Racial hoax
A racial hoax occurs when a person falsely claims that a crime was committed by member of a specific race. The crime may be fictitious, or may be an actual crime.
The term was popularised by Katheryn Russell-Brown in her book The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions. A racial hoax can be performed by a person of any race, against a person of any race. According to Russell-Brown, racial hoaxes where whites falsely accuse African Americans are most likely to receive media attention and create a more acute social problem due to the criminal black man stereotype.
Concept
Patricia L. Brougham argued that the common stereotype of criminal black men has enabled the use of racial hoaxes against this group. Brougham writes that these stereotypes cause law enforcement agencies to believe that a black perpetrator exists when in reality the allegation is false.Russell-Brown argues that racial hoaxes are devised, perpetrated, and successful because they take advantage of fears and stereotypes. According to her, white-on-black hoaxes are the most likely to receive media attention and to cause social and economic problems. She argues that anyone performing a racial hoax should face criminal charges, particularly if a black person is targeted, and that hoaxes targeting black people create more severe problems than those against other racial groups. Letha A. See in Violence as Seen Through a Prism of Color sees the hoax as a unique method used against specific racial groups, rather than against individuals. Sally S. Simpson and Robert Agnew suggest that the unusual nature of some racial hoaxes can cause them to be dismissed.
Between 1987 and 1996 in the United States, Russell-Brown documented 67 racial hoax cases and noted that 70% were white-on-black hoaxes, more than half were exposed within a week, hoaxes are most frequently used to allege assault, rape, or murder, and hoax perpetrators were charged with filing a false report in about 45% of cases. These cases represent only a fraction of the total number of cases because racial hoaxes are not reported as such and most crimes are not covered in the media. According to Russell-Brown, a high proportion of the white-on-black hoaxes were perpetrated by police and judicial officers; she documents seven such cases. Historically the most common type of hoax perpetrated against black males was rape. Because of fears over the 'black rapist', Russell-Brown suggests "it is not surprising that so many White women have created Black male rapists as their fictional criminals".
An alternative type of hoax occurs when a member of a disadvantaged group pretends to be a victim of a hate crime often in order to inflame societal racial tensions, gain social capital through legitimizing grievance and gaining victim status or to distract attention from their own misconduct in another activity.
In the United States there has been little legislative response to racial hoaxes. Russel-Brown wrote that only New Jersey considered new laws to criminalize racial hoaxes.
Cases
Abraham Surasky
Jewish peddler Abraham Surasky was killed in an anti-Semitic attack by two white Christian men in 1903. The perpetrators invented a story accusing Surasky of sexually assaulting a white woman in order to justify their crime.Scottsboro Boys
In 1931, two white women falsely accused nine African-American teenagers of raping them on a train in Alabama. All but one were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries.Lois Thompson
On March 27, 1935, 19-year-old Lois Thompson, who was white, shot a Chinese-American man named Daniel Shaw in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, accusing him of being responsible for a month-long extortion campaign against her. It was soon established that Thompson and her sister had concocted the extortion plot themselves as a ploy for attention and had attempted to frame Shaw for the crimes by exploiting racial stereotypes. Thompson was convicted of attempted murder and spent thirty days in jail.Murder of Florence Castle
A white woman named Florence Thompson Castle was murdered in her sleep in a hotel room in Chicago in June 1936. The killer wrote the words "Black Legion Game" on the wall, referencing a white supremacist terror group known as the Black Legion. The killer was later revealed to be a black man, Robert Nixon, who had written the message on the wall in an attempt to implicate white supremacist groups in the crime.Emmett Till
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African-American who was accused of "offending" a white woman in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. He was abducted and lynched several days later. In 2017, author Timothy Tyson released details of a 2008 interview with Carolyn Bryant. He claimed that during the interview she had disclosed that she had fabricated parts of her testimony at the trial of his accused killers. Tyson said that during the interview, Bryant retracted her testimony that Till had grabbed her around her waist and uttered obscenities, saying "that part's not true". However, the "recanting" claim made by Tyson was not on his tape-recording of the interview. "It is true that that part is not on tape because I was setting up the tape recorder" Tyson said. Donham's daughter-in-law, Marsha Bryant, who was present for the two interviews, said her mother-in-law "never recanted." The support Tyson provided to back up his claim was a handwritten note that he said had been made at the time.Kissing Case
In October 1958, a white girl in Monroe, North Carolina, told her mother that she had kissed two black boys on their cheeks while playing with them. Her mother became enraged and falsely accused the boys of molesting her daughter, leading to both of them being sentenced to reform school until the age of 21. They were pardoned three months later by Governor Luther H. Hodges under international pressure.Manson Family
Between July 27 and August 9, 1969, members of Charles Mansons cult known as the Manson Family committed eight murders, supposedly as part of a plot to trigger a race war known as the Helter Skelter scenario. The killers left graffiti at the crime scenes implicating Black Power groups in the murders.William Henry Hance
During the 1978 wave of murders of white women in Columbus, Georgia by the African-American Stocking Strangler, a letter was sent to the local police purporting to be from a group of white vigilantes calling themselves the "Forces of Evil" and claiming to be holding an African-American woman named Gail Jackson hostage with the intention of killing her unless the Stocking Strangler was apprehended. She had in fact been murdered five weeks earlier. After her body was found, the "Forces of Evil" claimed responsibility for her murder and that of another black woman, Irene Thirkield, threatening to keep killing black women until the killer was found.An investigation soon led police to William Henry Hance, a black man, who confessed to the "Forces of Evil" murders and the murder of a white woman the previous year. It was established that Hance had concocted a scheme to avoid suspicion for the Jackson and Thirkield murders by blaming them on white racist vigilantes outraged over the "Stocking Strangler" murders. Hance was executed for the murders in 1994.
Tawana Brawley
Tawana Brawley, an African-American teenager, was found in a trash bag covered in faeces after being missing from her home in Wappingers Falls, New York for four days. She claimed that she had been abducted and raped by four white men, and her legal team subsequently claimed that the authorities were protecting the assailants because they were white, sparking a debate about systemic racism in New York. A grand jury later concluded that Brawley had fabricated her story and had deliberately set things up to make it look like she had been assaulted. Brawley's legal Al Sharpton, Alton Maddox and Vernon Masonwere accused of having exploited the story to trigger racial outrage and advance their careers, and one of the men accused successfully sued Brawley, Sharpton, Maddox and Mason for defamation.Charles Stuart
The case of Charles Stuart is often cited as an example of a racial hoax. On October 23, 1989, in Boston, Stuart and his pregnant wife Carol were driving when, according to Stuart, a black gunman forced his way into the car and shot them both, hitting Carol in the head and Stuart in the body. Still alive, Stuart drove away and called the police, who conducted a search of Mission Hill, Boston, a mostly black area. Carol died later that night; the baby, delivered by caesarean section, died 17 days later.Stuart picked out Willie Bennett, a black man, from a photo lineup. The police shifted their attention onto Stuart when Stuart's brother Matthew told them that Stuart had committed the murder, and when they noted inconsistencies in Stuart's account. On January 4, 1990, Stuart committed suicide. The police later learned that Stuart had committed the murder to cash in on his wife's insurance policy.
Jesse Anderson
In 1992, Jesse Anderson became infamous for stabbing his wife Barbara E. Anderson thirty-seven times while in the parking lot of a T.G.I. Friday's in Milwaukee. Anderson blamed two African-American men for attacking him and his wife, and even presented police with a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the assailants.When details of the crime were made public, a university student told police Anderson had purchased the hat from him a few days earlier. According to employees at a military surplus store, the red-handled fishing knife which was used to murder Barbara was sold to Anderson only a few weeks earlier. Police stated that the store was the only one in Milwaukee that sold that type of knife. Anderson was shortly thereafter charged with murder, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment.