Crying Wolf - Hate Crime Hoaxes in America, by Laird Wilcox

The faking of black history is an interesting area covered byWilcox.


In 1992, the Public Broadcasting System film The Liberatorspurported to show how an all-black unit, the 761st Tank Battalion,had liberated Dachau in 1945. In fact the unit was nowhere near the camp. The hoax was part of a scam by journalists to ease black-Jewish relations - "common history of oppression" and so on. The late Alex Haley's spurious book about slavery, Roots, is now well known to have been a fraud intended to inflame white guilt. Haleyfabricated many of the characters supposed to have been his ancestors. The campus at Slippery Rock University near Pitsburgh convulsed in1993 after anti-black epithets were found painted in a dormitory. Black student Lewis Williams, who initially reported the incidents, later confessed to doing it himself. He painted abusive racial slogans onother black students' bedroom doors. In a rather similar case at Emory University in Atlanta in 1990 Sabrina Collins claimed she was a victim of anti-black graffiti anddeath threats. There was a march and the usual 'crackdown on racism'demands. Police later revealed that the event was hoax. On the other hand, a feminist activist from George WashingtonUniversity, Mariam Kashani, claimed in 1990 that a white student had been raped at knifepoint by two black men. Admitting the hoax, Kashani used a common excuse. She said she hoped "the story wouldhighlight the problems of safety for women". Ronnie Thaxton, a blackstudent activist, said he was outraged by "attempts by white peopleto discredit black males".An interesting hoax occurred at Richard Montgomery High School inMaryland in 1990. The school was broken into twice, and swastikas as well as messages signed by 'Nazi youth' were scrawled on walls.$650,000 in damage was caused. Police arrested two students, one black and one Jewish.