THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 8, 1994 TAG: 9411080329
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Marc Tibbs
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
I fell for Susan's Smith story, hook, line and sinker.
I believed her when she stood, shaken, before the television cameras and pleaded with a fictional kidnapper to return her two boys. I believed her when she broadcast a plea for her sons to be strong, to depend on each other, to know they still had a loving mother.
Maybe that's part of the anger I feel now. Smith snuffed out two innocent souls, and she hoodwinked a lot of us in the process.
Now, some people in the black community, the Rev. Jesse Jackson among them, say Susan Smith is guilty of an even more cruel hoax: playing the race card.
They say that by concocting her story with a black male villain she played on the worst fears of white Americans - being victimized by a black man.
By accusing a black man, the argument goes, Smith's tale would somehow be more credible. America, after all, is more likely to believe that a black man could commit such a heinous act.
A big, black man, wearing a knit cap. If cops were ever to find that ominous figure, we could solve every mystery from the disappearance of Amelia Earhart to who killed Cock Robin.
Jesse Jackson is preaching that in the Smith case, somebody owes the black community an apology. My question is: Who?
I didn't believe Susan Smith because she described a black villain. In fact, I don't think many of us - white or black - focused on the race of the villain in this case much at all.
Susan Smith wrenched our hearts because, naively, we believe in the sanctity of parenthood. We believed her because our parents taught us that children are to be protected, not harmed. She could have described a green attacker and still gotten our sympathies.
As one woman in Union, S.C., said: ``This is not a black-white thing. This is babies.''
Even if Smith's story had been true - if that composite drawing had somehow materialized into a real person - as a black man, I'd have felt no kinship to him and no shame.
To be offended by Susan Smith's racially tinged hoax is, in itself, a racial stereotype. To think that one black criminal, even an imaginary one, casts a pall over all black people is ludicrous. We implore others not to judge us by the actions of a few. Now, it seems we're doing just that.
It's self-flagellation of the worst kind.
Critics are comparing Smith's story to the story of Boston's Charles Stuart, who police believe killed his pregnant wife, then sent the city on a rampage to find a fictitious ``black suspect.'' Stuart even identified a man in a police lineup.
In that 1989 case, police inundated a black section of Boston with 100 extra police officers who threw a dragnet over the neighborhood and violated the civil rights of scores of innocent black men. Mayor Raymond Flynn accused Stuart of damaging race relations.
Then, an apology was warranted.
But all of white America can't bear Susan Smith's burden.
Who owes us an apology? Who, but Susan Smith, can say ``I'm sorry'' for her devious tale. And what value is there in an apology from a woman so heartless that she could murder her own children? by CNB