Who's in the know about nooses in the news? Probably fewer people than the number who know about Britney Spears and Tasers.
The St. Petersburg Times featured a story Wednesday about a biker bar decorated with a lynching scene for Halloween. The owners of the bar claimed the fake corpse hanging from noose was white, but neighbors and other residents thought differently.
The end of the article showed a timeline of noose incidents throughout the United States, starting from an October 2004 noose-sighting to the Oct. 9 Columbia University controversy when a black professor finding a noose on the doorknob of her office.
Nooses seem so far away from Gainesville. We have no nooses here. We're not stupid enough to simulate a lynching scene in the name of Halloween spirit.
Our campus is so open-minded and accepting. We form panels and committees to talk about really important issues - or what we think are really important issues.
But I have my own timeline.
About one year ago, I stood in disbelief as a guy asked a room full of people if anyone was Jewish, so he could tell an anti-Semitic joke.
A little more than two months ago, I helped my roommate interview a Fred Thompson supporter standing outside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium who believed Fred Thompson would outlaw Islam, a religion he referred to as a "terrorist cult." Then he proceeded to yell, "All liberals should be hung for treason."
About a month ago, I overheard a supposed friend say she wouldn't vote for Barack Obama because he's black, and she didn't want a black president.
Three weeks ago, my friends were verbally harassed and threatened at a UF student's party - a party they were invited to - for the color of their skin, not their behavior. At this same party, a security guard approached my roommate, eyed my black friend and asked my roommate if she knew him.
These situations didn't include the use of nooses, but they show the underlying racism and hatred surfacing in Gainesville and throughout America.
This isn't new news. After all, hatred is a recurring theme throughout history.
It's funny that we devote time to protests, panels and committees focusing on a 15-minute fame-seeker but ignore the true injustices. They slip right past our "colorblind" eyes.
We may never eradicate racism or hatred, but we sure as hell pretend we've made progress. I think the reality is, we've just done a good job masking it.
I realize all humans are prone to such cancerous beliefs, even 1962 Nobel Prize winner James Watson, who unraveled DNA but on Oct. 14 claimed Africans are less intelligent than Caucasians. Watson said people misunderstood his comments.
The owners of the biker bar said it was only a Halloween decoration. The hosts of the party said their intolerant guests were just drunk.
It's news for five minutes, and then it's over. It's not that big of a deal anyway - it's not like anyone died.
But it's not over. It will never be over.
We need to drag hatred kicking and screaming and expose it for the sleeper epidemic it is. It obviously won't die, but people will know it's there and surrounding them every second of the day.
So, how many nooses does it take to get to the center of America's deep-rooted issues with hatred? If people think we've made progress so far, the world may never know.
Stephanie Rosenberg is a junior majoring in journalism. Her column appears on Thursdays.
