I must come to the defense of my online pal and ally, HomerJS.
In response to these Trump supporters attacking Jussie, I cautioned that we need to start making a list of all the times Whites lied about non-existent Black men attacking them.
Here is a partial list. But for a long while, these wild and false claims seemed to happen every month.
Joshua Witt
In August 2017, Joshua Lee Witt of Colorado concocted a tale about a scary Black man with a knife who didn’t like his Neo-Nazi haircut. “Soooooooo, apparently I look like a neo-Nazi and got stabbed for it,” he wrote on Facebook.
“Luckily I put my hands up to stop it so he only stabbed my hand…please keep in mind there was no conversation between me and this dude I was literally just getting out of my car.” This is from the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper.
There was no evidence of any attack on poor Witt. There was also no surveillance footage of any Black man supposedly running away.
But guess what the police did see? Witt buying a knife in a store. Eventually, as the cops chipped away at his fantastic tale, Witt admitting buying a knife and cutting himself when he was trying to open a package.
Yeah, like who hasn’t cut themselves while trying to use a knife? Most folks run for a band aid. Not the latest incarnation of “The Scary Black Man.” By the way, Witt showed no remorse.
Walker Daugherty and Michael Bryant
Texas hunting guides Walker Daugherty and Michael Bryant presented this fiction that on the night of Jan. 6, 2017, they were attacked by illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Somehow, a classic gunfight broke out injuring Daugherty and a third man, Edwin Roberts. Since this was two weeks before Trump’s undersized inauguration, it was a perfect fake opportunity to boost Trump’s anti-Latino agenda. The next month, Daugherty and Roberts were indicted for use of deadly force. On each other. Not “illegal” Latinos.
Breana Rachelle Harmon
In March 8, 2017, police in Denison, Texas, responded to a call that Breana Rachelle Harmon was missing. Harmon later walked into a nearby church bloodied, bruised and discombobulated, wearing nothing but her underwear.
Harmon told the police that she was kidnapped by three Black men sporting ski masks and gloves. She regaled the cops with a the tale in which she dispatched those dastardly heathens. Cops determined she was full of it.
Two weeks later, Harmon admitted she'd made the whole thing up because of trouble with her relationship. S she told police, she cut her clothes and herself, then concocted the abduction story so that her family wouldn't be mad at her.
She got eight years of probation.
Sherry Hall
During the summer of 2016, there were shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Pretty serious stuff and Black Lives Matter was blamed. Georgia police officer Sherry Hall decided to get her licks in.
A cop for just three months, on Sept. 13, 2016, this clown announced over her radio that a Black man took a shot at her. But she was still with us because of her body armor.
She kept up her lies and after 11 days police realized she was another phony. They fired her. She claimed her whole town was involved in a cover-up. She later got 15 years in the pokey.
Michael Huskey
All this lying and getting away with definitely has an effect on children. One day in April 2016, 10-year old Michael Huskey and his year 7-year boy cousin didn’t want to go to school. But they needed an excuse.
They departed for school, in Fort Mill, S.C., but came home soon after. What happened? Well, another scary Black man with a knife tried to attack them. He even wore a grey hooded sweatshirt.
Oh, the dreaded hoodie. How come these kids, who were still in grade school, knew for certain that telling a tale of a Black man attacker would be instantly believed? Because blaming a Black man works very well in America.
Michael Crawford III
On Aug. 5, 2014, Ronald Ritchie, claimed in repeated calls to 911 that Michael Crawford III was pointing a rifle at people inside a Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart.
He wasn’t. But that didn’t matter. Beaverton cop Sean Williams marched into the store with his own rifle and never gave Crawford a chance. Two bullets ripped into Crawford. Because someone lied. Who never faced any punishment. Does anyone really think Crawford would have been shot if he were White?
Cops claimed they shouted verbal commands at Crawford. Most don’t believe the cops.
The Guardian revealed in December 2014 that immediately after the shooting, police aggressively questioned Crawford's girlfriend, Tasha Thomas, threatening her with jail time.
The interrogation caused her to sob uncontrollably, with hostile questions suggesting she was drunk or on drugs when she stated that Crawford did not enter the store with a gun. She was not yet aware of Crawford's death at the time of the interrogation. That’s what happens when people lie.
Bethany Storro
On Aug, 30, 2010, Bethany Storro claimed a Black woman threw acid on her in front of Vancouver, Wash., store
“Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this,?" the alleged female assailant shouted, according to Storro. “I’m a nice girl and I don’t know why this happened,” Storro told told the Columbian newspaper.
People lost their minds in rage. Sympathy and donations poured in for Storro as the tale spread. Washington state police told the NY Daily News that Storro she received about $28,000 from strangers, “some of which she spent on clothes, train tickets and dinners for her parents.”
It turned out that Storro had rubbed drain cleaner over her face. Sadly, her face was disfigured. She also had to return most of the money. But the bottom line is Storro got people to easily believe her acid attacker was supposedly Black.
Ashley Todd
Less than two weeks before the 2008 election, Ashley Todd, a volunteer for John McCain campaign told Pittsburgh police “a 6 foot, 4 African American of medium build, dressed in dark clothes and wearing shiny shoes,” put a knife to her throat and stole $60 from while she was using an ATM.
He also allegedly told her: “You’re going to be a Barack Obama supporter.” The story was complete nonsense. But it enraged folks who favored the GOP. Todd later admitted she made up the story and underwent court-ordered psychiatric treatment.
Bonnie Anne Sweeten
Pennsyvlania mom Bonnie Anne Sweeten was arrested at Disney World in 2009 after claiming two Black men a kidnapped her nine year-old daughter. Her multiple and frantic calls to 911 resulted in a massive nationwide search for the daughter.
But it was all part of a fraud scheme. Sweeten got eight years following a convicted of stealing more than $1 million from her boss and a relative. People just believed her. Right away.
Susan Smith
Who can forget South Carolina mother Susan Smith? In October 1994, she drowned her 3-year-old son, Michael and 14-month-old son Alex, in a lake. She told the police a Black man had carjacked her and drove off with her sons. Cops could not find the car.
Smith kept up this noxious lie for more than week, going on TV pleading for her sons who lay eternally quiet in a lake. Hundreds of people joined the search for the boys. After nine days, Smith confessed that she strapped her sons into their car seats and allowed the vehicle to roll slowly into John D. Long Lake.
One of the most effective uses of the blame “The Scary Black Man.”
Jesse Anderson
Jesse Anderson pretended he and his wife were attacked in a TGI Friday’s restaurant parking lot by two Black men with knives. Anderson inflicted three soft stab wounds in his own chest, then stabbed his wife to death. He even gave police a Los Angeles Clippers hat he claimed he’d somehow snatched off the head of one alleged assailant.
Cops never bothered to look for mysterious Black men when they saw an image of Anderson buying the hat in store.
On Aug. 13, 1992, Anderson was sentenced to life in prison. Christopher Scarver, (who knocked off serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the joint, did the same thing to Anderson). And Scarver didn’t need the help of any Scary Black Men.
Charles Stuart
During the night of Oct. 23, 1989, Charles Stuart claimed he and his wife Carol were shot by a man with a gun.
Stuart was shot in the stomach and his pregnant wife was shot in the head. She died and her prematurely delivered baby died 17 days later. This supposedly happened in a Black neighborhood in Boston, according to Stuart.
Thanks to Boston’s perennial racial problems, cops just believed Stuart’s tale immediately. More than 100 extra cops prowled Boston’s Black neighborhoods of Mission Hill, Roxbury, and Mattapan hoping to find someone who fit Stuart’s description of the suspect.
First, cops grabbed Alan Swanson, who was homeless and owned a track suit which Stuart said his attacker had on. But they eventually zeroed in on William Bennett who had a used a gun twice before and had no problem getting violent.
Stuart might have gotten away with the whole thing if his brother Matthew had not come forward and told cops Carol’s murder was over a life insurance payout.
Matthew came to realize that William Bennett, another Black man who didn’t do it, was on the verge of being railroaded. (Gee, which we know, has never happened before).
Many believe others in Stuart’s family also knew the truth.
Stuart jumped off the Tobin Bridge into the Mystic River and escaped justice. Boston Mayor Ray Flynn who added his racist bullcrap in those terrible days, had the nerve to say everyone owed the Mission Hill neighborhood an apology. Ya think?
This is nothing new, folks. How many times have we read of White people getting upset because Black children are selling lemonade, holding a BBQ in a public park, trying to enter their own apartment building, house or place of business? Or trying to play golf, sitting in Starbucks or eating at a Subway?
How come so many Blacks get questioned if they really own the car they’re driving? Or if they really have a job doing WHAT? Sometimes, these encounters end up with completely innocent Black people In handcuffs.
Remember Olympic Swimmer Ryan Lochte? Who warned the entire galaxy about those dastardly and thieving Brazilians?
Apparently, most seem to think it was nothing but a joke. Getting drunk, trashing a rest room and then claiming Brazilians pulled a gun and robbed you. I guess that’s why the whole thing is called: “Lochtegate.”
So, Trump fans. When it comes to Jussie Smollett, tread carefully. You ain’t got nothing on your own people.
Know who else needed to apologize? Former Boston Globe reporter Mike Barnicle who was instrumental in defending Boston police officials for quickly fingering William Bennett. Now, Bennett did have a long arrest record. But one third of Americans have an arrest record by the time they’re 30. If a cop gets mad at you, you are going to have an arrest record.
This is what Barnicle wrote about William Bennett: “The man’s (pathetic, violent history is so much a part of the unyielding issues of race, crime and drugs tearing daily at America that it is amazing how any black minister or black politician could ever stand up and howl in public that his arrest was a product of police bigotry and a volley of discrimination aimed at all black residents of Boston. Where, after everything they had been told, would they expect the cops to start looking? The Myopia Hunt Club?’’ (Mike Barnicle, The Boston Globe, Jan. 7, 1990)
Barnicle was later fired from the Globe in 1998 after making up facts for a news story. He had been accused of this before. He went to the NY Daily News and then became an analyst on, (wait for it), MSNBC. The latter truly bothered me.
When Black print reporters tell a terrible lie about something, (Washington Post's Janet Leslie Cook and New York Times' Jayson Thomas Blair), few ever hear from them again.