During a sixth period bathroom break last year, I found an ugly black swastika scrawled on the bathroom wall. I needed a couple of seconds to regain my composure, to try to understand why someone would put a symbol of mass murder and a reminder of the Holocaust on our school walls.

I still think of that graffiti. I don’t want to believe that someone would draw a swastika as a prank. When I read about nooses being hung around the nation by attention-seeking copycats, I was shocked that newspapers reported these acts as a joke.

They see this as a joke. I see it as terror.

The noose, the South’s enduring symbol of racial hatred, has returned and is hanging right in front of our eyes. The recent racially hued controversy and wave of hate crimes may have originated in Jena, Louisiana. A day after a black student sat under the “white tree” at the local high school, three nooses hung from the giant oak. As racial tension grew at that school, six black students beat up a white student. The victim went to the hospital but still attended a social gathering that evening. But the six attackers, known now as the Jena Six, were charged with attempted murder.

The case grew into a cause as people across the nation questioned the stiff charges and what they believed was uneven justice delivered in the South. And the hate is still spreading.

Nooses were looped over a tree at the University of Maryland, tied around the neck of Tupac Shakur’s statue in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and draped on the office doorknob of a black Columbia University professor.

In a typical year, about half a dozen noose cases are reported, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes. This year, there have been more than 50 noose cases reported.

This leads me to question the validity of “justice for all” Americans. These noose cases are obviously hate crimes, but the law doesn’t include noose-related incidents in hate-crime statues or they have minimal penalties. This means that justice is not being served for the people who suffer when they see a noose hanging in front of their home.

You might say the country has changed since the time of legally sanctioned racism, and it has. The problem is, it’s changing again. We can no longer call ourselves an equal country if hanging nooses passes as a prank.

This is a hate crime, and it needs to be recognized. It’s not funny. It’s not a joke. The sight of a noose sends shivers through the black community, just as a swastika still terrorizes Jews.

We say we’ve changed. So, America, prove it. Call these hate crimes what they are: terror.