US-Election 2008

[acharya]

February 12, 2008, 7:44 pm
Bush Denounces Noose Displays

John D. McKinnon reports on the White House

In his final year in office, President Bush keeps going back to the well of compassionate conservatism. Today, he denounced recent displays of nooses as a racist symbol, citing “disturbing reports” around the country that have “heightened racial tensions in many communities.”

The comments follow a new round of minority-friendly proposals in Bush’s State of the Union, including private-school scholarships for inner-city students. Later this week, the president goes on a week-long tour of Africa, to celebrate his successful campaigns against AIDS and malaria. While Bush has long been sympathetic to nonwhites, his latest outreach could also be aimed at smoothing some of the rough edges of his controversial image.

“Our nation has come a long way toward building a more perfect union,” Bush said in remarks at the White House on Black History Month. “Yet as past injustices have become distant memories, there’s a risk that our society may lose sight of the real suffering that took place. One symbol of that suffering is the noose….As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. They are wrong. And they have no place in America today.”

If the American public needed reminding, many in Bush’s audience didn’t. It included Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), a hero of the 1960s civil rights movement, and William Coleman, an African-American lawyer who was President Ford’s transportation secretary.

The best-known recent noose display occurred in late 2006 in Jena, La., where several white students hung nooses at a tree at the mostly white Jena High School. The tree had been a hangout for white students, but a black student had asked a school administrator’s permission to sit under it. A group of black teenagers — the “Jena Six” — were charged with beating a white teenager in connection with the incident. The case against the black teenagers became the subject of a huge demonstration last September by thousands of marchers, who viewed the charges — which included attempted murder — as excessive.

Some critics see noose displays as one example of a broader surge of various forms of “stealth” racism in the U.S. The White House on Tuesday pointed to statistics showing that reports of hate-crime incidents in the U.S. rose by almost 8% in 2006.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush “was deeply disturbed” by the media reports of noose displays and similar incidents. “He felt it was important that as president of the U.S. he very publicly remind the world about the history of that symbol — and why as he said, so many people have a visceral reaction to it.”