[unholythree]

I’ve noticed a unfortunate conflation of word lynching with racism motivated homocide lately. Even from authorities (newspapers, lawyers, some state ACLU) that have to know they aren’t always the same.

I think the nuance of these specific injustices is important because the solutions are different. A killing could even be lawful but racist and therefor unjust, but that’s a distinct (albeit important) problem from mob violence or murder.

[unethical_ban]

Lone Star beer used to have images under their bottle caps as puns[1]. One of them used an image of a noose as part of the puzzle, which was completely unrelated to race, or death - it was simply using the word as a similar word to "news".

Someone went apeshit on Twitter[2], and now all the puns are gone while Lone Star reviews them for sensitivity.

I'm politically liberal, and I'm fucking ashamed of the fact that this kind of stupid behavior is associated with liberal politics.

1. https://lonestarbottlecaps.com

2. https://www.mysanantonio.com/food/bars-drinks/article/what-h...

[dahfizz]

It is the same way that "the mob" identified the ok-hand as a symbol of hate.

There is a real desire to be outraged. The mob members get awarded with internet points and smug self-righteousness when they are outraged. Combined with the zero downside they face, _any_ amount of mental gymnastics to be outraged at something is worth it. That's how they can think a completely normal thing, that millions of people do, is suddenly a symbol of fascism or whatever.

See also: wearing red hats is "bad" according the mob[1][2]. Its a perfect metaphor, really. They can't bother to look at the hat and see if its MAGA or not, they just see something vaguely similar to something they don't like and go off. This one in particular annoys me because I have an actual "red hat" baseball cap from redhat the linux company. Its a really cool hat but I get snide comments every time I wear it. Absolutely ridiculous that the mere color red "triggers" some people.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/20/style/red-baseball-hats-m...

[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/liberal-author-normal...

[verall]

Hey, as a fellow Lone Star drinker, I really don't think it's possible to separate the noose from its history, particularly in our great state.

Sure, it's just a pun, but for many people it conjures a very particular image. They don't want to open their beer to an image of a noose, regardless its context. And really, the lone star is the emblem of the Republic of Texas which was founded in large part due to Mexico's outlawing of slavery.

The noose on a Lone Star bottle cap has this particular context. I think it's pretty gross and I'm glad they chose to remove it rather than defending it has "history" or something.

Really, though, I always buy the cans.

[unethical_ban]

I just don't like the stink that someone made about it, and don't think it's that big a deal. Even had they quietly said "sure" to removing it, that would have been one thing, but to pander to the sensitive crowd irks me.

All that stuff you said may be true in the strictest sense, but I still think one has to train themselves to get mad about that kind of thing. It's unnatural to instantly get infuriated and see hate in a bottle top, is all.

[SamBam]

You did not personally live through a time of repression and terror that that noose signified. You did not fear for the lives of yourself or your loved ones. There are plenty of people alive today who did.

The last black man lynched in Texas was in 1942. The last black man lynched in the US was in 1981. And the noose itself continued to be used as a symbol of terror, just like the burning cross.

No body had to "train" themselves to get mad at "that kind of thing," that was done by the people doing the lynchings.

> Even had they quietly said "sure" to removing it

You think there's any chance that that would have happened without someone making a "stink" about it?

[jfengel]

There's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to death. That's what they're for. The puzzle may not be related to death, but the noose is.

And in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race. They are being used, today, as racist threats. When a noose appears, lynching is the assumed meaning, and not just by black people [1].

So it's a good thing that Lone Star is taking a look at the entire project. Using a noose was a mistake. One presumably made in good faith, but a mistake nonetheless. So the right thing to do is pull not just it, but to make sure that they didn't make other mistakes -- a sign of good faith.

I'm all for accepting a good and sincere apology. A lot of people have made bad and insincere apologies, and not only does that not help, it makes things worse by giving people an excuse to pretend that good apologies aren't worth doing. This is a good choice and I'd encourage people to take that.

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554694-amazon-closi...

[unethical_ban]

I didn't downvote you, but a noose in a locker is wildly different from making a pun about "headline news", and to suggest otherwise is foolish.

"There is no such thing blah blah" - yes, there is, it's called context. Someone who feels threatened by a pun "headline news" with a noose is not properly adjusted to the adult world.

Do kids not play hangman anymore?

More broadly, I think twitter lowers the bar for whining and manufacturing rage. In a pre-Internet world, would that woman have cried, or otherwise been mortified at the beer top? Would she have taken a picture and sent it to the investigative reporter in Dallas where Lone Star is brewed? Or would she have gone "Huh, that's rude, how strange" and thrown it away?

It's easy to get wrapped up in the hate-think, and I think this is a case of it.

[verall]

Yes, and a part of this context is that Lone Star invokes images of the old state of Texas. When they lean into this, if they are not careful, they lean into some really awful events. It's not the same as the same pun on a bottle of Snapple.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

> in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race

People do frequently hang themselves, and there have been some stories of people tying nooses as jokes about suicide or overwork that were misinterpreted as racist threats.

I'm not sure if a joke about suicide is much better than a joke about lynching, and not being aware of the possible racist interpretation is tremendously ignorant at best, but it's clearly not as horrendous as an actual, real death threat.

We should strive to leave at least a little room for nuance and context, and making broad statements like "in the US there's no such thing as a noose that's unrelated to race" leaves none.

[exporectomy]

The funny thing about this offense is it seems that was created by the offended so they could become victims of it. Nooses used to represent suicide or maybe western movie culture. The race thing seems to have been kind of resurrected by social media. Though I'm only an outside observer of American culture so perhaps the noose=suicide is because that's pretty much always been their only use in my country.

Does this picture suggest to you that he's planning to do some black people lynching in the holidays or something else?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/218bbe/not_tod...

[SamBam]

> Nooses used to represent suicide or maybe western movie culture. The race thing seems to have been kind of resurrected by social media.

I'm sorry, but this is just ignorant of American history. Lynchings were part of a reign of terror that whites, mostly in the South, inflicted on Blacks for over a hundred years.

Between 1882 and 1968 over 3000 black men were lynched by mobs. Families would go and have picnics, bringing their kids so they could watch the lynchings. They would sometimes then carve up the bodies for people to take home a souvenirs, and many of the hanging bodies of the lynched men were photographed and turned into postcards that were sold all over the South. The postcards were usually inscribed with racist text or poems, and people used to send them just as regular postcards -- photos of men hanging on the back of a casual letter. So many were being sent that the postmaster eventually had to ban them being sent through the mail, though they were still produced and sold.

Lynchings of Black men were absolutely a huge part of the American consciousness. They were one of the main ways that the South kept African Americans living in terror, and a major cause of Martin Luther King Jr's movement and the ensuing civil rights era. Songs like "Strange Fruit" were sung in protest of them.

The last black man lynched in Texas was in 1942. The last black man lynched in the US was in 1981. And the noose itself continued to be used as a symbol of terror, just like the burning cross.

[jfengel]

The noose continues to be used as a symbol of terror:

https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/29345568/nasca...

It's disappointing how explicitly and consistently HN responds to discussions of slightly-subtle racism with a very explicit not-at-all-subtly-racist pretension that it doesn't exist. "It doesn't bother me therefore it shouldn't bother you" and "You should look at the context", as if being black isn't a context.

[exporectomy]

What an odd example to give. The symbolism was hyped up by the media in recent times, consistent with this noose=racism idea being modern. Also, it wasn't an actual symbol of terror because it turned out to be an innocent door pull rope.