That is SO not post-racial!

You may have heard of Bethany Storro, the White woman in Washington State who, in August, claimed that she was attacked by an unidentified Black woman “with an athletic build” who threw acid in her face.  In spite of serious holes in Storro’s account of the incident (just for starters,  her eyes were protected by sunglasses that she was wearing at night) this story made national headlines.  While police searched for a suspect, sympathy cards came flooding in from all over the country to the hospital where Storro lay recuperating from her injuries. 

 This week, Storro confessed that she made the whole thing up, and that her injuries are self-inflicted. The Black female assailant everyone’s been looking for?  Completely fabricated.

Unbalanced White criminals blaming fictional Black perpetrators for offenses they have committed is (regrettably)nothing new. Susan Smith did it in 1994, and Charles Stuart did it in 1989…the list goes on and on. What seems to be a relatively new twist on everybody’s favorite go-to lynch mob meme is the addition of self-inflicted injuries to the roster.  Remember Ashley Todd, the McCain supporter who in 2008 claimed that she was robbed at knifepoint by a Black assailant who carved a “B” (for Barack) on her face?

Oh, and then there’s Sergeant Robert Ralston, the Philadelphia cop who shot himself and blamed it on a Black man with cornrows.  

Black men with any manner of hair were stopped and questioned by police in the Overton section of Philadelphia for about a week after the incident. Fortunately, no arrests appear to have been made in relation to the falsified report, but the potential for harm was substantial.  I mean, just imagine something like this happening with the NYPD! Oh, wait.

What fascinates me about all this is that the key to making these offenses plausible has been the addition of an imaginary Black offender. The perpetual  troping of Black people as violent and criminal (among other things) creates a myth of  constant potential White victimhood, and the more damaging and sinister countermyth of the necessity of unrelenting vigilance against Black criminality.  What troubles me more is that some White people are willing to actually invent a crime in order to have a Black person to blame it on.  Ralston, Smith and Stuart dumped their crimes at the doorstep of unidentified Black offenders to throw the police off their guilty trails. Todd and Storro made shit up with the specific intention of  vilifying Black people.  Ya know, because we don’t have it hard enough as it is. SIGH.

As saddened and outraged as I am about this, I’m not surprised. There’s bound to be at least one more case like this before the year’s out. World, get better.

Explore posts in the same categories: Current events, Media, mainstream, Racism, malicious, that's that BULLLLSHIT!

Tags: Fhat the wuck, Jesus be a fence, media, Racism, Really? REALLY really?, Stereotypes, Taking off my earrings..., the cultural "Other"

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