Nooses Are Not A Prank

Nooses from a truck in Alexandria Louisiana after the march
As I posted about Here; this happened to my group from Nashville.




Chief Coutee calls it a prank. I'm disappointed by this. As I talked about in that post linked above, I met the chief at a bar in Alexandria about two hours before this happened; and though he seemed like a good ol' boy culturally, he seemed pretty cool, and was very cordial with us marchers , 3 of us - he knew we were Marchers from out of town.

I usually don't give people the benefit of the doubt, and the one time I do, I'm remind why I don't.


Apparently there is a large portion of white America who thinks nooses are funny! They are bolstered by a few of their Black lackeys like Bush appointee, U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, who defends that position.

If swastikas were being bandied about I’m sure much more of white America, particularly Israel supporting conservative white America, would see no joke in it.


Hanging nooses, particularly directed at African Americans who were the subject of mass lynching in this country for at least a couple of centuries; even into the lifetime of millions of people still living; is at best a deep seeded insult, co-signing that history, and quite often is an outright death threat.


Either way it is easily harassment and racial intimidation. No wonder these kids go around hanging nooses; their parents think its funny, like a woopie cushion in a chair or toilet papering a tree.


As I’ve been saying, Black folks better wake up and see what we’re dealing with out here.

The atmosphere of racial intimidation against the Jena High School teens was allowed to build because the school board, Jena High teachers, and district attorney Reed Walters wrote off the first salvo, the hanging of nooses, as prank. After all that has happen, how do some not get it? Or the better question is, why do some not want to get it?