One Oklahoma man, Merle Martindale, displayed a hanging noose on a tree as a "warning to any potential thief," and said that "it was not meant to be racist." This raises the question; when does it become insulting and downright offensive for some members of society to selectively pick and choose a rhetoric that accommodates their distorted perceptions?
Moreover, given that Oklahoma is plagued with a long history of spectacular lynchings, race riots, and racial discrimination, it's almost impossible to convince reasonable residents that something as insulting and inflammatory as a noose hanging from a tree "....was not meant to be racist." People are not stupid---unlike the guy who hung the nooses, they have a clearer perception of history. One resident driver, Dennis Varner, said that the display bothered him and that it was "discrimination and America shouldn't put up with it."
According to a CBS news reporting, the nooses were hung in a tree with a sign that read: "It's best not to be hanging around this area after dark." Again, and although the man who displayed the hanging nooses denied that it was racist, the latter was a nostalgic reference to the post Jim and Jane crow era, where in many White, monolithic communities----like, Hawthorne, California, for example---residents would display signs that read: "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne."
To u-turn back to the thesis and to answer the proposed question, I believe it becomes offensive and insulting to use rhetoric that benefits your rigid perception of things when you display your ignorance in public spaces, and also when you selectively deny the looming iconographies of spectacular lynchings, race riots, and racial tension that existed in Oklahoma during the Jim and Jane crow era. Or am I just imagining things?
