Racial hoax
hoax
A racial hoax occurs when a person (usually the purported victim) falsely claims that a crime was committed by a member of a specific race. The crime may be fictitious, or may be an actual crime.
The term was popularised by Katheryn Russell-Brown in her book The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions (1998). A racial hoax can be performed by a person of any race, against a person of any race.
Concept
Patricia L. Brougham argued that the common stereotype of criminal black men has enabled the use of racial hoaxes against this group. Brougham writes that these stereotypes cause law enforcement agencies to believe that a black perpetrator exists when in reality the allegation is false.
Russell-Brown argues that racial hoaxes are devised, perpetrated, and successful because they take advantage of fears and stereotypes. According to her, white-on-black hoaxes are the most likely to receive media attention and to cause social and economic problems. She argues that anyone performing a racial hoax should face criminal charges, particularly if a black person is targeted, and that hoaxes targeting black people create more severe problems than those against other racial groups. Letha A. See in Violence as Seen Through a Prism of Color (2001) sees the hoax as a unique method used against specific racial groups, rather than against individuals.
“Racial hoax” enters the record as hoax. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Racial and hoax can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Racial hoax” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.