A Threat
Aunt B. argues that a Williamson County School's crackdown on Confederate symbols is not a case of violated free speech:
A noose is a threat. In conjunction with a truck full of Confederate Battle Flags and a white supremacist driving it around? It’s a threat.
Tennessee State Code says that it’s a crime to engage in any activity that “injures or threatens to injure or coerces another person with the intent to unlawfully intimidate another because that other exercised any right or privilege secured by the constitution or laws of the United States or the constitution or laws of the state of Tennessee.”There’s not any prosecutor in Williamson County who can make an argument that hanging a noose in your truck is a threat to injure black kids and that such noose-hanging constitutes an unlawful intimidation because some of those kids might not feel safe going to school?
It shows how forgiving we can
It shows how forgiving we can be as a nation to allow symbols of a group of traitors (and, folks, that's what they were, even if they were your great-great-great-great-great-grandparents) and it amazes me that we don't reflectively throw mud at such symbols.
Yes, I'm a descendent of Union soldiers, why do you ask?
Two points. A) Kids don't
Two points.
A) Kids don't have the right to free speech in school.
B) Displaying a battle flag or a noose is not a threat of violence unless done in a manner that could be interpreted as violence; for instance, going to a black person's home and hanging it in their tree (similar to burning a cross).
But if you wanna put it on your pickup truck to display to the world what an ignorant inbred hillbilly that you are...then its no business of the state (except for a sign of needed improvement in the education system and for siblings to wear protection when going at it).