Posted on 01/05/2007 9:10:26 PM PST by mfnorman
NEW YORK (CNN) -- James Jackson, a 26-year-old black employee of 180 Connect, was preparing for another day of installing cable, telephone and Internet service to residential customers of Cablevision in Nassau County, New York on December 7.
When he walked to the fenced-off area to pick up equipment for the day's jobs he looked up and was shocked to see a vicious, racist symbol in his workplace. A noose was hanging in the fenced-off equipment area, visible to the dozens of installers, the majority of whom are black, but accessible only to his boss and an equipment manager, both of whom are white.
Jackson, a former messenger who had worked at 180 Connect for a year and a half, immediately confronted the equipment manager, Dave Willie.
"I asked Dave," Jackson told CNN, " 'What is that hanging up there?' and he said, 'That is a noose' and I said, 'I know it's a noose, but why is it up there?' And he walked away."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
For next Halloween I would like to see Saddam masks with nooses around them.
Why is a noose automatically considered racist?
During the first Gulf War, my father-in-law made a life-size carboard cartoon cutout of Sadaam with a noose around his neck and hung it outside his business (prescient wasn't he?). One day a representative of the local NAACP came in and told him he was being insensitive to African Americans with that display. Go figure.
I'm still trying to figure out why I went bonkers and tears came to my eyes. SNOOPY IS NOT REAL!!
Pretty objective reporting, that.
A good question!
I've always associated a noose with a cowboy hanging due to my spending Saturdays afternoons at the Movies that had Westerns.
I've seen 25 cowboys hanging from a noose for every black guy that was strung up!
I consider this another "oh too sensitive" over-reaction!
I wonder how to readers would react to the following practical jokes:
1. A fake can of Zylon gas in a Jewish person's locker.
2. A model plane in a model skyscraper on the desk of a 9/11 widow(er).
3. A desecrated flag in the lunch box of someone who expresses strong patriot beliefs.
A noose is not funny especially when observed by individuals whose group was lynched until recently. I think that the employees should have gone to management and demanded the immediate removal of the noose and disciplinary action against those responsible for placing it. It should have ended there. Going to the EEOC was a mistake in my opinion and only asking for trouble (or a big settlement). These two individuals are representatives of management, and I think they should have been fired on the spot (I would have if they pulled something like this in my workplace). Time and energy is too precious to be wasted in garbage like this.
Yes I can see how this can be perceived as racist (just like burning a cross is also racist). This activity has a historical context. I don't see how it should warrant a big settlement though (or any settlement other than removing the noose and disciplining the managers who placed it).
When you are LOOKING to find offense, you will certainly not be disappointed. Is a noose a fun, friendly symbol to caucasions? Personally, I find it a rather grim sight, in general (though it is indispensible for necktie parties!). It's time to end this PC nightmare, and regain some common sense. If we rename the noose, maybe call it a niise, then African Americans might stop finding it racist. Can't we all just get along?
These guys must go nuts when they watch Pirates of the Caribbean, and see all the pirate skeletons hanging on a gibbet.
For some, it's viewed as a winning lottery ticket
Nooses are equal-opportunity, and have been used on all races, regardless. To think that blacks have a monopoly on the noose is the most arrogant assumption I've heard in a long time. We have just as much ownership, maybe more, since BY FAR more whites have been hung than blacks. So, leave our symbol alone, and go find something else to whine about. I've never even heard of nooses being racist. This is just stupid.
People are soft. That is all I concede.
"The hangman's noose has come to be one of the most powerful visual symbols directed against African-Americans, comparable in the emotions that it evokes to that of the swastika for Jews. Its origins are connected to the history of lynching in America, particularly in the South after the Civil War, when violence or threat of violence replaced slavery as one of the main forms of social control that whites used on African-Americans. The noose quickly became associated with the first Ku Klux Klan. In the early twentieth century, when the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan coincided with the height of lynching incidents (most of the victims of which were African-American), the noose became cemented as a key hate symbol targeting African-Americans. The noose may appear as a drawing or rendering, but also quite common is the use of actual nooses to intimidate or harass African-Americans-for example, by leaving one at someone's home or at their workplace."
YOU FOLKS ALL KNOW THIS, AND HAVE KNOWN IT SINCE SUCKLINGS. i'M ASHAMED OF YOU ALL!!! ....Bob
This used to happen at a foundry I did IT support for several years ago. Of course the "James Earl Ray Appreciation Day" Poster was the piece de la resistance for the guys in the wood working shops.
Remember the black student in Louisville who called his white teacher "nigga"?
When the teacher responded by calling the student "nigga", suddenly it was a federal offense.
Who cares what they think, anymore?
I'm trying to think of what a white bread, Scot descended guy like myself ought to be offended of. Speaking in a historical context of course.
I admit a certain shiver or two when I see a lance. The Captial One commercials get me quaking and the Immigrant Song gets the blood going. Ok. I see I, too, can be offended by certain things. Carry on!
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