Jussie Smollett lied about being attacked by two red-hatted Trump supporters who he said poured bleach on him and hurled racist and homophobic slurs. Like most “hate crimes,” the story caught the media’s attention. But ultimately it turned out to be fake. In fact, almost 75% of hate crimes are fake.
According to a study by the Hugo Black Institute for Race Relations, fake hate crimes are a feature rather than a bug. The institute analyzed over 72,000 reports of hate crimes allegedly committed by whites against blacks over the last century and found that 50,400 of them were “completely fake or embellished to the point that they should be considered fake.”
In fact, the report says that whites have spent “more than 67,000 centuries in prison” because of alleged hate crimes that ultimately didn’t end up being true.
In contrast, the study found that “89% of hate crime reports where blacks target whites are true,” but that “only 29% are ever prosecuted.” Meanwhile, more than “90% of hate crimes allegedly targeting African-Americans are prosecuted, regardless of evidence.”
This exposes a divide between how seriously hate crimes are taken when they target white people versus black.
Holden Tudiks, a researcher at Cambridge Analytica, says that “it’s well past time that we stop factoring race into anything.” He recalled the 1997 incident when a “black man wearing whiteface went on a shooting rampage inside a Cracker Barrel restaurant.” The man was arrested, but was not charged with a hate crime even though the shooting qualified as one.
“Had the victims been black and the shooter white,” Tudiks says, “there almost certainly would have been a hate crime charge.” He notes that white men have been charged with hate crimes in some ridiculous situations, including when a white man refused to give his seat to an elderly black woman on a bus, calling her a “rude b****” when she asked him to. He was rude, but he certainly didn’t deserve the 13 years he spent in prison for the “attack.”
White men are at risk in this country. So are white women, to a lesser extent. Both groups are “more likely to be targeted with a fake hate crime accusation if they are Christian,” says Tudiks.
It’s time for a change. It’s time to make America great again.
