A black student wrote those racist messages that shook the Air Force Academy
The person responsible for the racist messages was, in fact, one of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them. The racist messages roiled the academy and led its superintendent to deliver a stern speech that decried the “horrible language” and drew national attention for its eloquence.
The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy into a growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes.”
For example, a black man, Dauntarius Williams, of Manhattan, Kansas, admitted yesterday that he had defaced his own car with racist graffiti. Officials decided not to file criminal charges against Williams for filing a false report, saying it “would not be in the best interests” of the community.
About three weeks earlier, police announced that Eddie Curlin, 29, had been charged in connection with three racist graffiti incidents at Eastern Michigan University.
for many comments, check out here
In September, 5 black cadet candidates found racial slurs scrawled on message boards on their doors at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School.
The racist messages roiled the academy in Colorado Springs, prompted the school to launch an investigation. They led its superintendent to deliver a stern speech that decried the “horrible language” and drew national attention for its eloquence.
Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria told cadets to take out their phones and videotape the speech, “so you can use it . . . so that we all have the moral courage together.”
“If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect,” Silveria said, “then get out.”
The speech, which the academy posted on YouTube, went viral. It was watched nearly 1.2 million times, grabbed headlines nationwide, and was commended by the likes of former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
But on Tuesday, the school made a jolting announcement. The person responsible for the racist messages, the academy said, was, in fact, one of the cadet candidates who reported being targeted by them.
“The individual admitted responsibility and this was validated by the investigation,” academy spokesman Lt. Col. Allen Herritage said in a statement to the Associated Press, adding: “Racism has no place at the academy, in any shape or form.”
The announcement thrust the Air Force Academy Preparatory School onto a growing list of recent “hate crime hoaxes” – instances in which acts of racism were later found to be committed by someone in the targeted minority group.
On Monday, police in Riley County, Kansas, revealed that a 21-year-old black man, Dauntarius Williams, admitted to defacing his car with racist graffiti.
Officials decided not to file criminal charges against Williams for filing a false report, saying it “would not be in the best interests” of citizens of the Manhattan, Kansas, community, police said in a news release. They said Williams was “genuinely remorseful” for his actions, and published an apology on his behalf.
About three weeks earlier, police announced that a 29-year-old black man, a former student named Eddie Curlin, had been charged in connection with three racist graffiti incidents at Eastern Michigan University: A “KKK” sprayed on a dorm wall, messages ordering blacks to leave scrawled on a building, and a racist message left in a men’s restroom stall.
These reports have also energized many Trump supporters, who argue that reports about hate speech and racist graffitti are often fake accounts disseminated by liberal media.
“Anyone (including the lapdog media) who was surprised by this hate crime hoax hasn’t been paying attention,”
Jeremy Carl, a research fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University, tweeted early Wednesday in response to the news about the Air Force Academy Preparatory School. “The stream of fake hate crimes became a flood after Trump’s election.”
In August, Sebastian Gorka, then-national security adviser to Trump, appeared on MSNBC to explain why the president hadn’t condemned the bombing of a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota. He suggested it was because the attack may have been a “fake” hate crime.
“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,″ Gorka said. “We’ve had a series of crimes committed, alleged hate crimes, by right-wing individuals in the last six months, that turned out to actually have been propagated by the left.”