Faculty News
Katheryn Russell-Brown
Chesterfield Smith professor of law and director of the Center for the Study of Race Relations
Nov 9, 2008, Orlando Sentinel, Opinion Page, “Hoaxes signal the state of our racial fears”
“When I heard Susan Smith’s tale that she had been carjacked by a young black man, I was skeptical. In 1994, Smith told police that while stopped at a traffic signal, she was carjacked by a black man who drove off with her infant and toddler boys in the back seat. I thought, where would a black man go with two small white children?…. Likewise, last month when I heard Ashley Todd’s yarn, the alleged facts struck me as odd. Todd, a volunteer for John McCain’s campaign, reported that she had been robbed, assaulted and maimed by a 6-foot-4 black man at an ATM. She said the man was a Barack Obama supporter who wanted to ‘teach her a lesson’ after seeing her McCain bumper sticker…. Welcome to the land of racial hoaxes. Not burdened by logic, hoaxes don’t have to make sense; they just have to feel like they could make sense.”
