Unherd
Jussie Smollett was convicted yesterday evening of staging a racist attack on himself in January 2019. Coming just weeks after Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in Kenosha and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted in Georgia, the Smollett case reveals an uncomfortable truth about race in America: that the constant exaggeration, or even invention, of incidents of bias by activists and media members is probably a bigger problem than the residual violent racism that still exists.
The Smollett trial has been worth following for a few reasons. The first, if least important, is the pure entertainment value of the story that Smollett initially told police. For those who have forgotten, the former actor — famously dubbed “Juicy Smollé” by the comedian Dave Chappelle — originally said he was attacked by Trump supporters wearing ski-masks, in the integrated heart of Chicago, at 2am on the coldest day of the year.
The details were even more absurd than the big picture. Smollett claimed that after leaving his condo to buy a sandwich, he was approached by two white men who recognised him from the television show Empire, a hip-hop musical with a 61% black audience. The men assaulted him, tied a noose around his neck, and doused him with bleach, all while call him homophobic and racist slurs and shouting “This is MAGA country!” Per Smollett’s initial report, he heroically fought both off his attackers (“I hit his ass BACK!”), and escaped to his building with a noose around his neck and the hoagie still clasped tightly in one of his hands…
