Nooses Only for Some?

Nooses Only for Some?

In addition to the First Amendment protecting offensive symbolic speech
when did the noose become a symbol of hanging exclusively persons of color?
("FREE SPEECH LEFT HANGING," New York Post, Editorial, October 24, 2007) Saddam
Hussein and his sons were hanged. Is the noose a symbol of anti Iraqi hate? The
Nazi Doctors were hanged after the Nuremberg trials. Is a noose a symbol of
German hate? In Utah until recently or still hanging is a legal form of capital
punishment. In this country horse thieves were hanged. Why is this only an issue
for persons of color?

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

FREE SPEECH LEFT HANGING
New York Post
Editorial

October 24, 2007 -- The state Senate on Monday passed a bill that would make it
a class E felony to place, draw or otherwise display a noose - on public or
private property - and too bad about the First Amendment.

Now, the temptation for legislators to get tough on nooses has been
understandably strong recently - given the lawmakers' proclivity to pander, and
the uproar over the noose found on a black professor's door at Columbia's
Teachers' College earlier this month and the ensuing series of apparent copycat
incidents.

Disgusting occurrences, each and every one - but they're no excuse for an
end-run around free-speech rights.

Supporters of the bill assert that the measure merely includes the noose, a
symbol of racist lynchings in the Jim Crow south, in a legal category of
harassment that already covers swastikas and burning crosses. Threats - which
these things often are - are not typically considered constitutionally protected
speech.

Still, the bill remains problematic. What, for example, constitutes
"harassment"? And who gets to decide?

(The New York Civil Liberties Union - that self-proclaimed defender of
constitutional rights - punted yesterday, promising only to study the issue. How
timid - on a bill that poses a substantial threat to free-speech rights.)

The noose is a hateful symbol of a shameful chapter in American history. But
responding to it by doing violence to the First Amendment gives the bigots a
dangerous victory.