Racism has a variety of symbols and words that denote denigration and hatred. I recall in the 1980s a cross being burned at a Valparaiso-Gary Roosevelt football game. It was dismissed as a prank. Indiana has no hate crime law.

Recently Jena, La., was shaken by three nooses hung from a tree near a high school. The tree was reserved for white students. There is power in symbols that have a history of violence. Remember the swastika?

There have been 4,700 lynchings since the Civil War, two-thirds were blacks. James Allen reported on CNN that he had a collection of over 300 pictures of lynchings. These were not Halloween pranks. But the gruesome residue of America's sin, namely slavery, and the cruelty of racism is still here.

Cynthia Carr in "Our Town" explores the 1930s lynching in Marion, Ind., of two blacks dragged from jail and mutilated on a courthouse tree. Pictures indicate lurid public support and the presence of children. Will we ever learn?

A popular black comedian was interviewed on television wearing a noose as a joke. Maybe it is a generation gap at work here, in Jena and elsewhere, who are short on historic memory.

Today we don't drag African Americans out of jail and lynch them. However, we can politely lynch children with racist symbols and words.

WVLP (98.3) "Conversations" interviewed recently a Valparaiso University Law School Director of the Career Placement Center. Valerie Jensen was leaving Valparaiso's "Vale of Paradise" with her two sons after three years of enduring racial slurs.

Valerie moved to Valparaiso from Minneapolis after being recruited by the university. The first day she took her sons to school, the car in front of her was emblazoned with a Confederate flag and a bumper sticker "Red neck and proud of it." She dismissed this incident.

However, her 13-year-old heard racial remarks at community soccer try-outs. At high school swim classes there were racial epithets. On the school bus there were racial comments that seemed to come from a "white supremacist" mentality.

Teenagers generally do not want parents to present such problems to school administrators for fear of retaliation. Valerie met with the high school principal but she claimed there was no action.

The feeling "of not belonging" to the community has led the Jensen family to leave the Vale of Paradise. The question of the effect of powerful words and symbols on minorities must be addressed. Jena and Valparaiso will need to look in the mirror after these incidents and address our shortcomings. Racism is no joke.

Amen until next Wednesday.

The opinions in this column are solely those of the writer. Wolf is a retired minister and lives in Valparaiso. Write to him c/o The Times, 1111 Glendale Blvd., Valparaiso, IN