Faking racism

 Dinesh D'Souza:

The students, administration, and faculty of Albion College in Michigan were driven into a frenzy two weeks ago when racist and anti-Semitic graffiti surfaced in a dorm stairwell and photos were posted in a local news Facebook group. The photos included messages such as “White Power” and “KKK.”

Now the campus police have discovered that a 21-year-old black student is responsible. He has admitted creating the graffiti, and video evidence corroborates his confession, police said.

Here we go again! Another fake racial incident, another hoax perpetrated by a supposed victim. This is Jussie Smollett all over again. Fake racial incidents are now commonplace both on the campus and in the culture. So the first interesting question is: why would someone seek to orchestrate a horrific event that didn’t really happen?

It can’t be that the perpetrators, from Smollett to the black student at Albion, are merely trying to call attention to a social problem so that it can be promptly addressed. Blacks didn’t have to stage lynchings in the late 19th century, because tragically there were a lot of them going on in plain sight. Moreover, why would Smollett and his campus counterparts seek to pin the blame on innocent parties for what they did not in fact do?

A good way to understand this bizarre phenomenon is to turn to the discipline of economics, and specifically to the law of supply and demand. It seems that, both on the university campus and in the culture, the demand for racism exceeds the supply. To put it differently, there’s an enormous desire to find racism, and there’s not enough racism to be found.

This is especially true on the progressive campus, which Albion certainly is. On such campuses, white students do backward somersaults to accommodate blacks and other minorities. It would be interesting to perform a sociological experiment in which black students approach whites and ask them to kiss their feet. I predict that many would. Of course the experiment could not even be attempted in reverse. It would cause a national uproar!

So evidently this black student wanted to find racism at Albion but couldn’t. So he decided to manufacture it. And what might his motive have been for doing that? Perhaps he was sincerely frustrated that the racism he blamed for his personal failures was scarcely in evidence. Consequently, by “bringing out” what he fervently believed to be hidden, he would then find corroboration for his own self-perception as a victim of wicked forces on campus he could not otherwise identify.

That the student was psychologically disturbed in some way, I do not doubt. But the reason I feel no sympathy for him is because, in an effort to assuage his own anxieties, and also perhaps to achieve some public recognition as a poster figure for racist victimization, he’s willing to falsely accuse others. He’s like the cop who plants the evidence he wants to find, so that he can arrest the guy he’s convinced is guilty. A horrific abuse of power!
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But this is where the plot of the Albion story gets even more interesting. Having been vindicated by the student’s confession, the college pleads guilty anyway. Here is its statement: “We know the acts of racism that have occurred this week are not about one particular person or one particular incident. We know that there is a significant history of racial pain and trauma on campus and we are taking action to repair our community.”

This statement is, on its face, a lie. There were not “acts of racism” that occurred; there was only a series of orchestrated acts that created a false impression of racism....
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Tolerating false charges and making excuses for them is a good way to get more of them.  The perp in this case is not the first person to fake racism.   There should be an appropriate discipline for this kind of conduct.  I would start by requiring the perp to clean up the area he used for his fraudulent racism scam.