We have VP wannabe JD Vance to thank for the hate being launched on the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio.
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A single tweet alleging the Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs - based off an unrelated story about a Black woman allegedly confessing to eating a cat - took the internet by storm. Then, Donald Trump spewed the same lie on the presidential debate stage. However, despite the moderators calmly correcting him, the lie resulted in the unwarranted, racist violence and taunts against Springfield’s Haitian community, children included.
Does this come as a surprise, though? Throughout history, white lies on Black Americans have been used for political gain or for other reasons that’s hard to understand. The sad part is... some people take the bait.
For reference, we pulled 15 examples of dangerous lies told about Black people.
Haitians Eating Pets
JD Vance took to social media, various news stations and the podium of several rallies alleging Haitian immigrants populating the Springfield, Ohio area have been eating cats and dogs. The lie stemmed from the body camera video of the arrest of a Black Columbus, Ohio woman confessing to allegedly butchering a cat and trying to eat it. Then, that led Donald Trump to spew the same damning lie on national television during the presidential debate.
Although Vance admitted that he lied, rumors about “pet-eating Haitians” were already circulating the town, per NBC. Despite local police shutting down the rumors, these innocent people have been subjected to violent, racist threats both on a local and national scale - all because Trump wanted to solidify his stance against illegal immigration or rather, immigration in general.
The Great Replacement Theory
The white supremacist manifesto suggests Black and brown people will, at some point, ‘replace’ the white population of America by emerging as the new majority. Though the racist rhetoric was often connected to the motives of some anti-Black mass shootings (like the Buffalo supermarket shooter Payton Gendron), others with major political platforms suggested the manifesto had some weight to it.
Tucker Carlson, for example, boasted about the theory for years on both FOX News and his talk show alleging social movements like Black Lives Matter and the ongoing immigration crisis are to blame.
The Myth of Black-on-Black Crime
Ugh, gosh. For decades we’ve been spoon-fed under-analyzed statistics on the number of murders Black people commit in relation to the 15 percent of the U.S. population we take up. Trump and many of his conservative followers tout the lies that Black people are more violent and prone to criminal behavior than anyone else.
Crime data reaching all the way to Frederick Hoffman’s 1896 research on the matter confirms the idea of Black people committing more crimes than white people is not only a myth but also ignores the racial inequities that cause crime to occur in our community anyway.
Criminalization of BLM
Black Lives Matter, the movement, was immediately criminalized as a violent group who hates cops and thinks Black people matter more than everyone else. A few riots that bubbled out of intense interactions between police and peaceful protestors gave the opposition the ammo to not only denounce the group altogether but to claim they’re unnecessarily vile.
One white man in Texas tweeted a lie that his daughter and her boyfriend were attacked by BLM supporters group of BLM” in Baltimore, Md which was proven to be a fib by receipts from the city police department. Another white man went as far as to set his house on fire and vandalize his property to falsely allege BLM supporters targeted his home. Then, veteran Daniel Perry was convicted in the fatal shooting of an armed BLM supporter after accusing him of threatening his life which is still being disputed.
A White Lady’s Lie That Caused a Boy’s Lynching
In 1955, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham lied to her husband alleging 14-year-old Emmett Till whistled at her inside a grocery store. Once her husband caught wind of what was considered a societal offense back then, he rounded up his brother and the two kidnapped Till in the wee hours of that night. Till was tortured, beaten and murdered, having been mutilated to point of not being recognizable.
Donham’s lie wasn’t revealed until decades later inside her memoir, per CBS News.
The Central Park Five
Back in 1989, five Black teens hanging around Central Park at the same time a white jogger was brutally beaten and sexually assaulted resulted in one of the most widely criticized cases in America. Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray and Korey Wise were blasted in the media as the “wildin’ thugs” that nearly took the life of an innocent white woman.
Detectives conspired with the lead prosecutor, Linda Fairstein, to coerce the boys into false confessions and maliciously framed them as criminals during trial to ensure a guilty conviction. The five weren’t exonerated until 2002.
Birtherism
Back in 2016 and 2017, former President Donald Trump questioned the authenticity of former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, touting more than several times that Obama was born outside of the United States. Though, anti-Obama trolls ran with some unfound claim that he was born in Kenya and made further assumptions about his religion - all rooted in racism. He was born in Hawaii in 1961, for clarification.
However, Trump doubled back and used former First Lady Hillary Clinton as a scapegoat, claiming she was the origin of the birther suspicions because of an anonymous email from 2008 claiming Obama’s mother gave birth to him in the African country, per The Atlantic. These racist lies were nothing other than an attempt to discredit Obama as a presidential candidate and soon, VP Kamala Harris as well.
Hillary Clinton on “Superpredators”
She didn’t have to say exactly who she was referring to when sharing her support for the 1994 Crime Bill. In Clinton’s speech she said, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators. No conscience, no empathy.” In the previous “war on drugs” under Nixon’s administration, similar rhetoric was used to identify a certain population of people deemed problematic.
However, the racial implication was obvious as the bill resulted in the mass incarceration of Black Americans. Clinton later apologized for her comment after being confronted by an activist, per The Washington Post. However, experts persist that language like hers indirectly pointed at Black and brown communities put a target on their backs.
Anti-White Racism Claims
The downplaying of the importance of teaching children the truth of American history resulted in many Republicans alleging racism is too small of a problem to teach, per a YouGov poll.
With the rise of book bans and anti-white discrimination lawsuits, Trump and other Republicans officials have repeatedly projected the claim that America is becoming anti-white and that white people are suffering by somehow being marginalized. But study after study show otherwise.
Slavery Wasn’t That Bad
The centuries of slavery that resulted in the murder, rape and physical and psychological torture of Black people is hard to teach to a class of young minds but Republica leaders all over the country are encouraging the absence of it being taught at all.
If that’s not the case, then some political figures such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Bill O’Reilly suggested Black people benefited from slavery in someways like having food and shelter and learning sharecropping skills. Lying about the reality of slavery only makes its impact on Black American socioeconomics easier to blow off.
Haiti and Africa Being “Sh!thole Countries”
In 2018, former President Donald Trump made remarks in a meeting with senators where he referred to Haiti and African countries as “shitholes” while making a point about immigration. His remarks only reinforced negative stereotypes and false claims that the immigrants flocking to the states are no good, job stealing, criminal psychos. However, African and Haitian immigrants are among the most upstanding immigrants, succeeding in business and education.
Excited Delirium
When officers restrained Elijah McClain for paramedics to administer a lethal dose of ketamine, their excuse was that they wanted to calm him down from a state of “excited delirium.” Police officers often use the excuse that Black men who exert aggressive, “superhuman strength,” (as per a 2009 research piece) and appear to require more aggressive and sometimes lethal force for detainment.
This diagnosis has been the exaggerated and overused excuse for the death of many Black men beyond Elijah McClain so officers could escape immunity. It also echoes an outdated myth from slavery to the Jim Crow Era about Black people having an inhumane level of strength in comparison to white people.
The Crack Epidemic
The war on drugs between the 1960s and 1990s was most certainly targeted at the Black community by white politicians. The crack epidemic, in particular, was plastered through the media and politics as a Black issue. As a result, Black people were incarcerated eight times more than white people, who actually were using the drug more than Black people, according to The National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Not to mention, Black people got higher sentences and faced the good ol’ mandatory minimums more than white people, which further rigged the statistics to show a false narrative that Black people have more criminal tendencies.
Medical Myths
Being the medical field is inherently tailored to white men, a number of false narratives about Black patients emerged causing inaccurate diagnoses and sometimes, treatment. A 2020 article published in the National Library of Medicine found treatments for all patients are based on the treatments for a “default human” - that human being a white male.
Other notable myths include Black people having a higher pain tolerance, significant vitamin D deficiencies and other stereotypes that cause Black to receive biased assessments, per Medical News Today.
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