By: jackie.sauter

Jim Downs, an assistant professor of history at Connecticut College, has an interesting essay posted today on the History News Network’s Web site about the cultural significance of the noose.

He mentions the noose-hanging incident last year at the University of Maryland’s Nyumburu Cultural Center in College Park — also the impetus for a hate crimes legislation introduced this year in the General Assembly — as well as other recent incidents that garnered media attention.

Downs suggests that the “recent rash of noose hangings seems to have less to do with the viscous horrors targeted against African-Americans, and more to do with how the history of the noose has enabled the leading media, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, to define racism.”

He says that the black community’s reaction or portrayal has typically been absent in historical representations of the noose, such as photos only showing whites posed with a “black body dangling from a tree.” These absences, he writes, “illustrates the extent to which white people, both liberal and racist, have taken ownership of the noose and dictated its representation.”

Turning to the legislation proposed this year, which was amended to expand the definition of a hate crime to acts where a weapon — i.e., a noose — is displayed either on public or private property with the intent to target or emotionally harm a group of people, does this proposal perpetuate the black victim as Downs says?

The House legislation is sponsored by Montgomery County Democrats Saqib Ali and Herman L. Taylor Jr., who said during the bill’s hearing this month that the law needed to respond to incidents like those at the Nyumburu Center, where a noose was found hanging from a tree next to the property.

What do you think? Will making these incidents a hate crime exacerbate and unnecessarily publicize such an act, or is it an appropriate action?

LIZ FARMER, Legal Affairs Writer