A while back, I suggested that you won’t find nooses hanging from trees in New York City because, “that’s a Southern thing”.
We can’t always get it right.
The New York Times coverage of the Jena incident has been raising eyebrows coast to coast. “What’s with the Times?” people ask me.
Now that the noose craze has become too prominent and disturbing to ignore, the Times has published a well-written story by Paul Vitello focusing on noose hangings in the New York region. There have been several, and they just keep coming.
Mr. Vitello’s grasp of the situation in Jena is as weak as a dead fish hand shake. The Jena 6, Vitello tells us, are “accused of beating a white youth who they thought was involved in hanging nooses from a tree at Jena High School.”
Did they now? Vitello, like everyone else associated with The Grey Lady, has never taken the time to follow the flow of events in Jena. They asked the guy to write a story on nooses and he obliged. Ten minutes of research on Jena and Vitello comes up with a motivation no one remotely associated with the story has ever suggested.
There are three Jena stories. In Jena’s white community, it’s all about six black thugs beating an innocent white boy within an inch of his life. In the mainstream media we often get a story that jumps from nasty white kids hanging nooses to nasty black kids attacking a white boy (given this framing, Vitello’s thesis is understandable).
The real Jena story chronicles a slow, spiraling descent into chaos sparked by the refusal of public officials to validate legitimate protest from Jena’s black community. If these cases ever make it back into the courtroom, this is the story America will hear.
All of that said, Paul Vitello treats the recent rash of noose incidents in Gotham with insight and sensitivity. We learn, for instance, that ” The black population [of Long Island] is about 12 percent of the total, but is highly concentrated in a half-dozen communities that are 95 percent minority. In 2004, in Suffolk County, it was still possible for an interracial couple to wake up in the night to find a cross burning on their lawn — it happened in a hamlet called Lake Grove.”
Who knew? A story about nooses, faithfully pursued, can turn up all sorts of useful information.
Friends of Justice 
Racism is very much alive in New York State the nomenclature may not be what you would expect but it is still the same racism. Check out the map read the book it is not just history of the past. It is current. for minorities of all colors especially if you can’t pass for white. You have to get informed to know what you are looking at, what you are getting or not getting and why when you are in certain towns listed.
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/
A more direct link for current racist towns – minorities beware
get informed
http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundowntowns.php
Vitello’s assertion that members of the Jena Six thought the beating victim, Justin Barker “was involved in hanging nooses from a tree at Jena High School” appears to be taken from blogs that attempt to rationalize the attack. The motive for the attack has been well established. The Jena Six were angry at Barker because they heard he had been discussing a fight at a private party that involved one of their members, Robert Bailey.
Following the Jena High School beating incidence, the Justice Department reopened its investigation into the noose-hanging incident and found no link to the assault on Justin Barker or other confrontations between black and white students. Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, told CNN that “A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection.” He added that “We could not prove that, because the statements of the students themselves do not make any mention of nooses, of trees, of the ‘N’ word or any other word of racial hate.” Washington also told CNN that Bell had “several previous assault charges on his record. ” The CNN story is online at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/19/jena.six.link/index.html?iref=newssearch
God said this “This is my commandment that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” This means everyone, of every color, and every race, should love eachother.
I wrote a poem for the victims and their families, this has gone on much to long. I hope you like it.
It’s much to cruel to follow a prejudice rule;
of shaming, laming, abusing like a mule;
the pain and torture that people veiw;
of what the victims sadly go through;
spirits broken, lives discarded;
families feel as though their bombarded;
emotions flaring, violence snaring;
declaring to families of what they are bearing;
stop this cruelty, end it now;
before more victims are allowed;
victomized by guns, knives, whips and fists;
the terrifying noose, that won’t be missed;
compassion needs to empower;
that cruelty shouldn’t devour.
We are all human beings, and we should all be treated as such, no matter what color, or race. God made everyone different. That’s what makes each of us so special.