The Real Truth Behind The “Noose”
Music: THE COMMODORES “COMMODORES” and “Midnight Magic”
Beverage: Coffee (it was a little too early for Scotch)
Here we go again. After writing a book on race in America that seemed to terrify people of all races, White Men Can’t Hump (As Good As Black Men), I wanted to focus on something a little less contentious, like gender. But it seems like I’m getting pulled back into the murky waters known as race in America. I say murky, not because we can’t see the racial problems in America, but because we don’t want to see the reasons why many of those problems exist, i.e., America prefers to dismiss the problem by denying the root problem even exists. The recent national re-emergence of the “noose” is what has pulled me back into these murky waters, and my publicist keeps telling to put something out there to fully explain this issue. Because like so many other symbols of America’s racist past, once again the true motivation has either gotten lost in translation, or redefined. This is certainly not new; here’s two other examples of how time diminishes the true motivation behind certain symbols, or redefines the original meaning of a particular symbol.
1) The “N Word”: Was once the consummate symbol of hate and degradation in the eyes of Black Folks, and it was our primary name in the eyes of many White Folks. But time, political correctness, and hip hop music have made this term more mainstream, and at the same time more offensive. First of all, political correctness has changed the term “Nigger” to the “N Word,” so now everyone can say it without actually saying it. And then Black Folks turned it into a term of endearment amongst each other, but at the same time, we still lose our minds when we hear a racist tirade, like the tirades from “Michael Richards” or “Doug ‘The Bounty Hunter’ Chapman.” White Folks then cry “No Fair, how come you guys can call each other Nigger, but we can’t call you Nigger, just like we did in the good old days.” I hear that crap all of the time, and I also hear “No fair, why should we lose our job for saying what hip hop performers say in every other song.” Without getting into a long detailed explanation (I do however explain this in my book), all I can say is political correctness has created a unique double-standard, and anytime White Folks complain about a double-standard, I consider it progress. This language double-standard pales in comparison to the double-standard in sentencing for drug offences, i.e., Crack Cocaine (the drug of choice for Black Folks) gets you mandatory jail time vs. Powder Cocaine (the drug of choice for White Folks) gets you treatment and rehab. Yeh, I know, they recently knocked a few months off of those mandatory Crack Cocaine sentences, but my question is, why didn’t they just add a few years to the sentences for Powder Cocaine? We know why, that’s why I don’t want to hear crap about double-standards. The “N Word” may cost you your job, but you can always get another job, just ask Don Imus. When you catch a felony Crack Cocaine charge, you can’t get a real job, ever. Nor can you vote, own a gun, and on and on. So spare me the double-standard talk. The next example of a hate symbol being redefined is:
2) The Confederate Flag: This one is much easier to define, but our nation, with the help of pandering politicians, have allowed this symbol of hate and Slavery to become an issue of states rights. The Confederacy’s goal was to maintain the institution of Slavery, period. So to those uninformed idiots who still swear that the Civil War was about states rights, you’re only about half right, and 50% correct would still be an “F” on a test. The truly correct half of that equation is that the Civil War was indeed about “states rights,” i.e., a states right to own Slaves. Don’t take my word for it; take those states words for it. When individual Southern states began seceding from the Union, nearly all of their formal Declarations referred to their right to own Slaves. The state of South Carolina, the state which cherishes the Confederate Flag the most, mentioned the word “Slavery” 18 times in their formal Declaration. There you have it, the Civil War was about the institution of Slavery, period. But, one entire section of the country has been allowed to re-write history. The Confederate Flag is also a symbol of hate because every time Black Folks have made public appeals for justice, it has been waved in the back ground by those who wished to maintain the status quo. So while pandering politicians hide behind this “states rights” crap (only John McCain has had the courage to state otherwise), the Confederate Flag continues to skate by with a public definition that attempts to mask this symbols true motivation.
So there you have it, the “N Word” was once the ultimate symbol of hate, but has now taken on new dimensions thanks to political correctness and hip hop music. Hip hop music has made the word mainstream, and yet, political correctness has restricted White usage of the word to the privacy of their own homes. This has created a debate that focuses on the “N Words” usage, and therefore obscures its historical intent.
The Confederate Flag has maintained its presence because it has conveniently received a duplicitous redefinition. This has helped to obscure the Confederate Flag’s true motivation and historical intent, which brings us to the “noose.”
To say the “noose” is a symbol of hate is like saying a gun is a symbol of violence, duhhhhh, no shit. The beauty of the “noose” is that it’s a distinct symbol of a specific kind of hate that no one in this country likes to discuss. The “noose” is a symbol of lynching, and lynching represents the darkest and most shameful period in our history. And just like the “N Word” and the “Confederate Flag,” lynchings true motivation and historical intent have been intentionally clouded. Actually, the true motivation and historical intent of lynching, and its symbol the “noose,” have never really been publicly discussed or examined. When people think of lynching, they only envision the pitiful portrait that pitiful historians have painted. Lynching has therefore been reduced to three or four rogue klansmen who overpowered the local sheriff and hung some Black Guy (usually accused of raping a White Woman) before he received a fair trial. That’s an absolute joke of a portrait that only tells a fraction of this story (an inaccurate fraction at that).
Lynching parties, more often than not, numbered in the hundreds if not thousands, and the crowds usually numbered in the thousands as well. Lynching, or “Nigger barbecues,” as they were called in those days, was a community event, a major gathering, and also an opportunity to get together with the surrounding communities (who all showed up in droves). This fact has been intentionally obscured over time. But you don’t have take my word for it, I beg you to check out Ralph Ginzburg’s book “100 YEARS of LYNCHINGS” (it’s available at Amazon.com), and read for yourself. These crowds were enormous, and regardless of the supposed transgression, the methodology was usually the same. Torturing, castration, and body part for souvenirs. These preliminary activities were usually followed with shooting, hanging and/or burning at the stake. Mr. Ginzburg’s book contains a one page Foreword, and then nearly 300 actual newspaper accounts from local reporters and reporters who were visiting from the North. This book is America’s version of Holocaust footage and I can’t recommend it enough.
As a child I was always curious, and this curiosity has followed me into adulthood, so therefore my theory on life has always been: “Don’t just tell me what happened, please tell me why.” This approach to life forced me to do a lot of research on lynching because unlike the Nazi’s of WWII, lynchers rarely sat down and gave detailed interviews. I don’t understand why, because they certainly didn’t have to fear any Nuremburg-like prosecution. No one has ever been prosecuted for lynching a Black Man during that era, and the number of documented lynchings is close to 5,000 (the undocumented numbers could be 10 times that), but luckily there are plenty of photos of White Men posing next to their mutilated prey, and there’s also the braggadocios confession of J.W. Milam to Look Magazine. This paid interview obviously came after being acquitted of lynching 14 year old Emmett Till. The bottom line is, lynchers enjoyed smiling and posing for pictures, but for some reason have remained mum and have never told us why lynching, and more importantly, nudity and castration was the norm. Come on fellas, I know there’s still a lot of you alive, inquiring minds want to know.
The U.S. Senate routinely blocked every attempt to make lynching a federal offense, and to this day, no lynchers or members of those cheering mobs, have ever sat down and explained why this practice was so prevalent. Well, thankfully they don’t have to, because their methodology tells us the true motivation behind the practice of lynching. Lynching was solely about “Fear of the Black Penis,” period. So therefore, the “noose” really represents “Fear of the Black Penis.” How do I know this? Because I discuss “Fear of the Black Penis” in my book White Men Can’t Hump (As Good As Black Men), which is a book that has been widely distributed, and I’ve yet to be called factually incorrect, I’ve yet to be called a racist by anyone who’s read it, and I’ve yet to be challenged in any way. My book has gone completely unchallenged, and this fact is a source of pride for me. When you consider the fact that we currently reside in a racial climate that relishes the opportunity to call Black Folks racist, my book is a wonder to behold. Affirmative Action is now considered reverse-discrimination. Johnny Cochran was considered a racist for playing the race card in the O.J. Simpson trial, and the Simpson jury is considered racists for buying it. Then throw in Louis Farakhan, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, all of whom are considered Black racists, and you’d think my little book would be ripe for attack. Instead, White Men Can’t Hump has walked this gauntlet not only unscathed, but I repeat, unchallenged.
Why has my book, whose basic premise is that racism against Black Men emanates from “Fear of the Black Penis” gone unchallenged? Because no can dispute the following:
Jim Crow Laws: These laws served solely to keep Black Men out of social settings with White Women (i.e., schools, pools, theatres and lunch counters).
Anti-Miscegenation Laws: These laws were created specifically for Black Men, were introduced in nearly every state, and passed in over 30 states. None of these laws ever applied to White Men, and never stopped White Men from creating Mulatto babies with Black Women (i.e., Strom Thurmond’s political career should’ve ended before it ever began). And ironically, it took the U.S. Supreme Court to rule these laws unconstitutional in the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, when a White Man, Richard Loving, married a Black Woman.
The criminalization of marijuana: America’s first Drug Czar, Harry Anslinger, stated before Congress that marijuana caused White Women to listen to jazz music and fornicate with Negroes.
The Tuskegee Experiment: U.S. Government doctors watched Black Men rot from the inside out with syphilis, and also knowingly allowed them to spread this disease to Black Women, who in turn, passed the disease on to their fetus if they became pregnant.
AND OF COURSE,
Lynching and Castration: They couldn’t just shoot a Brother, or hang a Brother, or burn a Brother at the stake, they also had to remove his genitals (regardless of what the supposed offense was).
Note: I list many more similar examples in my book.
Why is the behavior I just listed important? Those events are important because in order to define the true motivation of the symbol, you have to validate the motivation itself. So now that we all agree that “Fear of the Black Penis” was/is a living and breathing thing, that was/is legally and illegally enforced, let’s talk about how “Fear of the Black Penis” was executed and practiced, i.e., lynching and it’s symbol, the “noose.”
Since none of the hundreds of thousands of people (that’s right, hundreds of thousands) who participated in lynching have ever stepped forward and explained why they felt the need to castrate thousands of Black Men, we’ll let the evidence of this practice speak for itself. Recently CNN featured a special entitled “The Noose: An American Nightmare,” which examined the re-emergence of this historically significant symbol of hate. CNN’s Kyra Phillips sat down with James Allen, co-author of the book “WITHOUT SANCTUARY: Lynching Photography in America,” and also curator of the largest collection of lynching memorabilia in America, and Mr. Allen (who by the way is White) stated the following: “I think, really, most painful for me, and I’ve never talked about this, but are the images where they stripped them nude. They are at your complete and total mercy, and this is constantly done to African Americans.” Mr. Allen’s book “WITHOUT SANCTUARY” provides the visual evidence of this practice, and Ralph Ginzburg’s book “100 YEARS of LYNCHINGS” provides the journalistic evidence from well known publications such as the New York Times and The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Ginzburg’s book features article after article after article, and seemingly almost every article contains the term “the Negro was de-sexed” or “the Negro was unsexed” and my favorite headline “BOY UNSEXES NEGRO BEFORE MOB LYNCHES HIM.” That’s right, before a crowd of nearly one thousand viewers, a 10 year old White Youth received his formal initiation to the art of lynching when he was forced to castrate Bert Smith with a large butcher knife, just outside of Houston, Texas in 1917. I know, I know, 1917 was in the Stone Age. To some it is, but seeing as how I was raised by my Grandfather, who was 18 years old in 1917, he didn’t see lynching as part of the Stone Age and neither do I (and lynchings also occurred in the 1960’s, certainly within my lifetime). You see, those crowds that numbered in the thousands, often contained hundreds of children (remember now, families were much larger in those days). By witnessing this barbarism, what were those children taught? What kind of adults did those children grow up to be, and what did they teach their children? What those children witnessed was “Fear of the Black Penis” and also that a “Black life is less valuable than a White life.” When you look at some of the attitudes that exist today, it doesn’t take a genius to see where these attitudes came from.
When you look at the “noose” incident in Jena, La., it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the real deal is. Those “nooses” weren’t hung because the White Kids were trying to defend their tree or their shade; those “nooses” were hung because those White Kids were trying to protect their women from the big Black football players. Do I know this for a fact? Nope. But I do remember the first time I heard the term “Nigger Lover.” It was in 7th grade (well before high school), and we all know what that term represents, don’t we. Would those kids ever admit to that? Did the lynchers ever admit to castration? The answer to both questions is Hell No!
So the moral to this factual story is this. The “noose” is not just a symbol of hate, it’s a symbol of lynching, which is therefore a symbol of a distinct type of hate, and that distinct type of hate is known as “Fear of the Black Penis.” And if people are really serious about permanently putting the “noose” in a museum where it belongs, I’ve got the answer to this problem. I absolutely guarantee that if this truth was reported; the fact that the “noose” is a symbol for “Fear of the Black Penis,” these little “White-supremacist- wanna-bees” would put their “nooses” away in shame and would retreat back to the Confederate Flag, where they enjoy political cover. And that my friends is the real truth behind the “noose.”
Always remember my Humpers and Humpettes: “Life is too short to Hate.”