John Hawkins
One of the oldest rules in psychology and economics is that if you reward a behavior, you can expect to see it more often.
In America, we reward victimhood.
That makes us feel good about ourselves and in some cases, it helps improve the lives of the people who've been victimized, but there's a dark side to it as well. It creates perverse incentives for people, it helps legitimize a victimhood mentality, and it also encourages people to fake hate crimes.
Under normal circumstances, that would seldom happen. However, in a society where we celebrate victimhood and savagely attack people we decide are “bullies”, being a "victim" can potentially be the high point of someone's life. It can mean getting attention from the media, being showered with sympathy, and even making thousands of dollars.
Is it any wonder that there are unscrupulous people who take advantage of the situation?
1) The Tawana Brawley Hoax: This was the case that made Al Sharpton's career and surprise, surprise, it was all a lie.
In a healthy society, Sharpton might be on parole now — not the must-get guest for “Meet the Press” and “Today” on issues of racial justice. He was a ringleader in perpetuating the evil Tawana Brawley hoax in which he and two corrupt lawyers (now disbarred) falsely accused Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones and others of gang-raping a 15-year-old girl in a racist attack (Brawley claimed that she’d been smeared with feces and had racist epithets written on her body). No person of any ideological stripe could doubt it was a fraud — except, that is, for the unrepentant Sharpton, who recently insisted “something happened.”
2) She wasn’t even Jewish: On the very day that College professor Kerri Dunn was supposed to speak at a campus forum on racism, she announced that she’d just been a victim of racism. That would have made for a great story....if it were true.
Dunn, a visiting psychology professor (at Claremont McKenna College), was scheduled to speak at a campus forum on racism. During her talk, she shocked the audience by announcing that she had been — that very day — the victim of a hate crime. Ta da!
Her car had been vandalized, its windows smashed, tires slashed. And profane, anti-Semitic graffiti covered the wreckage.
The campus was shocked. CMC and all four of its sister colleges canceled classes (they didn’t even do that on 9/11). An emotional student body held a giant rally against racism. The riveting spectacle was covered by network news.
Undoubtedly, the whole affair would have been a great career boost for Dunn if only two students hadn’t seen her doing all the vandalism herself. Dunn lost her job, of course, and also went to prison for lying to federal investigators and for insurance fraud. (She had claimed that $1,700 worth of items, including a laptop computer, had been stolen by the hate-crime bogeyman. These items were later found in a closet in Dunn’s home.)
Dunn might have avoided prison if she hadn’t tried to cash in. Her long years of education at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where she earned both a Ph.D. and a J.D., were not sufficient to instill in her an appreciation for the risks associated with perjury and fraud.
By the way, she wasn’t even Jewish.
3) Faking racist messages as a political tactic: A black student at St. Peter’s Prep came up with an ingenious technique to try to get elected at a largely white school: He sent racist messages to himself to try to generate a sympathy vote.
The black St. Peter’s Prep student who purportedly received racist text messages warning him to drop out of the Jersey City high school's student government election sent the texts to himself, a school official confirmed last week.
...The 16-year-old was running for president for the Student Council in May when he supposedly received four hateful text messages. He brought them to the attention of school officials who called in his father and police.
"We have NEVER and will NEVER have an (n-word) to lead our school," was one of the messages supposedly sent to the 16-year-old student, who at the time, was a resident in Jersey City.
The message went on to call President Obama by his middle name Hussein and used a racial slur in referring to Obama, a police report said. "We will never make that mistake again. Drop out right now . . ." it continued, a police report said.
A second message read "Whites! Your a waste on this earth, a waste at this school, and most importantly a Waste for this campaign." That message called the student government candidate a "slave" and used a racial slur, a report said.
The third message texted to -- and as it turns out from -- the student, contained a warning to drop out of the race and the fourth read, in part, "COMEONE your black!!! lol your a joke for even trying to run," according to a police report.
The 16-year-old eventually lost the race for student council president but was elected vice president.
…In an interview with The Jersey Journal at the time the texts were sent, the boy’s father said his son was “extremely nervous and feels threatened” and did not want to be interviewed.
"He is the type of boy who does not want any kind of trouble," the father said. "It's so sad. He doesn't want the image of the school to be tainted."
"It is a predominantly white school and there may be a few sections of the school who are fearful of a new face trying to get in office,” the father said at the time.
More at link:
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/11/30/seven-phony-hate-crimes-trumpeted-by-the-media-n1755158?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
