The 2022-23 school year saw 13 hate crime hoaxes and six questionable claims, according to a College Fix analysis.
Sports competitions continue to oddly be a source for race hoaxes, despite the omnipresence of phones that can capture alleged racial slurs.
Pennsylvania State University fans found themselves falsely accused of using racial slurs against Rutgers University’s men’s basketball team. “Further investigation into reported fan behavior at the Penn State versus Rutgers basketball game on [Feb. 26] has found that no apparent racial slurs were used by Penn State fans,” the university announced.
By now, it should be clear that claims of racial slurs at sports games are likely not true.
The hoax that attracted the most attention of them all began in August, when Duke University volleyball player Rachel Richardson claimed that someone at a game against Brigham Young University kept yelling the n-word at her. This is actually two hate crime hoaxes, because her godmother also claimed that someone yelled the word every single time the black volleyball player went to serve.
The hoax led the University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach to cancel a game against BYU, even after the hoax had been debunked. The University of Pacific canceled its game against BYU after the debunked hoax as well.
August was a busy time for hate crime hoaxes, as that is when a black female in a “head scarf” named Zaynab Bintabdul-Hadijakien was charged for an attack on the Black Cultural Center. UVA officials would not identify the suspect, and even a police report redacted her race, but The Fix dug around and found out she is a black female.
Even when a black Democrat at Harvard University stood accused of yelling a “homophobic slur” at a peer, LGBT students on campus blamed the pro-life club. This did not appear to be part of a rhetorical exercise, like when the president of MIT’s student government perpetrated two campus hate-crime hoaxes, hanging posters and chalking slurs against LGBTQ people, Latinos and other “marginalized communities,” to protest free speech.
He was not the only LGBT person who left slurs for others in his tribe. For example, a “non-binary” University of Connecticut student found “homophobic language” on a dorm room door – but the culprits were other LGBTQ students.
Other race hoaxes this school year include: the juvenile allegedly behind the bomb threats against historically black colleges and universities, a black man who trashed the University of Florida’s Institute for Black Culture sign, and the claim that white students surrounded a black female student at Sam Houston State University and poured water on her.
The university told The Fix in September 2022 that police were “unable to verify” the claim.
Hellbound and Down 