Hoaxes Spawned by Stereotyping

Whatever the reasons Boston store manager Charles Stuart allegedly decided to murder his pregnant wife, he certainly knew how to draw attention away from himself as a suspect. Stuart told the police that the murderer was a black man with a raspy voice and a spotty beard, and that he was wearing a red jogging suit.

Could anyone have drawn a more graphic stereotype of the so-called “typical” urban predator? Stuart apparently knew that, and he pushed the racial paranoia button. Stuart told police that when he and wife Carol, 7 months pregnant, left their birthing class in a largely minority area of Boston last October, they were confronted by a black robber who shot them. But, after Stuart positively identified an innocent man as the criminal, Stuart’s brother stepped forward last Wednesday with evidence that Stuart himself was behind the murder of his wife and the subsequent death of his premature baby. On Thursday, Stuart committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.

His lie, and his manipulation of racial fears, is a disturbing reminder of how some Americans seem eager to believe the worst about others.

The Stuart case has prompted some comparisons to the hoax perpetrated by Tawana Brawley, the New York black teen-ager who falsely charged that a gang of whites abducted and raped her. While the Brawley and Stuart case resemble each other in their manipulation of racial fears, a distinction must be made: The fear that Brawley had been abused by racists was based on a documented history of anti-black crimes, but there are no statistics to give credence to the fear that whites are targeted for attack by black criminals. In 1988, 94% of the murder victims of black criminals were other blacks, according to the FBI.

But it was hard for most people to care much about statistical probabilities once the dramatic audiotape of Charles Stuart’s 911 call was broadcast on national television. After all, the man had been shot himself, and there is a natural tendency to believe a shooting victim. That is a reasonable explanation for most citizens, but it is not a good enough explanation for the police. Their job is to professionally investigate homicides. Nor is it an adequate excuse for the news media: Their job is not only to report official accounts but to raise questions about them. The police, politicians and media in Boston were all too quick to judge an innocent man and his community. As it turns out, all of them were in search of a criminal who existed only in the mind of Charles Stuart. Too bad that the illusion of the black murderer who preys upon unsuspecting middle-class whites was apparently so widespread that it permitted this poisonous a hoax to be perpetrated. What’s worse is that it could have happened almost anywhere.