I’ve been saying loud and long that, post-Imus, -Jena 6 – post-everything – we don’t need a 21st century civil rights movement centered around protests and marches. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever take to the streets, however, and engage in some heavy duty symbolizing and grievance redressing. This heinous, however cowardly and childish, event ought to certainly produce some mass Negro indignation.
A noose was discovered this week on the office door of an African-American professor at Columbia University, school officials and the New York Police Department said.
The noose was found in a building at Columbia’s Teachers College, said Joe Levine, executive director for external affairs at Teachers College. The noose apparently was placed on the 44-year-old professor’s office door sometime before 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, Levine said.
This only happened yesterday, so we don’t know much, like why this individual was targeted or who the likely culprits (you know there was more than one cowardly lowlife involved; it takes a gaggle of them to equal one real man. And yes, I’ll bet they were male) are since they made sure to avoid surveillance cameras. Still, doesn’t matter. Nothing, anyone did justifies hanging a noose on his door; it’s a terror tactic no matter who the subject is though it’s worse for blacks given our history.
The question is the proper response. There are those, black and not, who will say ignore it and rob it of its power. I tried that on for awhile, but, nah. A noose mean something whether you ignore it or not and they affect those around you even if you’ve got it in you to simply toss it in the trash. Yesterday’s hastily organized demonstration is a great start. Here’s hoping it grows and grows, with stalwart university support. Unlike Jena, this is a protest I’d inconvenience myself to attend, knowing the little I know right now. Also, I’m thinking: nooses made of something with in-your-face-*&^hole symbolism hanging from every campus door and a sizeable reward for information leading to the capture of these morons.
There’s no doubt that nooses are more a reflection of some whites’ sense of waning superiority in the racial hierarchy than of actual threat (without knowing more) but then so can rape and sexual harassment be. The bastards have to be locked back in their cages.
