Letters to the Editor | Noose incident bursts Vassar bubble

We can look at last week’s noose incident from two different perspectives: through geography, and through time. Since Vassar College expends a great deal of energy attempting to defy the laws of both, I thought that I could use my experiences working in New Orleans to locate—in time and space—why someone might dare to be troubled by this incident.

In my third year at Vassar, I took a course on political geography. At the beginning of class one day, the professor asked us all to name the states where slavery used to be legal. Though reluctant to participate in such a high school activity, we eventually successfully named the southern states, and launched somewhat tangentially into a debate about Kentucky. In bringing us back to the board, the professor scratched out one more state: New York. Checking the reaction of the room, he wrote down several more northeastern states and noted that of course all states in the union participated in the institution of slavery: our geographic memories had simply been structured to alter this reality.

Like what happened in Jena, and in my geography class that day, the act of hanging a noose is easily framed as an anomalous and antiquated relic of the past, or at least of someone else’s past. Either way, it is an act that has no place in our cordial, enlightened and progressive present. I might have said the same myself a few months ago. In reality, however, the symbol of the noose is as American as the 4th of July, and the violence it contains shapes our national life in more ways than one might think. The noose remains disturbing today because the mentality and history it embodies are still with us, even way up in yonder north country.

Since the noose is not thought of as part of the history of the north, any incident can be seen as “misguided,” “backwards” behavior, fit only for our misguided, backwards, southern neighbors. In order to counter such a notion, however, Diversity, Inc. has documented the phenomenon of “copy cat” noose hangings across the country (diversityinc.com/public/2588.cfm). This attempt to define a “noose geography” reveals that this supposedly southern phenomenon currently possesses a remarkable spatial equity. If we were embarrassed because we thought that this incident made Vassar a solitary stain on the purity of the enlightened North, then we can breathe a sigh of relief (but not before gasping again): of the 37 documented incidents they list, precisely half of them have occurred above the Mason-Dixon line (Vassar’s has not yet been added, lest it tip the scales the wrong way).

I bring the Vassar classroom and the “Noose Watch” together in hopes of bursting some bubbles. I have a great deal of sympathy for those Vassar students, staff and faculty who are from, have lived or have family in the southern United States. I have never been in a place that permitted such unchallenged, widespread mockery and bigotry of southerners as I experienced in my time at Vassar. Not being from the South myself, I never pretended to feel personally violated by these near daily occurrences. However, I knew these incidents were indicative of the problems with the Vassar bubble, and I did feel embarrassed to be a northerner.

At Vassar we believe in the bubble, for better and for worse. If we want to continue to use that imagery, that is fine, but at least add the stipulation that it is a highly permeable one. As much as we attempt to separate ourselves from the ideas and practices in the United States with which we differ and disagree, let us try to remember that our separation can and will never be complete. Racism and ignorance reside within us all, because we all reside in the United States of America. If one of us is a backwards hick, then we are all backward hicks. The next time you hear someone make a crack about the south, recall the day that the noose came to rest inside the palatial rafters of Vassar College and the power of an American icon burst our bubble.

—Evan Casper-Futterman ’07