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Noose ladies suspended from California school

The jury at Chez Foolmewunz is still out on this. I'd like to hear what they THOUGHT they were doing and what the cryptic comment by the principal meant.

At best, they're just totally clueless to the implications to other races than their own. Particularly since we just had the racial connotations all over the news in the Boeing incident in South Carolina.

I automatically discount:

Reference to Hangman. No. It's not like Wizard's chess. No one has ever played a word game with death seriously on the table. (Unless it's a "here go hang yourself" message but I'd think that would be addressed to the principal.)

Reference to suicide. If it is, it's totally incongruous because of the smiling/laughing pose. Also, most suicide by hanging does not involve a proper noose. ((Unless it's a "here go hang yourself" message but I'd think that would be addressed to the principal.)

A threat to blacks. The district is majority Hispanic with an additional 11% black. And it's an elementary school. Where would the racial animus come from? They've been teaching there for sometime. The usual target would be the principal (da boss) but she's involved in it.

Rustlers. I doubt that area of CA was ever a part of the wild west and haven't heard of gangs of rustlers or horse thieves.


Is there some sort of dispute between the school and district? School politics in CA can be quite messy. Unions have a lot of clout and some issues turn into pitched battles.

I'd like to see some explanation. At present it seems to be a clumsy and insensitive moment, but I'm open to other possibilities.
 
Foolmewunz said:
The jury at Chez Foolmewunz is still out on this. I'd like to hear what they THOUGHT they were doing and what the cryptic comment by the principal meant.

At best, they're just totally clueless to the implications to other races than their own. Particularly since we just had the racial connotations all over the news in the Boeing incident in South Carolina.

I automatically discount:

Reference to Hangman. No. It's not like Wizard's chess. No one has ever played a word game with death seriously on the table. (Unless it's a "here go hang yourself" message but I'd think that would be addressed to the principal.)

Reference to suicide. If it is, it's totally incongruous because of the smiling/laughing pose. Also, most suicide by hanging does not involve a proper noose. ((Unless it's a "here go hang yourself" message but I'd think that would be addressed to the principal.)

A threat to blacks. The district is majority Hispanic with an additional 11% black. And it's an elementary school. Where would the racial animus come from? They've been teaching there for sometime. The usual target would be the principal (da boss) but she's involved in it.

Rustlers. I doubt that area of CA was ever a part of the wild west and haven't heard of gangs of rustlers or horse thieves.


Is there some sort of dispute between the school and district? School politics in CA can be quite messy. Unions have a lot of clout and some issues turn into pitched battles.

I'd like to see some explanation. At present it seems to be a clumsy and insensitive moment, but I'm open to other possibilities.
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Even though I'm thoroughly unconvinced it is racist, it is clumsy and insensitive, even if they intended nothing racist. The fact that they were unaware that it could even be considered racist is kind of clumsy and, no matter what they were thinking, they were still posing with an instrument of death which is kind of a weird image for teachers. However, "clumsy and insensitive" is not a good reason for getting someone fired, or even suspended. We're way too sensitive these days.

I've never lived in any part of the country that was the wild west (well, I was born in Durango, but by the time I was six years old I lived in Illinois) I would say most Americans my age would still be more likely to associate nooses with the wild west, due to the influence of Westerns in movies and TV. Between John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke", there were plenty of nooses to go around. Maybe the younger generation is more inclined to associate nooses with lynching.
 
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Malice, stupidity and all of that. Maybe I'm more sympathetic audience as anyone can win me over with a little gallows humor. And everybody has gaps in their knowledge. I recently heard about a co-ed who grew up believing Alaska and Hawaii were in close proximity, which confounded her as Alaska is famously cold and Hawaii is famously tropical. How could she believe such a foolish thing? Because they're bunched together in the lower left corner of U.S. maps!
 
This measured, considered and well reasoned response from Darren Harper (whoever the **** he is?) to the crass episode sums up the depths to which people will go to create an issue of race where one does not, on the face of it and without further investigation, exist.

You hate them little black babies. You hate them little Spanish babies. All them little minorities, you hate them just of where they're from. Because of the color of their skin you hate them? They're innocent. My babies.'
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The irony is that all the commentators could be described as a modern day lynch mob.
 
lionking said:
Making and displaying a noose is not in the same ballpark as hangman. It’s not on the same planet.
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I learned to tie a noose a long time ago.

Occasionally, if there's a random chord near me, I'll just tie one for practice. The entirety of the meaning of this is that I am practicing tying a knot.

Then again, I'm not in the USA, so the cultural connotations of the noose just don't exist. Sailors being hanged from yardarms is probably the strongest association.

I think it's a shame the racists get to control what others can and cannot say and do in that anything they adopt to intimidate becomes, for reasons I can't explain, unacceptable in every other context whatsoever (c.f. Danny Baker). It's frustrating.
 
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Being some where, where there is no historical context it seems more a dumb suicide/execution reference than race thing.

Nooses have been around for a very long time

The race thing doesn't have a monopoly
 
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cullennz said:
Being some where, where there is no historical context it seems more a dumb suicide/execution reference than race thing.

Nooses have been around for a very long time

The race thing doesn't have a monopoly
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Unless you have had your head in the sand for the past decade for so.
 
Nooses are also quite prevalent in asphyx fetish art. (As are titles like, "Noose ladies suspended from California school.")
 
3point14 said:
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
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It's more related to your personal and cultural experience than geography.

An American Southerner, especially a POC, would likely have strong connotations to klan lynchings. Hell, black people in general might well have that their first hit.

People who grew up only seeing a noose in horror flicks and Westerns would obviously associate it with them. Someone like lionking, who I gather is Australian, might have no other connotations than what they see in the news (note they referenced 'in the past decade'), which would be strictly the racist murder angle. So they would see it as 'grasping at straws', when other Americans have already posted that they think of nooses in the same way.
 
bluesjnr said:
This measured, considered and well reasoned response from Darren Harper (whoever the **** he is?) to the crass episode sums up the depths to which people will go to create an issue of race where one does not, on the face of it and without further investigation, exist.



The irony is that all the commentators could be described as a modern day lynch mob.
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Are you suggesting that the commentators believe the teachers should be publicly executed without trial?

While expressing disdain for them, calling them racists, and calling for their summary dismissal may be excessive, or at least premature, it will never be lynching, and I think it's really important to remember this. Fuzzing the distinction smacks of the same kind of cluelessness that gives rise to incidents like this in the first place.
 
Other than movies, the other references I grew up with were music:

Gallows Pole-Led Zeppelin
Gimme Some Water-Eddie Money
Renegade-Styx
And probably several others I still hear on classic rock radio.

50 years of association does not change easily.

That doesn’t excuse them from being stupid and deserving disciplinary action. But it does show that it’s credible that they weren’t thinking in terms of race.
 
The article says there are a few black teachers there. It would be interesting to know if they knew about this, and if so what their take is on it.
 
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