Hanging effigies in trees for Halloween

[Belz...]

And we don't have pirates inland.

The hell we don't! They collect candy later today.

 

[Ladewig]

It does. I think people should be able to express their ideas freely, even if those ideas are monstrous to us. An evil idea is better purged by light than by shadow.

And there's also the matter of de-powering the evil idea, as I said earlier.

I agree.

The purpose of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular, disgusting, vile, repugnant, or even evil and unforgivable speech. Popular or forgivable speech doesn't need protection.

 

[jimbob]

You wouldn't be the first. The display looks racist as hell to me, and I'm born and raised Canadian.

Me too, and I'm British. But I have listened to Billie Holiday.

As promised...

Racist?

No. The difference is because skeletons are spooky, and look old, whilst hanged effigies of what looks like brown people people dressed in clothes associated with black teenagers, in a region of the country where people hanged blacks in the same manner are a threat.

 

[quadraginta]

So all hangings from tree refer to black lynchings automatically?

Try as I might I can find nothing I have said which remotely suggests that.

Perhaps you could cite the posts where I did.

Or maybe not.

Could this be an example of that "Rule of So" people invoke so often?

I don't necessarily disbelieve this. I just find the difference between cultures interesting.

Perhaps a difference in cultures, but certainly a difference in histories.

Nearly three quarters of a million Americans died over a dispute about slavery. In a five year war that had been building up through guerrilla actions and border disputes for fifteen years or more before it started.From the end of the Reconstruction to the civil rights movements of the Sixties, a time still fresh in some of our memories, minorities, especially blacks (although Hispanics weren't left out) were legally abused. Any hint of resentment was quickly and ruthlessly snuffed out.

This is a series of events spanning nearly a century and a half which has irrevocably affected the American social fabric.

Some want to forget this as an inconvenient and disturbing representation of what this country was for more than seven decades after the Reconstruction was sabotaged, but it still pops up its ugly head even today. Trying to pretend that that history is over and insignificant does not make it go away or address its lingering effects.

I'm not sure if there is any analogue to this in the history of Canada. Not to anything like the same extent, burned with blood and terror into the social memory for generations.

So if you are looking for comparisons between the two you may not find them.

 

[quadraginta]

It is a deep cultural meme. Look up the song "strange fruit." Only white folk you see hanged from a tree are horse thieves, but they get cut down by someone. The only bodies that get LEFT hanging are pirates and n-words. And we don't have pirates inland.

You left out Hispanics, who comprised a very outsized proportion of the "whites" mentioned in the lynching statistics I cited earlier.

They were the N-word of the west, never really accepted even though they were compelled by force of arms to become American. Sort of become, anyway.

Maybe 3/5ths American, eh?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

I agree.

The purpose of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular, disgusting, vile, repugnant, or even evil and unforgivable speech. Popular or forgivable speech doesn't need protection.

Those are some of the purposes, yes.

Yet more would be speech that -popular or not- is critical of public officials, exposes abusive acts of powerful interests, or impacts public sentiment in a way that creates trouble for them. I would say that there is probably a fair amount of correlation between my list and yours. I would also say that some of that is because public officials and powerful interests have ways of spinning the things on my list into the things on your list.

You left out Hispanics, who comprised a very outsized proportion of the "whites" mentioned in the lynching statistics I cited earlier.

They were the N-word of the west, never really accepted even though they were compelled by force of arms to become American. Sort of become, anyway.

Maybe 3/5ths American, eh?

Hernandez v. Texas being a prime example.

ETA: Chinese, as well. The ending passages of People v. Hall are seared into my memory from college courses.

A white man could not be convicted by only non-white testimony, although Chinese were not specifically listed among those deemed non-white in the definitions.

After a lot of hand-wringing over the 'intent of the legislature' as a dodge from having to take responsibility for anything, the court offered such enlightened wisdom as:

The same rule which would admit them to testify, would admit them to all the equal rights of citizenship, and we might soon see them at the polls, in the jury box, upon the bench, and in our legislative halls.

This is not a speculation which exists in the excited and overheated imagination of the patriot and statesman, but it is an actual and present danger.

The anomalous spectacle of a distinct people, living in our community, recognizing no laws of this State, except through necessity, bringing with them their prejudices and national feuds, in which they indulge in open violation of law; whose medacity is proverbial; a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior, and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point, as their history has shown; differing in language, opinions, color, and physical conformation; between whom and ourselves nature has placed an impassable difference, is now presented, and for them is claims, not only the right to swear away the life of a citizen, but the further privilege of participating with us in administering the affairs of our Government.

Emphasis mine. Plus note that the very cornerstone of democratic institutions, "participating in administering the affairs of government," is (if 'we', in 'our' magnanimous benevolence, deign to allow it) a "privilege" they would be receiving.

I feel like I need a shower after every time I read this, it's just mired in pretentiousness and hatred. It's simultaneously flawed on its face in overt, scornful summations of an entire people and in the way subtly embedded cues undermine their worth as human beings. Half the time when I go back over it, I can't even articulate a full rebuke of it because there's so much interwoven bias, it's like getting stuck in a spiderweb.

 

[Belz...]

Try as I might I can find nothing I have said which remotely suggests that.

Perhaps you could cite the posts where I did.

Or maybe not.

Could this be an example of that "Rule of So" people invoke so often?

Maybe but then perhaps you should clarify the difference between what you said and my intepretation.

 

[quadraginta]

Maybe but then perhaps you should clarify the difference between what you said and my intepretation.

Do I really need to? You honestly can't puzzle it out on your own?

Okay. I'll be patient this time. Here's a couple of hints;

So all hangings from tree refer to black lynchings automatically?

<snip>

See if you can manage on your own from there.

(NB: It isn't all that uncommon an argumentative technique. There's probably even a name or too for it in addition to our own RoS. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt since you're so new here.)


ETA: And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and cite the posts where you think that's what I said.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

No, I'm just that *********** stupid.

Why don't you just answer my goddamn question?

I know you dislike it when I interrupt a Winning The Internet volley to talk about the ball, but I'll address your question if it's the one it think it is: all hangings in trees are taken to be lynchings of blacks in American cultural context.

Yes.

Lynchings were a real thing and the image of them is so ugly and the wound still raw enough culturally that we are not in the general habit of hanging effigies for art or commentary.

Similarly, Nazis ruined the swastika for Europeans and Americans, thus today Hindus chalking designs on their American or European homes for holidays send us into semantic confusion.

When Americans see effigies, it's usually our POTUS or Uncle Sam next to people spitting on a burning US flag on the evening news. There are no "fun" versions of effigies in our American cultural language.

Effigies, when executed by people with a cultural history of them to draw from, utilize caricature elements of the effigied person, like a voodoo doll. Halloween masks, iconic hairstyles or garments are usual, but sometimes they just use signs on the effigy to label who they're symbolically hanging. An effigy is a voodoo doll of the person, symbolically.

We do not use hanging as a symbol of "us" committing violence. We use it as a symbol of "them" committing violence. Rough and tough frontier justice with a rope was "them" the cavalry hanging deserters, or "them" the angry townsfolk hanging the unconvinced murder suspect or horse thief. We don't tell ourselves stories of "us" hanging innocent schoolgirls for witchcraft, and we didn't get to catch pirates and tell ourselves how much better we were by hanging them and leaving the bodies to rot.

The hanged horse thief gets cut down and buried with a plain plank for a headstone. But buried, as a human being with at least that dignity.

The bodies-in-trees iconography tells Americans someone died in the dark, by flickering torchlight. Nobody owns the body, nobody wants it, claims it, is disturbed by it enough to go mess with it. The South has a deeply held cultural value of "That Ain't My Problem" they use as a palliative delusion system to avoid freaking out over things. A dead n-word hanging in a tree is not a human body, culturally, it's a dead dog on the side of the road.

Your personal cultural argument of incredulity has now been curbstomped with Emic perspective. Deal.

 

[quadraginta]

No, I'm just that *********** stupid.

Why don't you just answer my goddamn question?

I did. And your pretense grows tiresome.

Since merely highlighting the problematic wording does not seem to be sufficient to get the point through to you I'll try one more time.

At no point have I suggested, intimated or insinuated that;

"So all hangings from tree refer to black lynchings automatically?"

I never said that. I never said anything even faintly resembling that, and there is nowhere that it could be honestly construed that anything I have said could be mistaken for that.

What I have said is that this hanging in this instance from this tree obviously refers to black lynchings. This time.

Not "all".

Not "automatically".

If that isn't sufficient to enable your understanding then nothing ever will be.

Now you can quit stalling and cite the posts where you believe I said something which supports the strawman you fabricated.

Go ahead.

 

[quadraginta]

I know you dislike it when I interrupt a Winning The Internet volley to talk about the ball, but I'll address your question if it's the one it think it is: all hangings in trees are taken to be lynchings of blacks in American cultural context.

Yes.

<snip>

No.

There has been a pic posted up thread a couple of times of a Halloween skeleton hanging from a tree. This would not be taken as lynching of blacks by most Americans. Not by me, at any rate. And probably not even by most blacks. Although they can be forgiven for being a bit hypersensitive on the subject of hangings, given that cultural context you mention.

The idiot in Florida, had he really been interested in a Halloween display, could easily have found some other subject for his display that would not have prompted the sort of controversy that this one has. Just like that skeleton demonstrates.

Instead he chooses to construct effigies which even the most mealy-mouthed apologists have to stretch credulity to try and gin up some sort of half-assed plausible deniability. At which they fail abysmally.

It isn't that such a display cannot be done without offense. It is that this particular one not only made no effort to do so, but, quite the opposite, clearly set out to provoke it.

 

[Belz...]

I did. And your pretense grows tiresome.

You know, you did that to Phiwum a short while ago, too. What is it with you and constantly assuming that the people you disagree with (assuming we even disagree at all) are "pretending"? Do you have such a small amount of respect for other posters that you'd rather spend your time typing about that than engaging them in actual conversation?

Since merely highlighting the problematic wording does not seem to be sufficient to get the point through to you I'll try one more time.

Repeating my own words to me is not answering my question, as you well know.

What I have said is that this hanging in this instance from this tree obviously refers to black lynchings. This time.

No, that's not what you said. You said:

It would be exactly as obvious. There isn't anything subtle about it. No Southerner and few Yankees could look at that display and not instantly understand what the intent was. Not if they are honest with themselves.

What is it about the display that makes it refer to lynchings? Is it the fact that people are hanged? That seems rather broad. Is it the fact that they are hanging from a tree? Perhaps that's specific enough. Is it that they are hanging from a tree in Florida? I can't make out the "ethnicity" of the dummies so I can't comment about that. Your comment here makes no distinction at all, hence my question: would any display of hanging people automatically refer to those lynchings?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

No.

There has been a pic posted up thread a couple of times of a Halloween skeleton hanging from a tree. This would not be taken as lynching of blacks by most Americans. Not by me, at any rate. And probably not even by most blacks. Although they can be forgiven for being a bit hypersensitive on the subject of hangings, given that cultural context you mention.

The idiot in Florida, had he really been interested in a Halloween display, could easily have found some other subject for his display that would not have prompted the sort of controversy that this one has. Just like that skeleton demonstrates.

Instead he chooses to construct effigies which even the most mealy-mouthed apologists have to stretch credulity to try and gin up some sort of half-assed plausible deniability. At which they fail abysmally.

It isn't that such a display cannot be done without offense. It is that this particular one not only made no effort to do so, but, quite the opposite, clearly set out to provoke it.

You appear to be too thoroughly invested in being Right On The Internet. I say this because you appear to be disagreeing with my Anthropology report.

A skeleton in a tree is a different symbolic construct than a dressed body. The semiotic understanding for Americans of hanged skeletons has to do with pirate movies and graveyards generally.

 

[Foolmewunz]

You appear to be too thoroughly invested in being Right On The Internet. I say this because you appear to be disagreeing with my Anthropology report.

A skeleton in a tree is a different symbolic construct than a dressed body. The semiotic understanding for Americans of hanged skeletons has to do with pirate movies and graveyards generally.

It's hard to keep track what y'all are arguing about. Didn't he just agree that a hanging skeleton has an entirely different connotation?

And to put in my .02, no... not all "lynching in trees" are associated with racial lynchings in the south. Many a western movie has cattle rustlers or horsethieves being strung up, IN A TREE, when they get caught up to by a posse.

So, it's not a 100% certainty, but cowboys and rustlers and horse thieves? Well, they wear boots and cowboy hats.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

What is it about the display that makes it refer to lynchings? Is it the fact that people are hanged? That seems rather broad. Is it the fact that they are hanging from a tree? Perhaps that's specific enough. Is it that they are hanging from a tree in Florida? I can't make out the "ethnicity" of the dummies so I can't comment about that. Your comment here makes no distinction at all, hence my question: would any display of hanging people automatically refer to those lynchings?

The quote of mine you just cited clearly uses the words "that display".

Are you going to explain how that translated into "all" and "automatically" in your mind?

The paragraph above does not do that. One part of one post does not represent all of what has been said here on this subject by myself and others. Unless you are going to make the claim that that is the only excerpt you have seen out of all which has been posted.

And if you "can't make out the "ethnicity" of the dummies so I can't comment about that." then you shouldn't have. Commented, that is. You just stated that you have no basis to do so, by your own admission.

The appearance of those effigies has everything to do with the offensiveness of this display. (I had to emphasize that in case it slipped by you. Again.)

If you do not deem yourself equipped to comment on that then you really aren't equipped to comment on the offensiveness of the display at all, since it is specifically the appearance of those effigies themselves which are the problem.

This aspect of the display has been discussed thoroughly by myself and others in this thread. You can't pretend that it has somehow been overlooked in the discussion of why this display is representative of the lynching of blacks in the South.

 

[Belz...]

The quote of mine you just cited clearly uses the words "that display".

Are you going to explain how that translated into "all" and "automatically" in your mind?

Let me illustrate. If I show you an orange, and you tell me that that orange reminds you of your mother, I would be likely to think that all oranges remind you of your mother, especially if I see nothing special about said fruit.

So yeah, you said "that" display, but since I don't see that the dummies represent black people, and can't specify what it is about the display that makes it what you say it is, then I can only conclude that anyone on US territory displaying dummies hanging from a tree would refer to the lynching of blacks.

And if you "can't make out the "ethnicity" of the dummies so I can't comment about that." then you shouldn't have. Commented, that is. You just stated that you have no basis to do so, by your own admission.

Now this is just being dishonest. First of all, if we can't see that they are meant to represent blacks, then we cannot conclude that they are. Second, not seeing this specific aspect of the display does not disqualify me from commenting, because were it the case that it does, it would disqualify every single member of this forum from doing so as well.

You just don't like the fact that some people don't automatically reach the same conclusion than you, and you're trying to find reasons for why I should just shut up instead of using a discussion forum to, you know, discuss.

The appearance of those effigies has everything to do with the offensiveness of this display. (I had to emphasize that in case it slipped by you. Again.)

I see you've decided to continue to either imply that I'm an idiot or that I'm pretending to disagree with you.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

I accepted it right off the bat. I was simply asking about the why, and nothing to differenced with Canadian culture.

If you had been "simply asking about the why" (Is that like "just asking questions"?) then you would not have used the terms "all" and "automatically" in your post.

This rephrasing of the points being made into an extreme and untenable position is not the sort of approach used for honest discourse. It is a rhetorical ploy intended to distort the conversation in a direction of your choice.

Why don't you explain why you chose to do that instead of actually simply asking why?

 

[Belz...]

If you had been "simply asking about the why" [snip] then you would not have used the terms "all" and "automatically" in your post.

That was later, champion. Keep up.

(Is that like "just asking questions"?)

No, JAQing off is making a veiled accusation in the form of a question (ex.: Did GWB order the execution of 9/11? We don't know! We're just asking questions). Now, for some reason the very people who argued against truthers have forgotten what the term means!

This rephrasing of the points being made into an extreme and untenable position is not the sort of approach used for honest discourse.

Of course it's ludicrous, which is why I asked it: you can't possibly be saying it, so what is it about this specific display that makes it so? It's not a difficult question to answer, but so far all I've gotten as an answer is essentially "it's an American thing, kid. Deal."

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Or maybe Halloween?

Unlike dark effigies attired in stereotypical urban black street clothes.

I disagreed with it because I don't agree with your anthropological analysis.

I thought it was simplistic and limited.

I'm sorry. Next time I'll post the bibliography.

PM me your disagreement points please. I would like to know what I got wrong but it doesn't further the thread.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

You know, this sort of condescending, adversarial approach by you is kind of ironic given the accusations you've leveled against me, don't you think? It's hard to seek some sort of reconciliation with someone who engages in exactly the behaviour they decry in others. Specks and beams and all that.

I've never pretended I'm not a condescending twat. It's hard not to look down on y'all from here.