On Jan. 29, “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett reported that he had been targeted in an apparent hate crime in Chicago, where two men had shouted racist and homophobic slurs at him before beating him, dousing him in a chemical substance and putting a noose around his neck. Since the incident, Chicago police have seemed to suggest that Smollett falsified the police report and had actually organized the alleged attack. 

This entire fiasco has done nothing but damage cultural conversations about hate crimes directed at people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals in this country. It has put groups that are at higher risk of hate crimes in a heightened state of fear that their reports will be ignored and that people will question their accuracy. If it is true that Smollett lied, as the case has not yet gone to court, then he was in the wrong, for sure. But that does not mean all hate crime reports are false or that victims should be examined more closely.

A few inconsistencies have risen up in the fallout of this situation. First, why did this story specifically get so much attention? Was it because Smollett was a celebrity? Perhaps, but celebrities have been accused of filing false reports before. Famously, Ryan Lochte, an Olympic swimmer for the U.S., alleged that he had been the victim of an armed robbery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the 2016 Olympic Games. While that story did get some headlines, it did not prompt a message from then-President Barack Obama on the topic, as President Trump has done with the Smollett case. And it certainly did not dominate news cycles for weeks on end. 

So the story must have gotten so much attention because of the brutality of it, right? Again, that seems inaccurate. While the alleged attack did draw on some viciously hateful concepts, people across the country are tortured and killed in hate crimes fairly often. On Feb. 16, Indiana University graduate Mustafa Ayoub was shot and killed in Indianapolis in a hate crime based on his Muslim faith. On Jan. 6, Dana Martin, a black trans woman, was killed in her vehicle in Montgomery, Alabama, because of her gender identity. In May of 2013, Gabriel Fernandez, an 8-year-old boy, was killed by a man because he thought the boy was gay. Fernandez had his skull fractured and 12 ribs broken and was forced to eat cat feces. When Fernandez went to sleep, he was tied up, gagged and shoved into a closet for the night. Clearly, the brutality of the alleged attack is not what is driving the conversation. 

If it is the combination of the falsehood, the celebrity and the use of hateful marks that is driving the interest in Smollett’s story, that can be forgiven of the public. People love a spectacle. But people need to ask themselves, honestly and truly, is this what we want our era to be known for – to laugh at someone for apparently using a horrible sign of our times in a failed attempt to elevate their own career, while people who actually experience this kind of violence every day go unheard? And then, in the ultimate insult to a society, use that one person’s poor judgement as an excuse to call them liars? 

Smollett seems to have used hate as a possible avenue to fame. Do not allow him to have the final legacy of making people doubt the true victims of hate in this country. 

Photo from ABC News via YouTube