The Jena blowback:
symbolic use of the noose as the new N-word
Commentary by Kam Williams
Ominously,
there’s been a frightening backlash building
in reaction to the mammoth demonstration in September
supporting the Jena Six, those Louisiana teens
charged with felonies during a raging local controversy
which arose over the use of a noose by white high
school students to intimidate their African American
classmates. The fallout started soon after The
New York Times gave D.A. Reed Walters all the space
he wanted to spew his racist rationalization for
his selective “all-black” prosecution.
Walters only fueled the
simmering fires by reiterating his basic contention
that “the placing of the nooses on the schoolyard
tree … broke no law.” The Times, by giving
Walters a forum without allowing equal time to any
attorney with a wellreasoned counter-position, effectively
decriminalized as just a harmless prank what was in
this lawyer’s legal opinion a patently heinous,
hateful and illegal act. This coded cultural message
has, in turn, only served to embolden bigots with evil
in their hearts, leading to an explosion of threatening
chatter at white supremacist websites.
One neo-Nazi
outfit posted the names and addresses of the Jena Six
on its homepage, exhorting followers to “drag
them out of the house,” ostensibly to lynch them. “If
these blacks want a race war, they will get one. Bring
it on!” warned a poster at Stormfront, an online
community catering to Ku Klux Klansmen.
Next, noose
incidents started being reported all across the country … hanging
on a black professor’s door at Columbia University … at
other college campuses … in a black Coast Guard
cadet’s bag … in a police station locker
room … on a sanitation truck’s rearview
mirror … ad infinitum … ad nauseam.
Remembering
his utter ineptitude during the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, I have to wonder why Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff is sitting on his hands again. Why
hasn’t there been a rush by federal authorities
to arrest the homegrown terrorists behind this rash
of hate crimes and to take down their websites dedicated
to inciting violence against blacks? I just pray he
acts before the burgeoning Jena tensions metastasize,
because if there’s any lesson that we learned
from New Orleans it is how easily official apathy can
translate into misery on a mass scale.
Finally, I would
be remiss if in my remarks I didn’t take a moment
to castigate comedian Katt Williams (no relation) who
recently strolled up the red carpet at the BET Awards
proudly sporting a noose around his neck. That tasteless
display is in no way a fashion statement worthy of
emulation, but the shameless, selfhating behavior of
an attentioncraving media whore who deserves to be
shunned before he encourages the substitution of the
noose as the symbolic equivalent of the just-buried
N-word.
Lloyd Kam Williams
is an attorney and a member of the bar in NJ, NY,
CT, PA, MA and U.S. Supreme Court.
