It's an old lie, claiming that The Black Man Did It.
But it was trotted out again last week when a white mother from suburban Philadelphia said two black men snatched her and her 9-year-old daughter from their SUV and abducted them in the trunk of a black Cadillac.
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A thoughtful AP piece that takes a single news event and highlights the broad problem of the stigmatization of black men in America. Pushes the reader think in important ways about how various institutions and society generally reinforce and then fall victim to the image of the violent black man.
Jesse Washington of the Associated Press does a good account of the Bonnie Sweeten kidnapping hoax--the woman who notified authorities that two black men had kidnapped her and her 9-year-old daughter. He cites valid sources in making the case about "The Black Man Did It" lie whose stereotype was revealed to millions in Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "To Kill a Mockingbird" (a fact that Washington should have cited). Also, he misses the stereotype of African-Americans and Cadillacs. While the reporter mentions Obama in the third paragraph of his story, he doesn't note how this particular stereotype was resurrected again with the Presidential Cadillac provided by General Motors. (I won't provide links to that so ... More »
I cover this type of hoax extensively in Living Ethics Across Media Platforms (Oxford, 2008). Jesse Washington could have added more context and depth to the piece by noting how "The Black Man Did It" lie now applies to more under-represented people than African-Americans. Case in point was the Jennifer Wilbanks "Runaway Bride" story in 2005 in which she claimed she was kidnapped by a Latino. (I'll provide links.)
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote about the difference in coverage between the killing of a white female college student in Connecticut and the ... More »
A good article that exposes a clear injustice--no one should be able to get away with falsely accusing anyone of a crime they did not commit; outrage is certainly appropriate. Nonetheless, it is impossible for anyone living in urban American to ignore the heavy preponderance of Black male perpetrators of crime, especially violent crime. (See statistics in "Comment," below) This fact leaves Black men vulnerable to false accusation--the solution must come from within the Black community itself.
On five separate occasions members of my family, who are predominantly White and Asian, have been victims of violent crime. On each occasion, the perpetrators of these crimes have been Black males. Here are the statistics relevant to Oakland, California (from the "Crime" section of Wikipedia, where I am a primary editor): "The five-year average for homicide victims in Oakland breaks down as follows: 77% Black, 15.4% Hispanic, 3.2% White, 2.8% Asian and 1.6% Unknown. The ... More »
The Black Man Did It lie last made news as recently as October, when a John McCain volunteer claimed a 6-foot-4 black man carved a B into her cheek (For Barack, evidently). ... More »
The author tells of another claim by a White woman, claiming she and her daughter were kidnapped, and the reaction that it has brought..
With the conservatives out of office, you will be hearing more and more of these claims. With our first black president, there is resentment not just from whites, but conservative blacks as well.
It is quality journalism because it is dealing with the reality of life and exposing the truth to the public.
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