In the months since nooses dangling from a schoolyard tree raised racial tensions in Jena, La., the frightening symbol of segregation-era lynchings has been turning up around the country.
Nooses were left in a black Coast Guard cadet’s bag, at a Long Island police station locker room, on a Maryland college campus, and, just this week, on the office door of a black professor at Columbia University in New York.
Maybe we shouldn’t be judged by a few bad apples, but we should be judged by how we tolerate them; and when they start popping up all over, it certainly appears that we tolerate them just fine.