A despicable act

Just a fair heads up. This is not one of those posts where you wade through the morass in the middle to get to the punch line. There is no punch line to this one. This post is about a horrendous, despicable, inexcusable act.

Specifically, I am talking about the Columbia University issue. To be sure, Columbia has been in the news lately. Their controversial decision to invite and allow the Iranian President to speak. And now some idiot hung a noose on the door of a black professor.

I would be interested to hear the justification for such an act. What, did he give you a bad grade you disagreed with? Did he use a different instructional method than you prefer? Or was it his crime to be intelligent and black at the same time? What possible rationalization could you have for such an activity?

That can never be anything except hurtful. I would put the odds about 15 - 20 % this is someone who will eventually CLAIM they "were pulling a practical joke". Of course, that makes it 75 - 80% that it is someone acting spitefully, hatefully, whatever adverb you want to put in there. Either way, it is inexcusable.

If you are "joking" then you are an idiot. Some jokes can never be less than hurtful. In a country with a history of racism that includes a heavy dose of lynchings, this is not something that can be interpreted as anything less than a death threat. Ha ha, good one, you scared me by making me think you were going to kill me...hilarious. Note: that previous line should be read with sarcasm dripping from every line. There is simply no way whatsoever for this to be considered funny.

And if you were intending it to be interpreted as a threat of beating or death...your idiocy is beyond belief.

Here is the irony; if someone is so lacking in compassion and human decency as to choose to hate an entire race of people because they look different than you...I believe you have that right. But to express it in such ways as this is something that you need to really reassess. Whether you choose to like "others" or hate them does not matter...you need to recognize we all live in the same space and peace can only be attained by getting along. And frankly, by sheer virtue of NOT having hung a noose or similar symbol on someones door, I can already tell you that professor is a better human being than you. Whatever his prejudices are, he does not express them in hateful, harmful ways.

How is it okay to hang it from a professor's door, or put one in a black man's sea bag or a white woman's sea bag in the Coast Guard? Or to hang them from your redneck-mobile and drive through town?

Plainly, it isn't. It is never okay. I have mentioned before that I grew up in an openly racist town. To some extent I suppose I was sheltered from it...when the first black family moved to town and some idiots painted some words on their house and cars. Dad wouldn't even tell me what the words meant, simply that they were horrific words with no place in society. But it did not stop there. He and some of the other good men of the neighborhood set out to make that family welcome. In later years when we all learned who was responsible, several of these same guys did what they always did when there was a problem.

They didn't call the police, write the papers, or ignore it. They got together in a group, went to that guys door and informed him that we were going to be a decent community, that sort of behavior was not acceptable and was not going to be tolerated.

And it stopped.

And that is what we all need to do. When people get out there doing stupid, harmful stuff we need to stand up and be counted, to tell them we do not allow that sort of behavior, that we are going to be a decent place to live, a safe community that does not allow immoral behavior to dominate a community and disallow their right to live peaceful, happy lives.

Shame on the people hanging the nooses...and shame on the people in those communities allowing it to happen. Stand up and act as good people everywhere ought to...stop the stupidity.