By Leonard Pitts Jr.|June 05, 2009
I am your scapegoat. I am your boogeyman. Brown-skinned, kinky-haired, black man, me.
So I was not surprised last week when a white woman from suburban Philadelphia called police from her cell phone, claiming she had been locked in the trunk of a Cadillac by two black men. Nor was I shocked when police said Bonnie Sweeten was actually holed up in a luxury hotel at Walt Disney World and there never was a kidnapping, much less by two black men.
I'm your scapegoat. I'm your boogeyman. So I'm used to these things.
In fact, they happen often. Happened just a few months ago when that John McCain campaign worker said she was robbed by a burly black man who carved a "B" into her face ... as in Barack, get it? Turned out she carved the letter herself and then blamed a black man.
Just as Charles Stuart did when he killed his wife in 1989. Just as Tanya Dacri did when she dismembered her 7-week-old son that same year. Just as Susan Smith did when she rolled her car, her two boys inside, into a lake in 1994.
University of Florida law professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of The Color of Crime, has documented 92 such incidents between 1987 and 2006. And she cautions that white men are sometimes victims of racial hoaxes, too: witness the cases of Tawana Brawley and the Duke lacrosse team.
But she says the overwhelming majority of the time - 67 percent, to be exact - it is the other way around: white liars blaming black men for things that did not happen. Ms. Russell-Brown is particularly intrigued that Sweeten identified her supposed kidnappers as driving a Cadillac. That fits a pattern, she says.
"When it's someone white alleging they've been harmed by someone African-American, there are these fantastic racially laden stereotypes that are used. Whether it's dreadlocks, or smell, or big and burly. This fits right in, the Cadillac."
Naturally. Because I'm your scapegoat, your boogeyman. Cadillac drivin', pimp-walkin', white woman-lustin', me.
I am the shape and size and sound of your fears. You know me on sight, know me before you know my name, know me before I even stick out my hand and say hi.
You know I have no feelings beyond your perception of me, no thought beyond what you impute to me, no purpose beyond your fear of me. I live in the shadow of your consciousness, do not exist outside of you.
But can you imagine if I did? Boy, can you imagine the ache and anger if I did?
