The Irreparable Damage Caused by Jussie Smollett’s Racial Hoax
How a phony hate crime contaminated meaningful discourse around identity
It’s been a little over two months since Empire actor Jussie Smollett reported that he was attacked — victimized due to his race, sexual preference and criticism of President Trump — in the early morning hours outside of a Chicago Subway Sandwich franchise. His attackers, Smollett would allege, wore ski-masks, berated him with racist and homophobic slurs, beat him, poured on him an ‘unknown liquid’ suggested to have been bleach, said to him: ‘this is MAGA country’, and even managed to slip a noose around his neck.
The attack, initially investigated as a hate crime by the Chicago Police Department, sent shockwaves through the media landscape, garnering massive amounts of attention from celebrities and politicians alike. Both Senators Corey Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) called it ‘an attempted modern-day lynching’, while enough stars reached out on social media expressing support for Smollett and disgust with the assault that Refinery29 and others were able to build whole posts around celebrity outrage. All were whipped up into a frenzied lather, simultaneously appalled by the boldness of the abuse and vindicated in the confirmation that, yes, we live in a Trumpian era of unsafety — that even someone as widely adored as Smollett could not escape the cruelty and violence of bias.
There was one problem though. The attack on Smollett was a hoax.
Yup, totally fake. A poorly conceived fabrication that, to the credit of investigators taking a closer look at the more sensational details of the case, was exposed as chicanery fairly quickly. In a turn that shocked his supporters, Smollett would then be charged with a class four felony of filing a false police report and later indicted on 16 other felony counts related to the incident. Bail was set at $100,000 February 21st and, after posting $10,000 bond provided by a friend, Smollett was released from custody.
By March 26th, all charges against the Fox star would be dropped and Smollett, who would forfeit the ten grand that gained him his initial freedom, would walk away from this, ready to ‘move on with his life’.
Court files attached to this case have been conspicuously sealed and details of the deal Smollett’s legal team likely made with Judge Steven Watkins and First Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Magat are unclear. More opaque is the recusal of Cook County’s State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx from the case following a bizarre conversation with Tina Tchen, the one time chief of staff for former first lady Michelle Obama, about kicking the case up to the federal level. What is clear is that trust has been breached. This was not a hate crime; not even close. Rather, this was a staged spectacle designed by an actor whose greed and baffling narcissism has proved deeply corrosive to otherwise productive discussions regarding race and reinforces the privilege of money and celebrity.
There is an understanding among many Americans that hate crimes are on the rise in their country; that vicious bigots, emboldened by President Trump’s hateful rhetoric, are violently lashing out at historically unprecedented rates. There are serious issues with the manner in which discrimination statistics are collected (namely that it is near impossible to adjudicate what is and is not a hate crime and, to the extent that you can apply math to something subjective, statistics on so-called hate crimes gathered by local law enforcement are delivered to the FBI on a voluntary basis) but nevertheless, the perception exists. Among the well intentioned and empathetic, this is a powerful source of fear and anger; a horrifying indication that a war on prejudice need be re-waged. Smollett, a member of two protected classes, drilled down deep into that fear and exploited it to the detriment of any victim of an authentic hate crime. All hoaxes serve to erode trust and the credibility of legitimate causes for alarm. Genuine grievances, if they are reported at all, will be taken with a cynical grain of salt by those recently fooled into action. In this way, Smollett’s deception is nothing new. Unlike all hoaxes however, his manipulation of the country’s unique struggle with race and homosexuality does more to damage meaningful social progress than any act of violence might. The Tawana Brawley case of 1987, an alleged situation arguably more grotesque than the incident in Chicago, is a grim reminder of the fragility of the American discourse surrounding race and the injuriousness of a racial hoax.
The ugliness of the deceit here goes well beyond Aesop, the obvious, and the not-entirely-worth-mentioning morality surrounding lying. The events of the last month reaffirm a truth that is as unsurprising as it is grisly: one can get away with a hell of a lot when one is rich and famous. The difference between Smollett and almost anyone else who might be mired down in a similar set of indictments is that Smollett has money — a lot of it. The actor, who’s apparent motivation for staging the February event revolved around dissatisfaction with his salary, earned a reported $125,000 per episode of Empire during its fifth season. A healthy bank account and a famous face affords the owner near limitless access to resources that can get he or she out of most every bind. This privilege, one that is powerful and shamelessly applied by both the legal system and offenders, is a privilege worth discussing over all others. Smollett walks away from this mess without an apology or any acknowledgment of wrongdoing — his on-paper credibility intact having been ‘truthful and consistent on every level’.
Save for a few bewildering holdouts, the backlash in response to the dropped charges has been understandably harsh, with former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel calling it a ‘whitewash of justice’ and Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie T. Johnson billing Smollett $130,106.15 for the overtime worked on the investigation. And now, with the FBI newly involved, Smollett may not be entirely out of the woods.
On the bright side, supposing there is one, the fact that this was a hoax means that there aren’t bigoted psychopaths running around Chicago violently targeting minorities — an understanding that should be spirit affirming. We as Americans indeed live in an era of unprecedented tolerance. Jussie Smollett, a man who’s avarice and ego is commensurate only with his talent as an entertainer, constructed a made-for-tv drama that falsely brandished evidence to the contrary and added fuel to a very real moral panic. His actions twisted the trajectory of progress, it’s up to us to decide how to course correct.
