They're a reprehensible symbol of hatred, no doubt about that, and if I saw someone hanging one in my neighborhood, my first inclination would be to run up and pile-drive him into the pavement.

That would also be my second inclination. And third.

Despite that, we should all just take a chill pill because a hanging noose is not the symbol we black Americans need to fear most.

After a handful of disturbing incidents revolving around nooses -- a black Coast Guard cadet found one in his bag, a professor at Columbia University in New York found one hanging on her door and three nooses hanging from a tree preceded the whole Jena 6 contretemps -- the federal government has launched an investigation into the presumed return of perhaps the most visceral and visual symbol of racial hatred in this country.

Whether or not nooses are making a comeback, as some say, or whether the incidents are simply being reported more is unknown. It's no coincidence, though, that when alleged comedian Michael Richards wanted to quash a couple of black presumed hecklers, he chose the image of a hanging -- "Fifty years ago we'd have you hanging upside down with a fork stuck in ..." OK, you get the picture -- to put them in their place.

Those were ugly words thundered by Richards, but they caused me to lose not a second of sleep. Indeed, the only thing they did was save me 30 minutes a day -- the time I used to spend watching "Seinfeld."

As a black man, I am far more frightened by, and am more likely to be attacked by, another young black man who wants my car or watch or who thinks I looked at him cross-eyed in the club than by some retromingent racist swinging a noose.

You know who else I fear more than the noose-hangers?

The program directors at Black Entertainment Television.

Think I'm lying? Turn to BET some day -- not Sunday; that's when they praise the Lord -- and you'll hear anti-black epithets that would make your average klansman blush.

If you watch BET for any extended period -- make sure you do so on an empty stomach -- you'll understand why so many young blacks exhibit so little respect for either their peers or themselves.

Critics used to say BET stood for Booties Every Time because there are half-nekkid women on there every time you turn to that channel.

It could also be an acronym for Black Extermination Television, since another large part of its programming consists of angry, socially maladjusted rappers who think manhood is exemplified by loving oodles of women, drinking Cristal and, above all else, pumping lead into other black men.

It may be hard to draw a direct link between BET's endless glorification of violence and a recent report that the leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 39 is homicide, but if you look hard enough, you'll see it.

From its inception, BET has glamorized the worst in us and ignored the best. That's why you have so many middle-class black boys thugging it up and acting not only like they inhabit the ghetto, but as though the ghetto inhabits them.

So why hasn't network founder Bob Johnson, who owns the Charlotte Bobcats basketball team, ever been tried for crimes against humanity?

More importantly, why don't we have a federal investigation into rap artists who make millions rapping about the joys of spraying lead and killing other blacks?

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