Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to part three of
my reading of Crying Wolf Hate Crime Hoaxes in America
by Laird Wilcox. Just a reminder, Thomas and I are
watching and reviewing movies. If you go to freemanby on
the Wall dot com forward slash movies, there are links
to where you can get them. The latest movie we
did was what was the latest movie we did? We
did The Warriors nineteen seventy nine. Before that, we did
Mad Max the original Mel Gibson nineteen seventy nine. So
go check that out, all right, it's going to jump
in and start going. So we are up to chapter
three about the prevalence of hoaxes and fabrications. How common
are hate crime hoaxes? Civil rights, Jewish and anti racist
groups stress the view that they are unusual and represent
them misguided work of disturbed individuals. On the other end
of the spectrum is to view held by genuine racists
and anti Semites that a massive conspiracy exists to commit
hoaxes and publicize them as bona fide hate crimes. The truth,
as might be expected, lies somewhere between these two extreme positions.
The problem, however, has long been recognized even by anti
racist authors and journalists, although a few of them have
written about it. Ben Has, author of the anti clan
classic KKK, noted that quote it would be foolish, of course,
to say that all violence attributed to the clan was
actually committed by clansmen or as a clan sponsored activity.
Therein lay the fallacy of the disguise. Any gang of
hoodlums that could scare up the requisite robes and hoods
could set out to have some sadistic fund or settle
personal grudges, and the onus of their misbehavior would automatically
fall on the clan. In all likelyhood, the actual extent
of racist and anti Semitic hoaxes can never be known
as long as in as long as unsolved cases are
uniformly regarded as actual and not merely suspected hate crimes.
Police who investigate alleged hate crimes cases privately report that
a surprising large percent are suspicious and likely hoaxes or pranks.
In talking with college and university security officials, I encountered
responses ranging from a few not too many to damn
near all of them. Most officials were cautious and reluctant.
To talk without some assurance of anonymity, and several merely
referred me to administrators who were even more paranoid. When
a figure for hoaxes was ventured, however, it was often
in the area of twenty to twenty five to thirty percent.
This figure has a kind of reasonableness about it, allowing
that it probably doesn't hold true for every environment. Deliberate misrepresentations, hoaxes,
and frauds are surprisingly commonplace in American political life. They
are more likely to occur in those issues where taboos, sensitivity,
or fear of being called names are operational, or where
the moral imperatives of noble social causes and crusades overwhelm
individual judgment. Let's look at a few proven hoaxes involving blacks.
In these examples, most people are deeply affected by the
emotional impact of the message, few ask whether the message
is actually true. New heading Roots a search for black origins,
as an example. Perhaps one of the greatest literary hoaxes
with strong racial overtones was committed by Alex Haley, author
of the spurious book Roots, which fraudulently purports to TRACE's
ancestry back to a village in Africa. What is particularly
troublesome about this hoax is that although knowledgeable researchers doubted
Haley's work from the beginning, it wasn't until December nineteen
seventy eight, when Haley settled a plagiarism lawsuit with Harold Coreyer,
author of the nineteen sixty seven novel The African, for
six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, that it became clear
how seriously Haley had fudged his facts. In the meantime,
the book had sold one point five million copies and
Alex Haley had won Appulitzer Prize. Ironically, Haley was quoted
ten on April tenth, nineteen seventy seven, in the New
York Times quote, it would be a scoop to beat
all hell if Roots could be proved to be a hoax.
And that's one of the reasons why it's so important
to me to document as best I could. The Roots
hoax had enormous consequences for the story it fabricated, was
used to inspire militancy in a generation of black people,
and was a significant factor in the development of black
political power in the post Civil rights movement. Nineteen seventies
and nineteen eighties. Its influence persists to this day. Although
the hoax had widely had received widespread publicity, it's still
widely regarded as an authentic and inspirational ledg not uncommonly
shown in the nation's schools in order to sensitize white
students to the black experience. The television mini series that
generated was viewed by an estimated one hundred and thirty
million people and broke existing Nielsen TV ratings. I remember
watching that shit in my house. My parents were half
retarded most of the time when it came to bullshit
like this. Subsequent research showed that Haley stole passages from
other books and fabricated many of the characters. Even his
pre Civil War US research, which some records were where
some records were available, was faked. When University of Alabama
professor Gary Mills and his wife Elizabeth, editor of the
National Geographic Social Society Quarterly, attempted to document Haley's genealogical work,
they concluded quote the records showed that Haley got everything
wrong in his pre Civil War lineage one hundred and
eighty two pages and thirty nine chapters on Haley's Virginia
Family have no basis in fact. So extensive was the
hoax that Harvard professor Oscar Hanlin observed quote a fraud's
a fraud. Historians are reluctant cowardly about calling attention to
factual errors when the general theme is in the right direction.
That goes for foreign policy, for race, and for this
book new heading The Liberators Black Jewish Reconciliation. A more
recent example of a hoax involved fake black history is
the nineteen ninety two Public Broadcasting System film The Liberators,
which purports to tell of the part played by the
all black seven hundred and sixty first Tank Battalion in
the liberation of the Docout concentration camp in April nineteen
forty five. Viewed by an audience with three point seven
million people, the film was nominated for an Academy Award.
The film, largely the work of William Miles and Nina Rosenbloom,
producers of politically correct documentaries on blacks and women, was
designed to ease strained Black Jewish relations from Black and
Jewish communities. Viewed a special showing of the film and
spoke of a common history of oppression. Good sentiments aside,
they had chosen a fraudulent vehicle to bring the groups closer.
Michael Jones talks about this all the time, and also
he points out that our current Secretary of State, what's
his name, Benjamin Netanyahu's lawyer, Anthony Blincoln is he uses
this saying that I believe. He says his father in
law was a part of this. He was when they
came to liberate the concentration camp. He was in it
was a tank and reached down a black hen to
bring him up to total horseship, total horseship. In a
February nineteen ninety two interview in The New Republic, Rosenbloom
attack critics of the film as Holocaust revisionists. Atributed their
criticism to racism, but according to former Army Captain David
Williams of the seven hundred and sixty first, the unit
was nowhere near Dachau when the camp was liberated. He says,
quote on April twenty nine, nineteen forty five, the seven
hundred and sixty first was near Strawbing, which is about
seventy miles from Dachau. As the crow flies bridges were down,
the tanks were all beat up there wasn't enough gas.
Nobody could have just taken a Sherman tank on one
hundred and forty mile round trip and not have been
noticed missing. We would have been court martialed. Philip Latimer,
president of the seven hundred and sixty first Veterans Group, said,
all anybody had to do is look at our history.
There's no mention of Dochau or Bookenwald. Other doubts about
the documentary arose, and articles questioning its veracity appeared elsewhere. Finally,
in February nineteen ninety three, w NetTV, a PBS affiliate
involved in the film's production, decided to withdraw The Liberators
from circulation, admitting that the seven D in his sixty
first tank Italian did not in fact liberate two concentration
camps as described in the film. This is just a
real problem. You know, World War Two was bad enough,
was horrifying enough for everyone involved. If you want to
tell the story of World War Two and what you
went through, what your people went through, what your family
went through, just tell the story. You don't need to
make shit new heading. Doctor Charles drew Death by discrimination.
One of the more enduring hoaxes has been the falsified
account of the death of doctor Charles Drew, a black
physician credited with developing the blood bank system. According to
the hoax, doctor Drew bled to death following a nineteen
fifty five automobile accident because a white only hospital refused
to treat him. This unfounded tail was repeated by National
Urban League director Whitney Young in a nineteen six syndicated column,
and black historian William Lauren Katz. That doesn't sound black
at all, William Lauren Katz HU wrote of the spurious
incident in his nineteen seventy one book Eyewitness the Negro
in American History. Katz has since acknowledged the error really
admitted a mistake. I find that Hart's belief. Doctor Charles
Mason Quick, also a black physician, has said he wants
to stamp out this perpetual lie about doctor Drew. Quick
says he personally saw three emergency room doctors worked for
two hours trying to save doctor Drew's life. Drew's injuries
included brain damage, and he died in the emergency room.
Cecil Adams, author of the Straight Dope column in Washington,
DC's City Paper, reported that doctor John Ford one of
the passengers who was injured in doctor Drew's car, reported
that we all received the very best of care. The
doctor started treating us immediately. Adams also mentioned a similar
hoax involving a famous black blues singer, quoting the true
story is strangely similar to one told about blue singer
Bessie Smith. She too, supposedly bled to death after an
auto accident when a white hospital refused to admit her.
The alleged accident, which occurred in Mississippi in nineteen thirty seven,
was even the subject of a play by Edward Albee.
Tell the same Just go to the well, the same well,
over and over again, and people aren't supposed to notice.
And if you do notice, they call you race sister.
An antie summit new heading. Doctor Martin Luther King a
case of plagiarism. There has been no greater Black icon
than Martin Luther King, whose name became synonymous with the
civil rights movement in America, Yet controversy plagued his life
until his terrible assassination in nineteen sixty eight. It became
widely known that he was abusive to women and frequented prostitutes.
As he traveled across the country. Several of his closest
associates had long tides to the Communist Party. What was
known until long after What was not known until long
after his death, however, was that his degree as doctor
was unearned and in fract the product of fraud. King's
degree was awarded for a supposedly original thesis entitled A
Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of
Paul Tillick and Henry Nelson Wireman. He has submitted to
Boston University in nineteen fifty five as part of his
requirements for a PhD. Over the years, rumors built up
about the originality of the work, and in nineteen ninety
the university established a committee to investigate the alleged plagiarism.
In October nineteen ninety one, the committee released its findings.
There is no question but the doctor King plagiarized in
the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited
in notes or mistakenly credited or credited generally and at
some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or
verbatim quotation of these highly damaging findings. However, the committee
said that no thought should be given to the revocation
of doctor King's doctoral degree from Boston University. Committee members,
through their spokesman John Cartwright, MLK, Professor of Social ethics, said,
I think it is good to get this behind us.
New heading the absence of healthy skepticism. Most Americans take
a surprisingly uncritical and unquestioning attitude towards this problem, because
if they question it, they get in trouble. They get
called names, and you lose your banking and you know,
all sorts of things, You're a bad person. They seem
to believe that whatever is said or written or done
in the service of a good cause must be truth,
particularly if that cause is fighting racism and anti Semitism. Why,
after all, would anyone lie, fabricate, exaggerate, or distort when
it seems clear that they are peer of heart. And
what if they did, aren't they doing it for a
good cause? And what are those who exposed these deceptions?
Isn't this evidence of some kind of covert racism or
anti semitism? Why would anyone talk bad about a good cause?
In short, those who lie in distort earn the good guys,
and those who pursue the facts of the matter are
the bad guys. This is a pretty incredible situation. Indeed,
for example, the elaborate rape hoax concocted by Towana Brawley,
her mother, and Reverend Al Sharpton was accepted at face
value by politicians in the media. It brought about a
virtual orgy of white guilt and anti racist agitation, and
we were made to feel that, in some metaphysical way,
we were all somehow responsible for what happened to this
young black girl. Finally, an intensive investigation revealed the hoax
that should have been suspected early on. There are still
people who believe that the story must have something to it.
You even heard the argument that if it didn't happen
to her, it might have happened to someone else somewhere.
Sometime it became a question of the idea identity of
the victim and alleged victimizers, and not one of facts
or evidence. For many people that Tojana Brawley was black
was all they needed to know. Nothing else carried as
much significance as her minority status. New heading victimhood pays
in terms of cost benefit analysis. The actual payoff for
victimhood can be very high, and the risk of discovery
of a hoax is very small. The issue of secondary
gain plays an important part in racist and anti Semitic hoaxes,
and the search for an answer to this troubling phenomenon
is well served by the question who benefits when a
hoaxer gets caught, which isn't often they are fallback. There
are fallback positions which can put a positive spin on
the incident. The hoax or status may be reframed so
that blaming the victim can be invoked, whereby the hoax
is understandable, or he may become mentally ill, which also
removes any responsibility for the hoax. Barry dav Schutz, Jeez,
what a pattern responsible for several apparently anti Semitic arsons.
Wanted to keep awareness of anti Semitism alive, and until
he was caught, accomplished it through a series of arsons
in Hartford's Jewish community. I'm not even going to go
into that story, but hearts for Hearts for Jewish community,
the genesis of that and how that was established. Oh oh,
I'm planning on having somebody on who told me the
story of that. Maybe we'll maybe I'll bring that up.
Psychiatric treatment was the major part of his punishment. The
rest was probation in a suspended sentence. In the case
of Sabrina Collins, who fabricated harassment and death threats, the
county prosecutor said she needed counseling and treatment, not prosecution,
for her hopes. I did not uncover a case where
a white, non minority defendant in a crime prosecution was
treated so generously or relieved of responsibility in such a manner.
With hoaxes, the nature of the offense makes discovery difficult.
Telephone harassment, for example, usually leaves no forensic evidence unless
the problem is severe enough for police to order a
monitoring device. Obviously, now that's almost impossible. This happened in
several of the hoaxes mentioned in this essay. A telephone
message service by the Oklahoma White Man's Association was being
sabotaged by endless incoming calls tying up the line. The
group complained to the police and the telephone company who
install telephone company installed tracing equipment on the line. An
investigation showed that the local Jewish community center, where a
computer was apparently automatically dialing call after call, was the
very source of the problem. In spite of hard evidence
of the contrary, Jewish Community director David Bernstein said, we
have no computers here and we're not jamming any phones.
Charges were filed. In other cases, both buzz Cody and
Laurie Wrecked, both of whom fabricated anti Semitic death threats,
were entrapped with telephone tracing equipment. In the case of
defacing property with racist and anti Semitic graffiti, investigation is
made only slightly easier. Spray painted graffiti, unlike handwritten or
typewritten material, cannot be pinned down. In two cases mentioned
in this study, the discovery of the very spray can
in the possession of the victims led to their prosecution,
but both were acquitted on the basis of insufficient evidence.
They just saw it. It was just laying on the
ground that they picked it up, and they just decided
to walk with it, just a spray can in their hand.
I don't know that that was your argument, but that's
I guess if I was a fucking moron, a piece
of shit lawyer, that's what i'd come up with. The
eyewitness account is often an important factor in hoax investigation.
In many cases, it was this that led authorities to
suspect fabrication. The factor here was inconsistent testimony or different
hoaxes by different witnesses, different stories by different witnesses, or
physical evidence of lying. Where the possibility of hoax exists,
the victim the witness, who is often the victim, should
be interrogated by a person's skilled in that area. Surprisingly,
the cover story often isn't very well prepared and can
be cracked with reasonable effort. In the case of Quenton Banks,
who faked a racist assault in death Threats, it was
a skilled interrogator who caught him in a number of
contradictions and broke the case. New heading temptations to fabricate
hoaxes is strong because bonafide, organized racist and anti Semitic
incidents are relatively unusual today, and because they serve valuable
functions for the victims and their constituencies when they occur,
the temptations to fabricate incidents is strong. Victims are usually
treated as heroes who have been ennobled by their experience
and the rage against the suspected perpetrator, as well as
represented as of their race genderer class can be amazing
in terms of sheer effectiveness. Nothing works quite as well
as a racist or anti Semitic incident to intimidate an institution,
sensitize a population, polarize an issue, or silence critics. Victimization
genuine or faith can accomplish more in minutes than months
of organizing, agitation, and propaganda. The personal benefits are impressive
as well. Many hoaxers have received substantial assistance from sympathizers
and well wishers, as in the case of Patricia Anderson
and Lee Williams, who vandalized their own house and received
offers of clothing, gifts, and money. Laurie Wrect, who faked
death threats and graffiti, became a celebrity for her victimhood
and wound up with a scholarship and an honorary Doctor
of Humane Letters before her hoax was discovered. The most
important benefits of victimization are psychological. However, the delicious sense
of importance and meaning to one's life that victimization brings
is often overlooked as a motive in hoaxes of the
time illustrated here. I suspect it plays a very significant role.
The paranoid personality, with its tendency to interpret everyday experience
in vigilant and suspicious terms, revels in the attention of
recognized victimization. Victimization gives dignity to the undignified, importance to
the unimportant, and it kind of I told you so,
self fulfilling prophecy that explains failure and disappointment as few
things can not being liked because becomes less of a
question of what is wrong with you than what is
wrong with others who don't like you? Oh wow, I'm
Some people become important and valued for what they do,
their contributions to their loved ones, to their careers into society,
others for what is done to them. In the former case,
many years of forming character traits and a reputation are required,
and the resulting importance can be seen as a reward
for recognized accomplishment. In the latter case, no such accomplishment
is required, only that one is victimized. Victimization is instant fame,
instant sympathy, and, often in some form or another, instant compensation.
Whatever shortcomings on popularity or character flaws one has are
eclipsed by the wickedness of one's alleged persecutors. Having the
right enemies can often lead to acquiring the right friends.
In a prospective article on victimization appearing in the New
York Times magazine a few years ago, Joseph Epstein discussed
the issue of motivation quite perceptively, quoting victimhood has not
only its privileges, but its pleasures to begin with. It
allows one to save one's sympathy for that most sympathetic
of characters, oneself. The pleasures of victimhood including imbuing one's
life with a sense of drama. The drama of daily
life is greatly heightened if one feels a society is
organized against one. To feel oneself excluded and set apart
is no longer obviously or even necessarily a bad thing.
People who count and call themselves victims never blame themselves
for their condition. They therefore have to find enemies new
heading hate crimes harmful to bonifide racists hate groups. There's
a very important point that needs to be understood here.
Bonafide racist and anti Semitic harassment is invariably counterproductive for
bonafide racists and anti Semites. The quickness and skill with
which racist and anti Semitic incidents, including hoaxes, are used
to galvanize anti racist support in the community is amazing.
No benefit accrues to racist and anti Semites, and the
costs are enormous. Not only does law enforcement immediately start
targeting suspects for questioning, but efforts to entrap them and
other offenses steps up as well. Who benefits The honest
answer is not white, racist and anti Semitic groups. So
damaging to real anti Semites and racists are desecrations in
graffiti that one bonafied anti Semite, Joseph malt Morose of Salem, Massachusetts,
was arrested for attempting to paint over anti Semitic graffiti
on a local synagogue. He claimed that the graffiti was
intended to create a false impression of anti Semitic harassment
in the community. Malat Moros was charged with malicious destruction
of property over two hundred and fifty dollars in civil
rights violations, both felonies, according to newspaper reports. Although evidently
not a hoax, a Lomita, California graffiti case demonstrates the
counterproductiveness of racist and anti Semitic vandalism and the skill
with which these incidents can be exploited to generate sympathy
and mobilize opposition to alleged perpetrators. In nineteen ninety one,
Janis brett Elspas and her beIN Shlomo found a Nazi
swastika and the words white Power sprint painted on the
garage doors of their house at seven thirty am one morning.
This was allegedly the ninth time their home had been
the target of anti Semitic attacks. A public relations professional,
Miss brett Elspas, immediately went into high gear, and by
eight thirty am she was faxing a news release to
area television and radio stations, quoting. By noon, we had
finished several newspaper interviews and had posed for photos for each.
Throughout the day, we did more interviews by phone and
two major Los Angeles all news radio stations, and a
variety of local, national, and international Jewish publications. And when
five television crews shout up at four PM, just one
hour before the start of the Jewish Sabbath, we held
an impromptu press conference in our living room. Within a week,
the Los Angeles Times had done three major stories, and
The Daily Breeze of Torrens Daily published three major articles
based in interviews with the couple. Numerous radio and TV
stations that covered the incidents, and stories ran in several
Jewish newspapers. The incident and resulting publicity were instrumental in
rewriting a city ordinance dealing with hate crimes, and an
ad hoc committee was formed to deal with graffiti and
hate crimes. At the time of this writing, the case
remains unsolved all right Chapter four. On the campus, the
college and university campus, because of its young and imaginative population,
and also because of the immense pressure for political correctness,
is a hot hot bed of sensitivity and awareness of
ethnicity and race. It is not surprising that a large
number of hoaxes and pranks occur there, including some of
the more imaginative cases. It's also on the campus that
most of the unreported hoaxes occur, i e. They are
discovered to be hoaxes early enough that they simply are
never reported in the campus or community press. Cases. Quentin Ebanks,
a black student at Northwest Missouri University in Maryville, reported
a racially motivated assault in death rights against themselves to
university officials in October nineteen eighty eight, following extensive media
attention rumors of a ku klux clavern among n mu's
students emerged and the campus shifted into a crisis atmosphere.
Even the president of NMU, Dean Hubbard, bought the story, saying, quote,
we believe the clavern is made up of about five
students who are distributing the leaflets and letters on the
student's cars and under their doors. The US Marshall's Office
and the FBI have told us that this is a
violation of the student's civil rights. We'll catch one of
them these days at it. At a campus rally, some
two hundred students, faculty, and administrators protested that racism instigated
by the ku Klux Klan didn't belong on campus or
in Maryville, and that it would not be tolerated. In fact,
there was no Claveran at NMU, although as many as
fifteen black students had reported finding KKK flyers on windshields
and dormitory doors. James A Moran gran Dragon of a
two man KKK claverrate in nearby Kansas City, took advantage
of the publicity and announced will grow and prosper off
their paranoia, with plans to exploit the situation. Newspaper accounts
portrayed the campus as a hotbed of racism. As the
situation gained the national spotlight. The case unraveled a month
later when the principal victim came clean and confessed to
having fabricated the entire story. On the strength of the
original complaint by Banks eighteen, the university had summoned assistance
from the FBI and a special unit of the Justice Department. Later,
when President Hubbard began noticing inconsistencies in banks account of
the alleged incident, he summoned a special investigator from the
Missouri Highway Patrol. During the course of an interrogation by
Sergeant larryed R. Stobbs of the Patrols, broke down and
confessed to his hopes. During the several week period when
Banks's story had been believed, he had been a campus hero,
talked about and admired for his victimization. School officials encouraged
Banks to address freshman classes on his alleged experiences found
a flyer. According to Hubbard, the student became the center
of much attention following the incidents. Banks was subsequently suspended
for school for two years. He claims that all he
did was devise a really big calculated plan to test
university policy on non discrimination. At the University of Kansas
at Laurence, students awoke one January nineteen ninety two morning
to find flyers from a purported conservative Christian crusade posted
throughout the campus. The flyer contained neo Nazi icons, a
border resembling a series of swastik as, a flaming sword
at three imperial eagles at the bottom. The content in
the flyer was calculated to provoke the radical, anti racist,
and multicultural forces on the campus. It stated, in part,
aren't you tired of minority special interest groups being given
preferential treatment on this campus as to radical minority pressure
groups indulge in historical revisionism. It is our duty to
oppose the orgy of white male bashing threatening to destroy
academic structure of our university. Join your brothers on Friday,
January seventeenth on westco Beach at noon to show the
administration and the community of cultural extortionists the power of
our voices. We must be heard. When the appointed date came,
the area was filled with two hundred anti racist, feminist,
gay rights and multicultural counter demonstrators, all expressing their indignation
over the message on the flyer that couldn't have smelled
good at all. Ugh Led by Anne Wike, Chairman, chairwoman
of the Lawrence Allons and Dean of Social Welfare Department
at the university, the group was apparently disappointed that no
one from the Conservative Christian Crusade had decided to appear. Nevertheless,
a good conscious illness raising time was had by all,
including speeches condemning racism, sexism, homophobia and so on. In
point of fact, there was no such group as a
Conservative Christian Crusade. A hunt on and off campus failed
to turn up a single member or even anyone who
said they had heard of the organization prior to the flyers.
The KU Department of Religious Studies was not familiar with
the group. Campus police checked all local print shops and
failed to find any who had printed the flyers. KU
Police Lieutenant John Mullen said, as far as we know,
there is no organization whatsoever by that name. He also
said the flyer was a hoax. The writer contacted the
bonafide of the few bonafide right wing students on the campus,
and none of them had heard of the group, although
they acknowledged they would like to Quoting Lard Wilcox, former
KU student and founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary
Political Movements, said that the flyer was obviously designed to
stigmatize the ideas associated with and arouse anger and hatred
toward them. The quasi swastika, the burning sword, and the
imperial eagles are not particularly subtle attempts to evoke Nazi connotations,
both on a conscious and subconscious basis. He said, the
terms conservative and Christian, as well as well the reference
to skin color and race, white male bashing, and brothers
name and brothers named the groups intended to be stigmatized.
The reference of the academic structure of our university completes
the suggestion of linkage between the interests of conservative Christians,
white male's Nazi imagery and the university administration and its policies.
It's actually a rather clever creation. Wilcox also said that
any thinking conservative Christian or white male activists would realize
that the flyer would create ant negative response will be
entirely counterproductive. Ask yourself who actually benefited from this incident.
It certainly wasn't any conservative Christians or white males who
wound up being portrayed as Nazi sympathizers and racists. A
year and a half later, a year and a half
after the incident and ongoing investigation had failed to turn
up any trace of the group conservative Christian crusade. Black
students at Williams College in Massachusetts were horrified in February
nineteen ninety three to find three Rachel slurs written on
notebook paper posted on the door of the Black Student
Union building. The event took place five days before the
start of a Black History Month. The campus convulsed with
social consciousness spasms and indignant speeches condemning racism. Seven point
seven percent of the students at Williams are black. The
notes posted on the rice door had said die and
words go home, and words and worth less than dirt
under this the dirt under this house. Wonder how much
of this was really misspelled? The Black Student Union covered
the campus with posters deploring the act and challenging students
to examine themselves for racist attitudes. Shortly afterwards, dean Joan
Edwards informed the campus, without specifying the student's race, that
a student had confessed to the act. Although rumors spread
on campus, it was a full ten days before the
Williams record, the campus newspaper reported that Gilbert Moore, a
black student, had been suspended. Interestingly, even though Moore had
informed the Black Student Union of his acts when he
confessed to university authorities, the BSU continued to exploit the
incident as a bona fide case of white racism until
the student newspaper reported otherwise. The newspaper had criticized the
BSU for perpetrating an implicit lie through silence. In February
nineteen ninety three, Lewis Williams, a black sophomore and resident
dormitory assistant at Slippery Rock University near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, returned
to his room to find a racial epithet head and
word scrawled on his door with a black marker. Two
other black students, James Kenny and Darryl Carpenter, also found
the word N on the door of the room they
share in the same building. Williams reported the incidents. He
opined that the slurs were related to Black History Month
currently being observed on the campus. The incident reminded students
of an off campus prank crossburning three years previously, in
which two white students were expelled in charge with ethnic
intimidation and harassment. As might be expected, the campus was electrified. Williams,
a member of the Black Action Society, was quoted in
the Pittsburgh Post Gazette as saying racism is not something
you're born with, It's something you're taught. Students didn't have
to wait long for the culprits to come clean. It
was Williams himself who confessed to both incidents before campus police.
Police filed criminal mischief, a summary offense, and ethnic intimidation
charges a misdemeanor against Williams, none of which were likely
to involve jail time. An attempted racist frame up occurred
at Ohio Dominion College in Columbus, Ohio, December nineteen eighty eight,
when white student Michael A. Smith, twenty two, found himself
under arrest for sending threatening letters to thirteen black students
and faculty members. The threats were worded in the same
way as was a section of a term paper on
prejudice he had submitted to Janist Hamlet, a black teacher
at the school. Hamlet had pointed out the similarities in
the documents, which immediately implicated Smith. The letters stated death
to all ends and dumb Puerto Ricans at canvouch for
the second part. However, two Columbus police detectives who had
taken a class from Hamlet took an interest in the case.
Hamlet had been outraged by Smith's use of n in
his term paper and had tried unsuccessfully to get him expelled.
Forensic examination of the envelopes that threatening letters had been
mailed in turned up Hamlet's fingerprints, and an examination of
her typewriter determined that the letters had been written on it.
In fact, she had copied part of Smith's essay and
mailed it to the thirteen Blacks, and then discovered that
they were worded in the same manner. Ethnic intimidation charges
against Smith were dropped, and Hamlet was charged with two
felon accounts of ethnic intimidation and two misdemeanor accounts of
aggravated menacing. The unequal treatment of Smith and Hamlet raised
considerable controversy on the campus. Smith was immediately suspended without
a hearing after being accused of sending the flyers, while
university officials appointed a factfinding committee to investigate the charges
against Hamlet. Also, Smith was arrested at the school and
hauled off in handcuffs in a patrol car to a
patrol car. One would think that that such a damaging
fabrication would have ended Hamlet's career. At last report, however,
she had returned to Kent State University to complete a PhD.
Michael Smith subsequently filed suit against the university for six
million and was awarded an undisclosed account. In nineteen ninety,
in Atlanta, Georgia, a black freshman at Emory University claimed
she had been the victim of racist attacks in her
school dorm in April nineteen ninety. She had discovered the
phrases hang ends and die and die written under a
rug in her closet, as well as carved on her
tampons in a drawer. Sabrina Collins, eighteen, also claimed to
have received two letters threatening to lynch her. In addition,
bleach was poured on some of her clothes and stuffed animals,
and the phrase and hang was written on the wall
of her closet leach huh huh, smolette huh never mind.
Despite an alarm that Despite an alarm that police installed
in Collins's room, the incidents continued. Police eventually determined that
a threatening letter had a grammatical error. The victim commonly
made that it was typed on the sort of typewriter
found in her place of employment, and it had no
fringer prints on it, but hers. In the meantime, Collins
was hospitalized and became mute. Two weeks later, she was
released after having recovered her speech. The incident triggered a
march by seven hundred students and a sit in in
front of the administration demanding a cracked down on campus racism.
Black leaders in Atlanta got into the act, perpetrating demands
against hate crimes. Although it was speculated virtually from the
start that Collins might be responsible for the events, considerations
of sensitivity kept the lid on this aspect of the
case for several months. Finally, police reports for leak that
confirmed suspicions to Cab County Prosecutor Ralph Bowen announced that
he will not pursue charges against Collins. He said that
Collins needs counseling and treatment, execution, that it almost seems
like a script. The Collins case is interesting in a
number of respects Otis Smith of the Atlanta chapter the NAACP,
perhaps without realizing it, admitted the utility of hoaxes in
the following statement quote, it doesn't matter to me whether
she did it or not, because of all the pressure
these black students are under at these predominantly white schools.
If this will highlight it, if it will bring it
to the attention of the public, I have no problem
with that. According to Harvard's Law school professor Alan Dershowitz,
quoting mss Collins first submitted her reports of racial harassment
shortly after she was formally accused of cheating on a
chemistry test HMM, Dershwisz noted that the ends justify the
means when it comes to racism, mentality will inevitably lead
to false accusations being directed at innocent people. A widely
publicized case of anti Semitic graffiti bears specially attention because
of the manner in which it was handled. Although the
suspected perpetrator was eventually acquitted of the charges, students at
the State University of New York and Birmingham were shocked
to find anti Semitic slogans spray painted inside the door
of the Jewish student Union office in November nineteen eighty eight.
The slogans kill Circles and Zion Nazi racists were sprayed
the day after the fifth anniversary of Crystal Knacht, where
Nazis terrorized Jews in nineteen thirty eighth Germany. Jeez, why
authorities and was it who actually did? Never mind? Authorities
investigating the incident soon zeroed in on a suspect. He
was James Oppenheim, former president of the Jewish Student Union.
According to the bene Brith Hillell Foundation in Washington, Jewish
students represent fifty percent of the school's enrollment, one of
the highest ratios of any public university in the nation.
Sunny Binghamton's president, Richard D. Dye, responded to the accusation
with the statement that Oppenheim is entitled to full participation
in all aspects of university life and that this should
not be an occasion for prejudicing a person or a group.
In September nineteen eighty nine, Oppenheim, twenty, was arrested by
state police in Charge with fourth degree criminal mischief and
third degree false reporting of a crime. These relatively minor
misdemeanor offenses rarely result in jail time upon conviction. The
manner in which the case was handled is a fascinating study.
State police investigator Charles Gould responsible for filing charges stead
of Oppenheim. He's not a bad kid. The Binghamton Press
Son bulletin quoted police investigators as saying, quote, Oppenheim was
trying to broaden recognition of NCCIS Semtism. Following a mediocre
showing at a memorial to the victims of the Nazi
Crystal Knock program, student Association president Craig Spiegel read a
statement that warned against judging Oppenheim before due process takes it.
Courus is courus at reminding students that anti Semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia,
and other forms of oppression existed on our campus. Three
weeks later, Oppenheim was selected to the Harpoor College Council.
The Liberal Arts College of Sunny Binghamton. Rabbi Arnold Ferdigg
described Oppenheim as an emotionally highly committed young man devoted
to Jewish causes on the campus, and we cancel our radicals.
In addition to being portrayed as sincere if misguided, Oppenheim
had another advantage. His father was an attorney and knew
that the evidence against his son could be challenged Aside
from non specified circle sbstantial evidence. The primary item was
the very can of spray paint with James Oppenheim's fingerprints
found hidden in his desk at the Jewish Student Center.
Not even a good criminal, this would seem incriminating enough,
but the case was made that Oppenheim had just picked
up the can and hit it so it wouldn't get lost.
The judge accepted this account. In December nineteen eighty nine,
Oppenheim was acquitted of all charges. In all Fairness' decision
for acquittals should be respected. At the time of this writing,
no one else had been apprehended and there were no
other suspects. The Dartmouth Review, a politically conservative student weekly newspaper,
had been a thorn in the side of high ranking administrators,
some professors, and campus leptives campus leftists at Dartmouth University
in New Hampshire. For ten years. Its editors have been
harassed and vilified for their values, opinions and beliefs, and
their more extreme critics have gone so far as to
accuse them of racism and anti Semitism. These critics had
their fondest dreams fulfilled when a copy of the Review
appeared on the eve of Yam kapor In on October third,
nineteen ninety with their usual credo, a quotation from former
US President Theodore Roosevelt replaced with a quotation from no
less than Adolph Hitler himself quote, I believe today that
I am acting in the sense of the almighty Creator
by warding off the Jews. I am fighting for the
Lord's work. Interestingly, like many conservative campus publications, the Review
had been exceedingly strong in support of Israel against the Palestinians,
but that brought them no protection from false charges of
anti Semitism. It will not do not bend an inch
a centimeter to your enemies. Ever, the substitution was immediately
recognized as sabotage. Review editors and staff quickly apologized, even
taking out ads in the campus newspaper, and began searching
for the culprit. Amazingly, Dartmouth University President James Friedman, along
with numerous leftist student groups and off campus activists, persisted
in treating the quotation as if it was actually represented
the policies of the paper and was collectively was the
collective responsibility of everyone who wrote for it. Appalling bigotry
of this kind has no place at the college or
in this country, Friedman said. Review editor in chief Kevin Pritchett,
who was black and rather sensitive to racism, was not amused.
Our knowledge is that it was an inside job by
one or more staff members. Friedman's tirade against a review
was so vituperative that former US Treasury Secretary William E.
Simon responded in an essay in The New York Times
to the effect that quote Friedman led the campus in
a nationally publicized rally against hate, metamorphosized metamor metamorphosed into
an instrument of hate, hate directed against student journalists, who,
as a result, suffered death warnings of threats of violence,
as well as means spirited accusations. As a result of
the furor and as a result of complaints about the
reviews editorial content from anti racist groups, Barry Palmer, chairman
of the New Hampshire of New Hampshire's Human Rights Commission,
undertook a review of two years back copies of the paper,
said Palmer. I read every single thing they wrote about teachers,
I reviews, editorial I reviewed editorials and editorial cartoons, and
I didn't find any hints of bigotry or prejudice. After
reviewing two years of the publication, I began wondering what
all the fuss was about. Although no one was ever
charging the hoax, suspicion boiled down to a couple of
staff members who have since left the paper. Pedro House,
Junior of Cranford, New Jersey, was caught in the act
of painting a series of racist and anti Semitic slurs
on a restroom wall inside of building on Union's County
College's Cranford campus in December nineteen eighty nine. House, who
is black, is a postal employee in South Orange, New Jersey,
and a part time student at the college. Cranford Police
Captain Harry Wilde said that offensive graffiti was found in
the same restroom on eight different days within the past
two months. The graffiti had become an issue around which
anti racist groups had rallied on the campus. Police also
seized materials allegedly used to mark the drawings at epithets,
which included swastikas in quotations about white power, Adolf Hitler,
Jews and blacks. House had been active in anti racist movements.
John Grace, a black freshman at Milbury College, and at
Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont had been at school less
than a week in September nineteen eighty three before he
got the first racist note taped to his window. The
next day, he got a second note, which said die
n Black's on the campus, rally to his side. Erica Wannacott,
dean of students, began her investigations uncovered the horrible racist
who had victimized Grace. She didn't have to look far.
We conducted a vast handwriting check and it was pretty
clear it was his handwriting. He was confronted with it
and admitted he had done it. In addition to the
fake notes, Grace had also broken a window. The school, however,
did not press charges. Missus Wilcott said, he's obviously a
young man with a lot of problems. He said a mouthful. Berkeley,
California police reported that there had been four attacks on
white students by black students at Berkeley High School following
the appearance of a racist leaflet on the campus in
December nineteen ninety one. The leaflet thanked blacks for killing
one another in gang violence, among other things, and mimicked
the stereotype of a white supremacist production. Two days later,
police had located the flyer's author. He was black journalist
Matthew Stelly, a reporter for the black weekly Milwauk Courier.
The leaflet claimed to originate from the KKK. Handed out
to students at a Berkeley public transportation station, the leaflet
brought an immediate, almost immediate reaction, according to Oakland Tribune
reporter Robert Hollis, quoting that morning, seven or eight black teenagers,
whose school officials said were angry over the leaflet, attacked
a number of white students, four of whom were injured.
Police arrested one fifteen year old sophomore after he was
identified by one of the students. Stelly is quoted as
saying he wrote the flyer as a reverse psychology ploy
to try and get these people gang members to stop
this madness. Planned carefully, the risk of discovery of a
racial hoax is minimal. However, even when a hoax is discovered,
it may still serve its intended purpose. An example of
this occurred at Pennsylvania State University at State College, when
an unidentified man placed six help once it ads in
the student newspaper asking for colored nannies in January nineteen
seventy nine. The expected and intended outrage resulted in several
demands upon the administration, quoting about seventy five students met
with Provost Edward d Eddie and demanded that the school
increased a number of black students, professors, and programs, and
provide more financial aid for blacks. The newspaper printed an
apology and its help Wanted columns, but editor David Skidmore
said a second apology would not be run. He said
the incident was being used to bring attention to a
host of complaints by local black organizations. The six phony
ads had been accepted by a junior staff member and
were not approved by the newspaper senior staff. The hoax
was discovered after a search for the man who placed
the ads. It was learned that the ads originally appeared
in a South African newspaper and that they were placed
in oppositions to South Africa's racial policies. Two break ins
at Rockville, Maryland's Richard Montgomery High School resulted in incredible
six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damages in nineteen ninety.
Included in this figure was damaged to the library, computer
storaging administration offices. In addition, gas jets were opened in
the chemistry laboratory, filling the school with natural gas, threatening
an explosion. According to news reports, the culprits, in an
effort to implicate white supremacist skinheads, drew swastika is on
the walls and books and life threatening anti Semitic messages
signed by Nazi youth. Investigators soon found those responsible when
two students reported another student's account of the destruction. Arrested
were Jason Wesley Knight, who was black, and Stephen Lawrence Bonner, eighteen,
who is Jewish. Bonner reportedly said that Knight wanted to
destroy the school, and Knight's attorney, Myra P. Kovach, said
mister Bonnard took the lead. The incident, as intended, was
originally reported as a hate crime. At San Bernardino Valley College,
a campus officer brought KKK flyers to work in order
to make others aware that such litterature was being circulated.
The flyers were left on a table so other officers
could familiarize themselves with them. However, when Arthur Johnson thirty seven,
a black campus security officer, found one of the flyers
in the campus mailbox in January nineteen ninety two, he
charged a fellow officers that placed it there as a
form of harassment. Later, he confessed to placing the flyer
in his mailbox himself. News reports noted that quote Johnson's
accusations prompted an FBI investigation and sparked complaints about alleged racism.
Reached it home by phone. Johnson declined to say much.
I want to make all the right moves, said Johnson,
a five year veteran of the campus police force. Let
me see what their hand is going to be. You know,
I'm no fool or nothing. You know, I had a reason.
Chancellor Stuart Bundy commented that the affair had had taken
a serious toll in the college. That department has been
totally demoralized, the board of trustees has been charged as race.
He said, all right, so next time we get together,
start on chapter five and yeah, I hope you're getting
something out of this. And I think at this point
if nothing is really just showing the genesis of where
we are now. One of the things I'm looking at
in this is that all of these people are claiming
victim status when they're basically many of them, like the
girl at Emery, it's probably there as far as part
affirmative action. A lot of them probably don't even belong there,
and they're playing the victim card when they're not a victim.
Some of us, when we talk about the way you know, Europeans, whites,
Christians are being treated, we get accused of playing the
victim card. Yet you can watch the evening news, you
can watch cable news, and they're openly declaring a war
on a white population. They're saying they're doing it. I mean, imagine,
I know, imagine if the roles were reversed and pointing
out hypocrisy or anything like that is just old at
this point. But if that was white people on the
TV talking about how, you know, black people are no
good and their time has come, you can just imagine.
But no, they're openly calling out white Europeans, Christians, white men, women,
conservative women, women who want to stay home and have children.
It's not you're not playing the victim when you can
present over and over again, you know videos that have
been compiled where they just show that white people need
to be destroyed. This isn't victim. We just have to
understand where we are, understand who we are, and figure
out what needs to be done. There were ads during this.
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