Hoax, Racism, and Some Americans

This turned out to be a hoax, but when the story first broke it was very alarming. A McCain campaign volunteer, Ashley Todd , told the police that she had been robbed at knife point, while withdrawing money from an ATM. Before her assailant left he saw a McCain sticker on Ms Todd’s car, and returned to beat her and scratched a B on her cheek, the B allegedly being for Barack. I was upset that a criminal supporter of Obama would bring such bad publicity to the campaign, and terrorize a young woman exercising her right to advocate for the candidate of her choice.

I heard this story first, and then, I watched the coverage on TV and saw the photo of the injured Ms. Todd. The black eye looked bad, and genuine, but the B. There was something odd about the B. Look closely and you will see the arches of the B are going backward. Now unless the attacker had a horrible case of dyslexia, if the guy had this poor girl down and was scratching a letter on her face, the ache of the B would be correct. This B was backward. It looks like the error one might make if they carved the B into their own face.

Apparently the details from Ms Todd came out in dribbles and spurts. One time the assailant was said to have bent over her. The next time she tells the story her assailant was sitting on her chest. The first time the story was told there was no mention of a McCain sticker being the motive of the beating. The way details were given just did not conform to the way real victims give information to the police. There were no ATM photos to confirm any part of her story. Then the cops gave Ms. Todd a polygraph exam that she reportedly failed. Finally, Ms. Todd confessed that she made the story up, and that she has a history of mental problems. Wow! I didn’t see that coming. The police department's investigations division, now say that Ms. Ashley Todd is being charged with making a false report to police.

No one can directly blame this nasty attempt at smearing Obama on the McCain Campaign, however, there are reports that the McCain people in Pennsylvania jumped on this story and started pushing it on the media before the facts were investigated. Obviously the McCain campaign needs something to increase their chances, and this race based attack by a “6’4” black man and Obama supporter” may have seemed like really good luck to them, but they spread the story before they had the facts and it turned out to be the made up story of a mentally off McCain volunteer staff supporter. There are some, including me, who feel this eagerness for the hoax to have been true is an example of race baiting. The hoax plays on a long term fear among some white segments of our population and huge segments of our white patriarchs. Big scary black men messing with our precious, pure white women and that can’t be allowed. The fact that this lie has been used and abused by guilty white people is an undeniable fact.

Remember Susan Smith the woman who claimed a big black man had hi-jacked her car and driven off with her two young children still strapped into their child safety seats in the back of her car? Susan Smith finally admitted killed her own two very young children and blamed it on an imaginary black car-jacker?

What about Charles Stuart who shot his seven months pregnant wife in the head, and then shot himself in the abdomen. Stuart told the police that the murderer was a Black man, which sparking a police round-up of hundreds of innocent Black men for questioning. Stuart's story unraveled and he committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.

Being in Oklahoma City I recall clearly that the Oklahoma City Bombing was, at first blamed on "the Nation of Islam." The suspected involvement of the Nation of Islam was announced by both Tom Brokaw and and Peter Jennings. The actual terrorists were white men from middle America with U.S. military backgrounds.

Then there is the lesser known, Jesse Anderson, a white man, told the police that while leaving a suburban Milwaukee restaurant he and his wife were attacked and stabbed by two big ole Black guys. Of course Anderson was just barely stabbed at all and his wife was stabbed over and over in her face, her head, and torso. Guess which one of them died? After a five-day search for the fictional Black criminals, Anderson was arrested and charged with his wife's murder. Apparently the blood evidence made the cops suspicious. Oh, yeah, also, Anderson called his wife's insurance company one month prior to her murder to determine whether her $250,000 policy was in effect.

Robert Harris claimed that he and his fiancée, Teresa McLeod, had been shot and robbed by an armed Black man wearing a camouflage jacket and black and white pants. Harris was shot once and McLeod was shot several times. Guess which one died at the scene: the fiancée. Harris confessed to his involvement: and that he mistakenly believe he was the beneficiary of his fiancée’s $250,000 life insurance policy.

Remember the "Runaway Bride," Jennifer Wilbanks? Wilbanks got cold feet, and ran off just before her wedding. When the Runaway Bride showed up later she claimed that a Latino (non-white) man and a white woman had kidnapped her. The lie came out and later the Runaway Bride was asked how she came up with her fabricated story, Wilbanks’s answer was that she watched too many cop and robber movies.

Or how about the horrible crime against a woman known for years as the Central Park Jogger This was a horrible crime that lead to the arrest and imprisonment of 5 teens who were convicted, in 1989, of assaulting and raping a white woman. They were said to have been "wilding" a term that meant they were just going nuts coming unspeakable crimes against any and all innocent white people they could find while wilding in the park. A non-Black serial rapist admitted his guilt in the crime, and his confession was confirmed by DNA testing. The victim of this crime did not blame black or non=white teens for raping and beating her and leaving her near death. That victim remembered nothing of the crime. The public was happy to do the blaming for her. The actual rapist later said that he had never met the five accused (and innocent) perpetrators

If black people mistrust white people, they are mistrusting racism, and that is appropriate. ~Jasmine Guy

This most recent play on historic white fear is just an example of the racism that still lives beneath the skin of America like a parasitic worm. I can’t know this, but it certainly looks like part of the desperation of Republicans to smear Obama comes from the sudden realization, by a segment of White American that we just might actually elect a black man as President and that is just totally unacceptable to them.

As some know, I work as a Child Welfare Case Manager going in to the homes of families involved in child abuse. Some families are abusers, and some are families that take in abused children. During the primary race this white father told me that he was voting for the Republican, whoever that might be, because the only choice the Democrats had for him was a woman or a n#%&er.

Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel

No one likes to lose, and while the road to the White House looks bleak for the Republicans, it is still not a done deal. McCain could still win. The election will not be based on a popular vote, but on the Electoral College vote. This racist based hoax is evidence that we are just not totally OK in this country. We are better, but we are not there yet.