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The TownhallSocial issues

Jussie Smollett and the never-ending cry of racism

By Mecca Fowler

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. View more opinion on ScoonTV. 

Even when a situation has absolutely nothing to do with race, many on the left will use the scenario to score political points with their Black voter base. Unfortunately, because these same people rarely look beyond the news headlines, they don’t figure out until way later that the perceived racism simply isn’t true. It doesn’t matter if the victims aren’t people of color or if the incidents are coincidences or fabricated, they will dig their heels in further to support their narrative. 

This has never been more apparent than the response to former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction for fabricating an alleged “racist” assault in Chicago. 

After being convicted of lying to police, he’ll serve the first 150 days of his 30-month probation term in jail. He also must pay a fine of $25,000 and over $120,000 in restitution to the city of Chicago. 

At the time, the same civil rights figures that always show up for highly publicized “hate crimes” commented, such as Reverend Al Sharpton. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were some of the most prominent voices, too. 

One statement from Harris’ Twitter account reads, “@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”  

Once the police alleged that Smollett staged the attack, the media adopted collective amnesia. They no longer covered the story with such fervor. 

But even today, as Smollett was released from jail on bond Wednesday, some are still saying his sentencing was racist. Although it’s abundantly clear that this situation was a hoax, many people are still sticking beside him and his narrative. The fact that he still has support at all is an indicator of how polarized this country is.  

The past few years have shown a litany of other “racist” controversies that ended up being not racist at all. Another example is Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two individuals and injured another in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. The shootings happened amid the demonstrations, rioting, and civil disturbance that erupted by Black Lives Matter activists and others when a white police officer shot and killed a black man, Jacob Blake.  

The media coverage of this story was extremely partisan and divided. News stories hardly waited for all the facts to come out. Instead, they opted to paint him as a gun wielding “white supremacist” who went looking for trouble. Once his trial was over more than a year later, anyone who paid attention or even went to look at who his victims were could easily tell that the narrative was fabricated. He shot the victims in self-defense which his attorneys successfully conveyed in court. Still, the narrative persisting among some elitist liberals like Lebron James, and Joy-Ann Reid continued.  

Another example is the infamous “noose” incident reported by NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace. The noose was discovered by a member of Wallace’s racing team, which tipped off NASCAR officials. When the story got out, the media coverage was blanketed with the insinuation that someone had intentionally put a noose in his garage to intimidate him. 

When the FBI came to investigate the situation, they found that the rope had been in the garage since the year before Wallace arrived and therefore could not be considered a hate crime.  

“The investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the noose found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019. Although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week,” the FBI said, according to CNN.  

One of the most consequential accusations of racism by the liberal media is the story of Covington Catholic High School teenager Nicholas Sandmann. A conflict between groups of political activists occurred outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. on January 18, 2019. The Covington students were attending the March for Life, which aimed to raise awareness on anti-abortion issues while the Native Americans attended the Indigenous Peoples March. 

During the protest, Sandmann was singled out while wearing a MAGA hat. Many major news outlets quickly shared images and videos of the interaction between Sandmann and Native American activist Nathan Phillips. 

The initial media stories portrayed Sandmann as being the villain of the situation and claimed that the protest was racially motivated. After several accounts wrongly depicted the Catholic students as the aggressors, reports of the event sparked fury in the United States. 

The media, however, omitted critical facts of the encounter, according to videos revealed days later. The entire incident started before Phillips had entered himself into the situation. The Covington students were passing by a group of Black Israelites who shouted insults at them. When Phillips saw the clash between the Black Israelites and the students, he attempted to step in to diffuse the situation. This was the part that the media captured and ran with.  

As a result, Sandmann sued NBC, CNN, the Washington Post, and other media news outlets for vicious attacks on his character and defamation. The Washington Post reached an agreement in July 2020. CNN reached an agreement in January of that year. 

These are the types of consequences that the media must face when they aren’t truthful in their reporting and instead rush to cast judgment. Too often, when the facts come out, suddenly everyone who promotes these narratives is no longer around to face the consequences. 

There are enough racist attacks in this country that could actually warrant our attention. By continuously claiming things are racially motivated instead of examining for ourselves what is happening, we’re doing a disservice to bettering race relations. 

Eventually, we will get to a point in this country where people stop caring about racism at all. 

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Mecca Fowler

Writer

Mecca Fowler is a passionate writer with a background in journalism and social media management. She is a free-speech advocate who hones in on her ability to reach across political spectrums to have engaging and transformative conversations to push the conscious of American culture forward.

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