As Racial Hoaxes Go, Jussie Smollett’s Case Is a Strange One
Many other accusers have tapped into our unconscious beliefs about the nexus between race and crime.
Updated at 11:46 a.m. ET on February 25, 2019.
If the purported attack on the actor Jussie Smollett indeed turns out to be staged, it will be the latest in a long line of hoaxes grounded in racial stereotypes. By design, these hoaxes reinforce different groups’ worst suspicion of one another: Whites are racists. Blacks are criminals.
Smollett, a cast member of Fox’s , is African American and gay. After telling Chicago police last month that two masked men had physically attacked him while shouting racist and homophobic slurs and a pro–Donald Trump slogan, Smollett turned himself in Thursday
