuscates the role that racism played in the epidemic of lynchings that was then occurring at the time. Why do you suppose Hollywood chose two white victims to dramatize instead of, say, two black victims? You really think it was out of fairness and balance?

It is, exactly what you are proposing here: downplay the role of racism in the history of lynching in favor of some ridiculous sense of balance. Once again, the vast majority of lynchings in this country’s modern history were of blacks in the deep south. To pretend otherwise by mentioning Clint Eastwood is just idiocy.

Um, okaaay. Now please point to me an incident, let’s say in the last 100 years of American history, when a white guy was lynched or threatened with lynching by an angry mob … oh and Spencer Tracy doesn’t count.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027652/

You know Naruki, there’s context and then there’s just being obtuse. Then, of course, there’s just plain idiocy. After telling us that lynching means a lot of different things to people you reference Clint Eastwood? Brilliant.

In this case, we have racial bigotry and the threat of hanging.

It doesn’t bloody matter if when you see a noose you normally think of lynching blacks or lynching cattle rustlers or lynching that stranger who came into town. What matters is the context in which the noose is shown.

The noose is a common symbol of lynching. Can it be used in other ways? Yes, but only when the context is very clear.

Lynching is killing without legal sanction. In other words, murder.

In the west, and in 95% of Westerns where a person is hanged, it is seen as a one size fits all solution. Works for thieves, rapists, killers, blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, and that stranger who rode into town.

In the South, there is a much stronger association with lynching blacks, mostly for the crime of being black.

In popular media, BOTH of these contexts are widely known. It is really astounding that so many people here blythely pretend they have never heard of a Western. Does Clint freaking Eastwood ring any bells? He’s been lynched by and he’s lynched plenty of bad guys in his western flicks.

This deliberate blind side in order to make one’s outrage seem more justified is just making you look like as much a hypocrite as anyone in the conservative camps. And you don’t have the combination of sheer balls and utter stupidity that they have to persuade otherwise sensible people to believe your bull, so they will roast you over the flames like the incompetents you are.

Rather than trying to be more competent at being stupid and dishonest, you should work harder at being logical and humane. That’s a level they will never be able to compete on.

Lynching is ANY murder by mob, especially by hanging. It is not specifically related to racial bigotry.

Seriously, how educated can you be and not understand that?

That said, it is clear that this case was racially motivated. The noose was meant to remind of the lynchings of blacks in the South. Not the huge number of OTHER lynchings that have taken place throughout the United States.

Seriously, don’t make your stand on a flawed too-narrow definition of an emotional word. That just makes it easier for the conservatives to pretend you are lunatics (instead of themselves).

Apparently mine. I see a noose first thing I think of is a European gallows. Second thing is hanging cattle rustlers.

Mr. Willis’ reaction of rightous indignation reminds me of the uproar that surrounded the tempest in a teapot that was the flight attendant on Southwest Airlines.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200304%5CCUL20030416a.html

Obviously when the setting is a high school in a defacto segregated town in Louisiana nooses hanging from a tree is a very different symbol, but absent the context, it’s very ignorant to assume that every person sees every symbol the same way you do.

I recently had someone tell me that there is no institutionalized racism in America. I cited the Jena 6 story, and he said, Nope. Just a kid with priors getting busted for starting a fight.

You’re absolutely right, Oliver, that the civil rights movement people have their act together, much more than the anti-war crowd. The real problem is that, just as there are many who want to deny that the war is going poorly, there are also many who want to deny the history of race relations in the US.

* Some black kids hang out under a “white” tree, and nooses are hung on it the next day.
* The principal wants to expel the fucks who did this, but the school board makes it a two fucking day suspension.
* The black students decide to sit quietly under the tree as a non-violent protest.
* The police are called in, and the DA threatens the black kids (and it’s clear that is what he did) at a school assembly.
* Tensions are inflamed with at least two instances of groups of white kids beating down a black kid, no prosecutions.
* The same school board that allowed the noose hanging perps to walk refused to allow black students and parents to testify before them.
* In the fight in question, the kid who was beaten up, but is not even kept over night.
* The students involved in the fight are charged by the same DA who threatened them with attempted murder.
* The one student who has made it to trial maintains that he wasn’t even there, but his public defender refuses to call any witness and the all white jury convicts him of aggravated assault.
* That conviction has been overturned because an appelate judge basically said, “are you out of your fucking mind charging this kid as an adult.”

You’r right, it’s just some uppity n***ers, no discrimination here.

Send In The Clowns!

The journalism is shoddy and the comments underneath the article will make you weep for America, but the protest itself is gold.

Yes, this person had made it to college without *any* knowledge of the civil rights movement, or the terror tactics employed by the KKK. It can really happen.

Not acceptable social behavior.

Unless you honestly believe the kids were being warned away from their cattle.

In the Jena context, though, the implication is obvious, and the commenter is either naive or reflexively contrarian.

But more importantly, the context as I understood it was that the nooses appeared on the tree immediately AFTER the black kids sat under the tree. And given that, how could anyone NOT think it was about lynching?

(And frankly it’s appalling they had to ask for permission.)