A Queer Qase in Reverse Reverse Racism

It was a blustery, cold, January afternoon in Baltimore's Fell's Point, when Shamekia Watts lost her baby.

"It was my husband's birthday, and he wanted that movie, Putney Swope. So, I went down with my daughter, Tamara, to pick up the DVD."

Ms. Watts, a Harvard Law graduate and partner at the law firm, Watts, Day, Fuchs, and Associates, had just picked up her three-year-old daughter, Tamara, from day care when the incident occurred.


"We were just about to enter the CD store, when three white men approached," Ms. Watts stated. "They were big, and there was something wild in their eyes. I tried to rush into the store, but Tamara bent down to tie her shoes. That's when it happened."

What happened is still confused in Ms. Watts' own mind, but apparently these "three white men" with "something wild in their eyes" proceeded to jostle the mother and her child, knock the mother down in the middle of the street, took her purse, and her daughter.

"It was absolutely horrific," the 35-year-old mother wailed. "They took my baby!"

But the horror was only compounded when the authorities arrived.

"They didn't believe me," Ms. Watts claimed. "They didn't believe three white men would abduct my daughter. They didn't believe I had a daughter. They didn't believe I only had one child. They didn't believe I went to Harvard or that I had my own law firm. No matter what I said or did, they wouldn't believe me."

The police held Ms. Watts overnight in jail and ultimately charged her with filing a false report. She served six months probation and was expelled from the Maryland BAR Association. She and her husband are yet to find their daughter.

"We've received absolutely no assistance," Ms. Watts continued. "No one would believe us. We provided lie detector tests, hospital records. One security camera had even caught the three men on tape with my daughter. Yet, everyone decided to treat it as a hoax. We didn't even get an AMBER Alert."

The AMBER Alert (a backronym standing for America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response") is a child abduction alert issued nationwide via commercial radio stations, satellite radio, television stations, and cable TV through the Emergency Alert System whenever there is a suspected child abduction. After much investigation, we at Tome discovered there actually was never one issued for four-year-old Tamara Watts.

"No parent should have to go through this," Ms. Watts moaned.

When asked about the failure to issue an AMBER Alert and asked about Tamara and Shamekia Watts, Baltimore Chief of Police, Harry Quim was incredulous.

"It was a hoax," Quim guffawed. "Shamekia Watts is a con artist. She got what she deserved. Like she went to Harvard!"

He continued, "I mean, come on, three white guys, stealing a black baby? Who's ever heard of such a thing?!"

The local media was equally unimpressed with Ms. Watts' story.

"What? Does Harvard have affirmative action?" WFUN producer, Liam Sacco-Shipp asked.

"She was graduated summa cum laude," I informed him.

"Still."

Nanny Mace, the host of cable network WNN's Mace Up Her Sleeve, didn't believe Shamekia Watts' story either. Mace's nightly show focuses on murdered women and missing children. According to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), some 264,000 black children under the age of 18 go missing every year. The Violence Policy Center (VPC) reported that, in 2005 (the last year such data were collected), "574 black females were murdered by males in single victim/single offender homicides." None of these stories have been featured on Mace Up Her Sleeve.

"That was all a hoax, right?" Ms. Mace questioned. "She was the one who claimed carjackers took her kids and drowned them in a lake?"

"No. That was Susan Smith."

"Oh, right. She's the one who said she got kidnapped and ended up going to Disney World with her daughter."

"That was Bonnie Sweeten, and that just happened this week."

"Got me there," Ms. Mace smiled. "She was the one who got mugged, and they carved a backwards 'O' on her forehead for being an Obama supporter?"

"What the hell is a backwards 'O'?"

Ms. Mace shrugged and smiled impishly.

"No, that was Ashley Todd, a backwards 'B' because she was a McCain supporter, and a hoax."

"Right," Ms. Mace conceded. "She was the one who shot her pregnant wife in the stomach and blamed it on car jackers."

"What the hell kind of sense does that make?"

Ms. Mace shrugged once more.

"That was Charles Stuart," I finally huffed.

"Who knows?" Ms. Mace concluded. "Maybe her babby daddy took the kid."

"You mean, her husband?"

"Ooh, that reminds me. What has O.J. been up to lately?"

She reached for the phone to talk to her production assistant.

"It's a damned tragedy!" exhorted self-proclaimed civil rights leader, J.C. Sharktowne. "A white woman go claimin' a black man hurt her, and all the national media come runnin' to her side! Say, he hurt one of her children?! Hoax or not! There's an all-out manhunt! Brothers are rounded up and thrown in jail! AMBER Alerts go up in Sweden!!!

"But, you ask me! That AMBER Alert be lookin' mighty alabaster! What about our black babies?! Where Nanny Mace then?! Where CNN?! Where BET at?!

"No, forget the AMBER Alert! We black folks need a EBONY Alert! Something to protect our black babies!!!"

Shamekia Watts could not agree more.





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Black Muggers for Obama ™

Yeah, nigga! We big, we black, and we deep, nigga!” boasts Nucka D., president and founder of Black Muggers for Obama™. “We was pissed, yo, pissed wif all dese racist, cracker muthafuckas poppin’ they shit, votin’ fo’ Palin ‘n’ shit. So, we got our asses ohga—ohgan—we got our shit togever, nigga! An’ we goin’ to all them swing states, swingin’! We on the attack! So, to all yall racists votin’ fo’ McCain, if you see a gang a niggas bumpin’ to ‘Ride of the Valkyrie’—“

“Wagner’s one deep nigga,” interjects T. Coon Pickens, the group’s treasurer.

“Yall better change yo’ votes to Obama. Or else, you gonna git got!”

“Yeah, and make sho’ you carryin’ at least a 20,” advises Pickens. “Or it ain’t just gonna be a ‘B’ in yo’ cheek, but the whole, damned name. Barack Hussein Obama. And we gonna misspell it, too—to make yo’ ass look stupid.”

This nightmare vision of racial, political violence is the latest boogeyman terrorizing the blogosphere Right after reports of such violence came out of my hometown, Pittsburgh, yesterday. For those who haven’t heard, a 20-year-old McCain volunteer, Ashley Todd, was robbed at knife-point at an ATM Wednesday night. The mugger (reportedly a 6’4”, 200-pound black man), after getting the cash, suddenly noticed the McCain bumper sticker on her car, became enraged, socked her in the eye, and, in order to “teach her a lesson,” carved a backwards “B” on her cheek. (Todd pictured below.)



The story went nationwide. The Obama/Biden campaign released a statement: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the young woman for her to make a speedy recovery, and we hope that the person who perpetrated this crime is swiftly apprehended and brought to justice." The McCain/Palin campaign released a statement, and both candidates have talked to the woman. Almost immediately, folks smelled a rat. And not just the liberal blogosphere and their vast, liberal, MSM conspiracy. No, even the rabidMichelle Malkin has gained a little sanity on this point, comparing Todd to Sarah Marshak, the George Washington University student who caused a national furor when she drew swastikas on her own door to call attention to anti-Semitism on campus.

Now, I don’t really want to get into a “blame the victim” post here. But one does have to question the veracity of Todd’s tale. Many question the superficiality of the cut and why is the B backwards. Todd, herself, now seems to be changing her story, now claiming she was also sexually assaulted.

Personally, I can’t help but think this is a hoax. I’m not saying my brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh aren’t above mugging someone. But, come on, this story is just too weird. A big, black mugger suddenly becomes enraged because this young, white woman isn’t backing the black candidate and wants to … teach her a lesson? And then he also wants to sexually assault her? In this racially-charged election season, what better story to drum up even more porch-monkey paranoia than an Obama racist raping white McCain women? Clutch her children, and vote for the GOP!

No, I am not, not, not, not, NOT putting this one on the McCain/Palin campaign. There is no way in hell they’re responsible for this nonsense. What enrages me is that I’m sick of the attacker always being black. Almost 19 years to the day (October 23, 1989), Charles Stuart shot and killed his pregnant wife in Boston and shot himself in the abdomen and then went on to claim that a black guy “with a raspy voice” shot them both. According to the Boston Globe, “Police swarmed the area and a black man, Willie Bennett, was arrested on unrelated charges and became a prime suspect in the case.”

Almost 14 years to the day, Susan Smith rolled her car into a South Carolina lake, killing her three-year-old and 14-month-old sons. She immediately told the authorities that she had been carjacked by a, yes, black man. For nine days, the entire world were looking for a black man, two white boys, and a Mazda Protégé before the woman confessed to the crime.

And it’s not just these whack jobs who blame black folks for all their ills. Black folks have damned near always been the bete noir of American politics. We were blamed for our own slavery, being too stupid, child-like, and cursed by God. Despite the evidence, blacks were considered too cowardly to fight and weren’t integrated into the armed services for centuries. Crack cocaine, welfare abuse, all of it has been placed at our feet. It’s hard to believe that Jerry Falwell didn’t blame us (along with the feminists and gays) for 9/11.

Currently, the GOP is blaming the housing crisis on Fanny and Freddie lending to too many “high-risk” blacks and Latino, and the McCain camp are claiming that ACORN is trying to steal the upcoming election, illegally registering all these black and poor to vote. It feels that they are reaching into the white, reactionary past and stealing signs from the Hoke Smith playbook.

For those who don’t know, Hoke was an Atlanta politician and publisher of The Atlanta Journal during the turn of the century. While running for the governership in 1906, Smith realized that the black vote might ruin his chances. Needing to suppress the black vote so that blacks would “know their place,” Hoke started running stories of black men attacking whites and sexually assaulting white women. The other Atlanta dailies got into the act, ultimately inflaming a race riot, leaving dozens of blacks and two whites dead.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive here, but that is why I find the Todd story so disturbing. While I think she’s just a kook and a flake (like the equally egregious Tawanna Brawley and Duke rape cases), it seems that there are dangerous strains running through this campaign that some people are all too willing to believe. “Real American,” “America First,” “patriotic America,” “Joe Six-Pack,” “hockey mom,” blaming brown folks for the financial crisis, the “ACORN swindle,” it feels as though the GOP is mustering up animosity and rabid hatred among their constituents. Though they have toned down a little after the “kill him” controversy, the McCain/Palin campaign is edging perilously close to an American past most of us truly want to leave behind.

Todd will, I feel, be soon revealed as a hoax, but it won’t matter. Twenty years later, people still believe that Tawanna told the truth. No amount of evidence will convince them that the girl smeared herself with dog feces and etched “KKK” into her own skin. People who want to believe will not believe that Todd carved that B into her own cheek. They are not going to believe that racist blacks committed voter fraud to get their boy elected. As I said, I don't blame the GOP nor the McCain campaign for this woman's story. But I do blame them for fostering a climate that makes this tale seem the least bit credible. The Republicans seem to be more than willing to throw more wood under the racial cauldron this election season. I just hope it doesn’t boil over--like it did in 1906.

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