black…MYstory

We have heard this story too many times before. A white woman says she was raped. She identifies the perpetrator as a black man. Because the description is vague, many black men in the area are held under suspicion. It later turns out that either the woman was not attacked at all or, at least, not by a black man.

I am not trying to diminish the crime of rape. Personally, I rate it slightly below murder. However, because it is so severe to me, I think that we must be very concerned when black men are falsely identified as attackers. Such is the case with Rosemarie Clark, a white Connecticut woman who is now facing charges for falsely claiming she was raped by a black man.

We must ask some serious questions here. First, was she really raped? If so, why identify a black man as the attacker? For black folks, the answer is simple. There’s a presumed criminality and even a presumed bestial nature when it comes to black men. This makes it much easier to garner sympathy and mobilize action on the part of law enforcement. If she was indeed attacked, does this mean that her story is less credible by identifying her attacker as white? This seems to be the moral of the story here.

I saw a similar story unfold when I was a student on Ohio State University’s campus in the around 1989-1990. A young white woman claimed she was raped by a black man. The description was just vague enough to cast a cloud of suspicion over a good portion of black men on campus. It was such that black men were concerned about their movements at night, lest they suffer some violence by presumed defenders of white womanhood. A few months later, the woman recanted. She only received a $1000 fine and had to write what I considered a very weak apology in the local newspaper.

Needless to say, having witnessed this firsthand, I was left somewhat bitter by the whole experience.

So, naturally, I become defensive when I hear stories like this one. My concern will only grow greater as my son gets older. People sometimes mock the fear that some black parents have with their sons dating white women but, the jilted lover of today could be the accuser of tomorrow and, possibly, lead to a life in the criminal justice system.

Therefore, cases like this one will always stir emotions on both sides of the issue. Who do you consider - the person who may have really been raped, but by someone of another group entirely, or those placed under suspicion for no good reason?

All I know is that, as a black man and the father of a black boy, I don’t want either of us to have to live under this scrutiny. So, when things like this happen, I am going speak out, if for nothing more than the sake of my own child.

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