Teacher declares doll hanging from noose in Watchung is racist
By Pamela Sroka-Holzmann
WATCHUNG — The owner of a Halloween costume store here said a window display depicting a man hanging from a noose will be removed after a Scotch Plains woman complained, saying it was appalling and racist.
Delores Jackson, a fifth-grade teacher at the Charles H. Skillman Elementary School in Plainfield, said the display she saw Sunday in the window at the Halloween Scene store in the Blue Star Shopping Center on Route 22 West depicted a stuffed doll resembling a black man, wearing a labor suit and hanging from a noose.
“They are selling this particular display like spiders hanging from the ceiling. . . . I took offense by a black man being hung in a display window,” Jackson said.
Jackson and her son, J.J. Jackson, 24, entered the store after seeing the display and asked a clerk about it. The inflatable “hanging victim” costume is manufactured by California-based First Imperial Trading Company, and resembles a “decaying person,” said Robert Lap, store operator.http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070925/NEWS01/709250388
As the various holidays approach, we should expect to see an increase in these kinds of racially-charged “complaints,” no matter how crazy.