Heroes, Hoaxers, and Haters

Celebrating Black History Month

As Black History Month comes to an end, perhaps it is a good time to remember that Black Americans come in all sorts—courageous trailblazers, geniuses and inventors, media hustlers, hate mongers, and just normal people getting through life and raising families as best they can. Pretty much like folks of every other race.

Each human is unique, even though we all share about 99% of the same DNA. And whether it be by race, religion, national origin, or favorite football team, each group is unique, sharing a common history, culture, or belief. But that does not imply that all members of any group think alike, look alike, or act alike.

Our current moment seems saturated with grievances about race, about white supremacy and white fragility and white privilege, about assigning guilt and blame, about righting both real and imagined wrongs, about which words and comments are now forbidden, about whether to focus on individual responsibility or on reforming our institutions.

Today’s essay is dedicated to our Black fellow Americans, some of whom inspire us, some of whom don’t.

FIRST, SOME HEROES

Clockwise from upper left: Madame C. J. Walker, first self-made Black millionaire; Harriet Tubman, escaped slave who founded the Underground Railroad; Buffalo Soldiers, U. S. Army, 1866; inventor Elijah McCoy; Jesse Owens, Olympic multiple gold medalist, 1936; Jack Trice, Iowa State football player, 1923;Tupac Shakur, an original hip-hop musician; Jackie Robinson, first black Major League baseball player;

And some more…..……

Clockwise from upper left: George Washington Carver, scientist and agriculturalist; Rosa Parks, civil rights pioneer, Dr. Thomas Sowell, economist and philosopher; Tuskegee Airmen, World War II; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Muhammed Ali, boxing champion

Madame C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, made her fortune by creating a line of make-up and hair care products for Black women. Her sales force employed several thousand women. She later became a philanthropist and activist for Black Americans.

Jesse Owens was the youngest of ten children born to an Alabama sharecropper. He excelled as a track athlete in high school, and when competing for Ohio State at a Big Ten track meet he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of 45 minutes. As part of the U.S. Olympic team, he competed in the 1936 Olympics which were held in Berlin, Germany during the pre-war rise of Hitler. His record of four Olympic gold medals in track and field would not be matched until 1984.

Dr. Thomas Sowell was a high school dropout and Korean War marine veteran. He later became a Harvard graduate and received a PhD in Economics from the prestigious University of Chicago. He is a best-selling author, free-market advocate, and recipient of the National Humanities medal. He has been called one of the country’s foremost public intellectuals.

These people are a very, very small sampling of Black Americans who have made their own remarkable contributions to our nation. Some of these people used their intellect, some used their physical gifts, some used their strong moral sense, some used their business skills. But all of them shared some form of courage and belief in themselves.

Some of them died well before their time because of their efforts.

I love this story: Elijah McCoy (1894 to 1929), pictured above, was a Canadian-born son of fugitive slaves from Kentucky. He received 57 U.S. patents during his lifetime. At age 15 he was sent to Scotland and returned as a certified mechanical engineer. His first patented invention was an automatic lubricator for steam engines. Legend has it that railroad engineers so preferred his system that they would inquire whether a locomotive was fitted with an inferior oiler or whether it had “the real McCoy”.

THE HOAXERS

Other individuals have used racial issues to deceive, con, or exploit their fellow Americans. Some have used a tragedy to elevate their own prominence or prestige. I call these people The Hoaxers. I do not know their motivations—possibly self-promotion, consciousness-raising, or other reasons. Have the hoaxers been helpful or harmful in improving race relations?

Clockwise from upper left: Bubba Wallace, NASCAR driver; Crystal Mangum, Duke Lacrosse hoax; Rachel Dolezal; Oumou Kanoute, Smith College; Shaun King; Jussie Smollet, actor; center, Tawana Brawley with Al Sharpton

In 1987, Tawana Brawley was found by police in a trash bag, her body smeared in feces and marked with racial epithets. She claimed to have been raped and abused by multiple white men, including a policeman and a prosecutor. Civil rights activist Al Sharpton served as her publicist. National outrage ensued, demanding justice for this 15 year-old victim. But after lengthy investigation, a grand jury concluded the rape allegations were false and that she herself may have fabricated the appearance of an attack.

Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal both presented themselves as authentically African American, despite both having been born to and raised by white parents. Mr. King, recipient of an Oprah scholarship, later claimed he was biracial. Ms. Dolezal had served as chapter president of the Spokane NAACP in 2015, but resigned after her parents went public with her background; in 2018 she was charged with felony theft by welfare. She has changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo.

Jussie Smollett, an actor, claimed to have been attacked at night by two men in red hats, saying “This is MAGA country,” and putting a noose around his neck. Mr. Smollett was found to have colluded with the two men in fabricating a false hate-crime and subsequently faced charges of his own.

Bubba Wallace is a NASCAR driver. A member of his crew reported that a noose had been placed in his garage stall at a North Carolina race venue in June, 2020. NASCAR described the act as “heinous”. A 15-member FBI investigation later determined the “noose” was a looped garage door pull-rope which had been present for months.

Ms. Kanoute accused Smith College security and cafeteria personnel of accosting her for “Eating While Black” in a closed-off dorm lounge. After a lengthy investigation the college personnel were exonerated but not before Smith College had responded by instituting a campus-wide barrage of “bias training”.

In 2006 Ms. Mangum claimed to have been raped by multiple members of the Duke lacrosse team, resulting in a newspaper advertisement placed by 88 Duke faculty members alleging a climate of sexism and racism at Duke, and the alleged rape as a “social disaster.” Ms. Mangum’s claim was found to be false, charges against the team members were dropped, and the chief investigator, Mike Nifong, was disbarred and removed from office for withholding exculpatory evidence. Duke faculty members later denied that their blistering comments against the lacrosse team were a rush to judgment.

Hoaxes, frauds, and misrepresentations such as these undermine the validity of claims by legitimate victims of racial injustice. Initial support of these false claims by media, academia, Hollywood, and the public stirs discord and racial tension. To whose benefit? Are national outrage and passionate demands for justice changed by learning that the events were hoaxes?

THE HATERS

A small group of so-called “thought leaders” uses hatred of The Other, such as whites or Jews, to attract a following. They consider their beliefs to be true, one presumes.

Clockwise from upper left: Elijah Muhammad, Nation of Islam; Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam; Ibram X. Kendi, author; Malcolm X

Elijah Muhammed, born Elijah R. Poole, was leader of the American movement Nation of Islam from 1934 to 1975. He preached that whites were inferior and “evil”, and that his movement’s goal was to return the stolen white hegemony to American Blacks.

Mr. Muhammed’s successor, Louis Farrakhan, has preached black superiority over whites, who he states were created by an “evil genius” named Yacub 6000 years ago to dominate the black race; Minister Farrakhan has saved his strongest invective for Jews and their “dirty religion”.

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was also a minister in the Nation of Islam, and later became a Sunni Muslim. He preached that white people are “devils”, that Blacks are superior to whites, and that the demise of the white race was imminent. He rejected Martin Luther King’s message of non-violence, stating that blacks should advance themselves “by any means necessary”. He was assassinated by Nation of Islam members at age 39.

Ibram X. Kendi, born Ibram H. Rogers, is a best-selling author, historian, professor, and anti-racist activist. He criticized Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s adoption of two Haitian orphans, saying, “Some White colonizers 'adopted' Black children. They 'civilized' these 'savage' children in the 'superior' ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial…” He has proposed a Constitutional amendment establishing a Department of Anti-racism, to be “empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas”.

SOME THINGS JUST TRANSCEND RACE

Achievers come in all colors. So do just regular people trying to get by as best they can. So do Hoaxers, Grifters, and Haters.

Honesty, integrity, courage, empathy, and love do not depend on skin color, and no single person’s behavior can be considered “typical” of his or her “kind”--it just doesn’t work that way.

The Rev. Martin Luther King’s message of judging ourselves and others by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin does not seem to be the fashion of the day. But I hope it returns soon. Very soon.

Happy Black History Month.