Free Republic

After school walkouts, protest marches and an FBI investigation, authorities concluded that a black girl was responsible for creating an Instagram account that sent racist messages to students at White Bear Lake High School. The city of White Bear Lake was torn by controversy last month as tearful students made protest signs and gave speeches outside their school after an anonymous Instagram profile called members of the school’s Black Excellence Club racial slurs. Protesters subsequently demanded action be taken to hold whoever ran the profile accountable. However, it looks like they will not get their wish, as the black student...

An unfolding case at Smith College shows how the obsession with race can blind administrators to facts and lead them to act in ways that harm innocent people. In 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a black student at Smith College, claimed that she was harassed by a janitor and police officer who had accused her of trespassing while eating inside a dormitory lounge. The story went viral with coverage from CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, and the American Civil Liberties Union came to her assistance, claiming that she had been targeted for “eating while black.” Because of the...

In an open letter to San Francisco Bay View National Black newspaper, USF Black Student Union President Brianna Johnson had demanded the university release the identity of the person responsible for hanging the noose, evict them from student housing and expel them from the university. Johnson also called on the university to quickly and widely disclose hate crimes and proactively provide wellness checks for students who might be emotionally affected. Fitzgerald said in an earlier response to the Black Student Union that it would not identify the student, citing federal and university privacy requirements. But he said the university would...

Here we go again. It’s the time of year when we have to muster the energy to pretend to be happy when a friend tells us their child is headed off to college. It’s a sad perennial ritual in which a sometimes unique and interesting young person departs and an overconfident, woke and melodramatic clone returns, just months later. They preen in the glow of their nonconformity, trumpet their individualism and relish in their distinctive worldview, too intoxicated by their self-perceived uniqueness to notice that they are exact facsimiles of millions of other mass-produced units coming off the factory floor....

A Texas family woke up last Wednesday to find their two cars lit on fire, and “Trump 20” spray-painted on their home after putting a “Black Lives Matter” sign on their yard. Jayla Gipson and Charles Crawford, who are black, told WFFA they suspect the sign may have triggered vandals to attack their home in Little Elm. “That sign was in my yard for less than two weeks and then all of a sudden we get a tragedy like this,” Gipson said. “I would have preferred they just take the sign. But to set the house on fire? That’s going...

Cards describing a "social visit" from the Ku Klux Klan were left at the homes of Joe Biden supporters in Tennessee, intimidating local residents. Breana Green, of Shelbyville, described how she noticed that a sign showing support for Biden in her neighbor's yard had been disturbed. Speaking to WSMV, Green said the yard was littered with a number of "business cards" reportedly belonging to the KKK. Green believed the cards were left in response to the Biden-Harris yard sign, which also had tire marks indicating it had been run over. "It's scary knowing that just supporting a presidential candidate can incite this kind of vandalism," Green said. "There...

Federal authorities have closed their investigation into a “hate crime” incident in Madison, Wisc., where a black woman claimed four white men threw lighter fluid on her and set her on fire after shouting a racial epithet. Eighteen-year-old Althea Bernstein claimed she was the victim of a June hate crime attack. Her story was uncritically reported across the nation. CNN, NBC, Good Morning America, and most major print publications told a horrific story. Althea Bernstein, 18, told investigators she was stopped at a traffic light in the city at around 1 a.m. Wednesday when she heard someone yell a...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — There’s not enough evidence to prove that a group of white men set a young biracial woman on fire during a chaotic night of protests in Wisconsin’s capital city this summer, federal prosecutors said Friday. Detectives were unable to find any surveillance video that shows the alleged attack taking place, but they did find footage indicating the woman wasn’t in the city at the time she says she was attacked, according to investigative reports.

A gay baker in Michigan is speaking out after she received a request for a custom cake with a homophobic message. Esteemed baker April Anderson, who has baked for Oprah Winfrey, owns and operates Good Cakes and Bakes with her partner in Detroit. On July 19, she said she received a $40 online order for a custom red velvet cake. A $10 tip was also included, Anderson told the Detroit Free Press. As Anderson looked at the order, which had the word “Pride” in all caps, she realized it contained a homophobic message. “I am ordering this cake to celebrate...

A woman spent years posing as a bisexual Native American scientist and university professor, claiming in recent months to be suffering persistent, months-long symptoms of COVID-19 until finally announcing that the fictitious persona she created had died from the disease. The woman, BethAnn McLaughlin, a former assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University, operated the Twitter account with the handle @Sciencing_Bi. She claimed to have contracted the coronavirus in April, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation, and said she suffered persistent symptoms that included a "loss of language fluency." On Tuesday, BethAnn McLaughlin confirmed in a statement to The New...

An Arizona State University professor who posted on Twitter for years about social justice issues and recently detailed her fight with COVID-19 was said to have died last week — but she actually never existed. BethAnn McLaughlin — who announced the made-up professor’s death on July 31 — admitted to The New York Times on Tuesday that she was behind the hoax. “I take full responsibility for my involvement in creating the @sciencing_bi Twitter account,” she said in a statement through her lawyer. “My actions are inexcusable. I apologize without reservation to all the people I hurt.” Since 2016, the...

Nothing damages real claims of racism more than fake claims of racism. How many of these fake hate crimes have there been now? It’s impossible to keep up. From ‘poop swastikas,’ to the pull rope on a garage door, to bogus hijab-pullers, to Jussie Smollett, and so many others there has been a parade of people with their noses out of joint because ‘America is Racist’ who — on closer inspection — weren’t the victims of anything more than their own myopic need for attention and outrage. And it’s looking like we’ve got another such case at A&M. It started...

UMATILLA COUNTY, Ore. -- A man who claimed he received a hate-filled, racist letter from an anonymous person allegedly wrote the letter himself, Hermiston Police say.

The FBI is investigating after an apparent noose was found in the locker of a black firefighter in Bloomington, Minnesota, a spokesperson for the bureau confirmed to CBS News. The incident was first made public by the city's mayor, who said Saturday that "a piece of rope resembling a noose" was discovered in the locker on June 15. "I regret to inform you about some horrible news regarding an incident at one of the City's fire stations," Bloomington Mayor Tim Busse said in a statement. "A piece of rope tied into what appears to be a crude noose was discovered...

Authorities in Wisconsin are investigating a possible hate crime after an 18-year-old Black woman was set on fire. On Wednesday morning, Althea Bernstein was driving through downtown Madison when she stopped at a red light. Bernstein was sitting at the intersection with her window down when she heard someone yell a racial slur, she told police, CBS News reports. Moments later, she told police four white men appeared, with one spraying a liquid on her face and neck and throwing a flaming lighter at her. Bernstein told police she was able to drive away and put out the flames, but...

An assault on an 18-year-old biracial woman in Wisconsin is being investigated as a hate crime after she was set on fire in her car, according to the Madison Police Department. The victim, Althea Bernstein, told authorities she was stopped at a red light Wednesday with her driver's side window down when she heard someone yell a racial slur. It was at that point that four white men allegedly sprayed a liquid on her face and neck and then threw a flaming lighter at her, which caused the liquid to ignite, according to the incident report. Scared, Bernstein began to...

A black man who was shot inside Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) last week claims it was a 'hate crime' carried out by a group of white supremacists who dropped the N-word before opening fire on him. DeJuan Young, 33, was shot in the arm on Saturday amid a weekend of gun violence in the police-free zone, also known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), that left two people wounded and a 19-year-old man dead.

Reports surfaced Sunday night that NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was the apparent victim of a hate crime, after a “noose” was found hanging from the driver’s garage. In the midst of the reports, before the results of an investigation, The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill appeared on MSNBC airwaves to slam NASCAR and its fans for being what she suggested are anti-black racists. “This reminder is [a] very stunning, shocking, appalling, disgusting reminder of who, again, this sport is for,” Hill told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday, as noted by The Hill. “I’m very curious to see how NASCAR handles this, because...

NASCAR said it is investigating after a noose was found in the garage of black driver Bubba Wallace on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama. "Late this afternoon, NASCAR was made aware that a noose was found in the garage stall of the 43 team. We are angry and outraged, and cannot state strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous act," NASCAR said in a statement. "We have launched an immediate investigation, and will do everything we can to identify the person(s) responsible and eliminate them from the sport. "As we have stated unequivocally, there is no place...

Every single one in this photo will get what is coming to them," read the ominous Instagram message sent to several students of color at the University of La Verne, east of Los Angeles, in March 2019. The accompanying black-and-white photo was of a group of outspoken students who were well-known on campus for organizing anti-racism protests. Seen in the photo: Anayeli Dominguez Peña, a Mexican-American graduate student and vocal social-justice campaigner. She had been instrumental in organizing numerous protests in the Decolonize ULV group she co-led. "That wet back bitch Anayeli and that n---r Jasmine need to SHUT THEIR...