They turned over the noose for DNA analysis. Seems strange that if they are looking for answers, they don’t turn over all the evidence. Surely protecting some racist whackjob isn’t worth that much.
I proceed from the starting point that the whole noose business is an act of racial bigotry, whether or not the perpetrator was trying to make some kind of joke or hoax.
But reading the OP over and over, I feel like I’m missing something, mostly because I think it boils down to an assertion that if we ignore racist acts they’ll go away. That seems ludicrous on its face, but I’m at a loss to come to any other interpretation.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything the OP says, but I don’t think anything he said can be construed as suggesting that such incidents be ignored. There’s a difference between responding with a thorough investigation and appropriate punishment if someone is caught (on the one hand) and making a national issue of it (on the other).
If the authorities fail to investigate, or if the investigation reveals that this was a sign of something organized, or otherwise deeper (beyond one stupid teen mad at a grade, for example*), then maybe it’s the time for national attention and confrontational meetings about What We Are Doing Wrong.
I also think that if the North Carolina lacrosse case taught us anything, it is to wait until the facts are in before rushing to judgment. Anguished college meetings about How This Is Proof of Systemic Racism at Our School when the investigation is just getting started strike me as ill-advised.
*Before anyone jumps on me for this, I think that, even if it turns out to be one idiot teen, that idiot teen should be criminally charged.
Do nooses show up in conjunction with white people who are not involved in multicultural education? That is part of how I sort it out.
I think that this sort of question arises more frequently from people who are, generally speaking, members of majority cultural groups. I think that it is hard to understand what it is like to live in a culture as a minority and have to remain alert for many different kinds of dismissal, negative treatment, and threats. Have you ever been assaulted by a group of men whom you were afraid would kill you, on the basis of your membership in a group? I have. If that were to occur, would you be afraid that if you called the police you would not receive assistance based on your group membership? Been there, too.
I know the professors at Columbia. This is not the sort of thing a person of that degree of integrity would do as a hoax. Even raising the question of whether it is a hoax troubles me.
My professional organizations (and my students, of their own initiative), have sent letters of support and assistance to the affected professor(s), not letters of outrage. However, I am sure that letters expressing disgust and concern will also be sent. Why would you not be outraged? A dismissive explanation of the it-was-probably-some-drunk-guys-not-really-racist sort is also, frankly, quite concerning to me. When I was in college, some drunk-guys-not-really-sexist/homophobic shoved a burning porn magazine under the door of the campus women’s center. Not under the door of their frat, not under the door of the newspaper or chess club, not under the janitor’s door or the college president’s door. Had it not been spotted quickly by someone who came through the building, it was said the building, an old one, would have come down. People lived in that that building, too. Presumptive drunkenness is not exclusive of committing a hate crime or harrassment based on a minority idenmtity, and in my own experience often precipitates the crime. Presumptive drunkenness is also no excuse for threatening, antisocial behavior.
OP checking back in. I’m not suggesting we ignore racist acts, and regardless of the motives of the perpetrator, it’s fair to say the individual who did this chose this symbol for its racist connotations.
I’m asking why the national outcry? This act isn’t an example of institutional or even social racism, it’s an individual jerk using racism to get a bigger media reaction than if he/she just left a threatening note on the door. Yes, there are racists in America, but to the extent they are organized into groups, they are completely and utterly marginalized.
Do we have a problem with race in America? Sure we do, but it isn’t because a sizeable, respected portion of the white population wants to reinstate lynching. I’m asking that the incident be put in perspective; overblowing it leads to misunderstanding, bad policy, and more copycat acts. I fear we’re boarding a runaway train here as everyone races to be the loudest denouncer of a level of racism that just doesn’t exist.
People who rush to judgment before all the facts are in trouble me.
Hoaxes exist. Even hoaxes perpetrated by previously-respected people exist. Also, as someone has already pointed out, the target of this act may be innocent, yet this still might be a hoax by someone else.
If someone can’t even consider a hoax as a possibility, his or her analysis of this issue will be flawed, right from the beginning. Someone who considers all of the possibilities at the beginning on an investigation shows that s/he has an open mind, not that s/he is a closet racist.
I think four is more likely. The noose bit is a tradition among the racists, not the left; they’d be more likely to think of it. And given that blacks are a minority, the odds are that anti-black racists simply outnumber all the other likely suspects. In my opinion, most things that look like blatant bigotry against a minority are done by racists and not the others you mention, for the same reason most crime is committed by right handed people; sheer numbers.
Like the Republican Party ? The Republicans have been pandering to the racists with their Southern Strategy for decades. Every time an election rolls around, they come out with racist ads and other things ( like the push poll about John McCain and his imaginary black baby ). They are racist, and anything but marginalized.
Then why has hanging nooses ( or sometimes sneaking up behind a black person and dropping it around their neck, “just as a joke” ) been a complaint for so long, if it’s just a few copycats ? Racism is alive and well in America. Yes, it’s better than it was in the past, but that’s only because it was so very bad in the past. America is a country that was built on bigotry, and we aren’t over it yet.
You are entitled to your opinion, of course.
Given the recent events in Jena Louisiana, I think that just about anyone would think of this.
I don’t understand this at all.
Which do you think there are more of at Columbia: left wing whackos or right wing whackos?
I totally agree. Did people learn anything at all from the Duke Lacrosse fiasco?
If I had to bet before all the facts are in? Leaving aside the most likely result (that we’ll never know) then, yes, I agree that option 4 is the most likely of all the remaining possibilities (although I can think of more than the four mentioned here.)
But so what? Just because it is a likely explanation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wait for more information. This only happened 2 days ago, and it seems like the police are vigorously investigating it. There are apparently videotapes out there that haven"t been seen yet. May we at least wait until these are available before we rule out all other possibilities?
No comment on the rest of your post.
Can I just say I think this is really a dumb question? I can imagine somebody faking this to draw attention to himself - like I said, something just like that happened at my school during my college days, and Shodan linked to another - but that’s a whacko attention whore thing, not a whacko left-wing thing. An anonymous leftist making a fake racist threat because they think racism is bad? I find that one very hard to swallow.
I never said it was a “few” copycats. And the recent increase has surprised even people who carefully track racism: from the earlier link:
Do an internet search on “fake hate crimes” and see if it changes your mind.
It happened a few years ago here at Northwestern University. The student who did it said it was to bring attention to the problem of racism.
You don’t actually think this noose hanging bit is new, do you ?
Simple. Say that Group X is 10 percent of the population, and that about ten percent of the rest of the population is bigoted towards X. That means that X will be faced with a number of bigots equal to nearly it’s entire population. Any sub-group of X, such as those willing to fake being the target of bigotry, are going to be outnumbered by the real bigots.
I have no idea. And unless the place is a walled fortress, it doesn’t matter much.
That’s where I went to college. 
I’d never heard his explanation before, but I’m going to stick with “attention whore” rather than “misguided anti-racism crusader.” I think he was trying to protect himself from everybody’s wrath by claiming good intentions. And I note that he faked crimes against himself, not other people. If he’d written threats against somebody else he would have been in significantly more trouble.
That case is not analogous at all. There, you had a he said/she said situation that was made more volatile because of the race component. Here we have a victim of a crime making a report. The real issues wrt the Duke case are rape shield laws and prosecutorial discretion. To think that the “lesson” we should learn form the Duke case is to immediate distrust those reporting crimes is seriously dangerous. God forbid something happens to you, and you have people immediately thinking your pain was self-inflicted. Yes, hoaxes happen, but they are far more rare than real cases, and for that to be your default judgment when presented with such cases is incredibly flawed thinking.
I guess you could stick with that, vs. the explanation he gave to police, but I don’t know why you would do so.
And if you don’t like that one, here’s another one.
Because the other explanation requires me to trust a liar. And one who had reasons to try to paint himself in a positive light, at that.
All the people who perpetrate these kinds of hoaxes are liars…does that mean we can never believe the reasons they give for doing it?
I edited my previous post with a link to a story about another one. The internet is full of stories like this. Are the all lying about their motivations, do you think?