Another Bogus College “Hate Crime”

Not news, but we wanted to record it here: from the Chicago Tribune:

Marcus Owens is an African-American student at the University of Iowa, and he told police he was set upon by three white men when he left a bar to go into an alley to use his cellphone. The men beat him severely as they hurled racial epithets, he said. And with his front teeth broken, his lip cut so badly it required stitches and his face swollen, he certainly looked the part of the victim.

The attack was given considerable coverage in Iowa City and Chicago-area media, and the Iowa City police “treated the investigation as a major case with the dedication of all available resources,” according to a department news release.

Race-based attacks — hate crimes — are particularly sickening, particularly threatening, as they simultaneously intimidate and indict whole communities of people.

By examining multiple surveillance videos, what police said they found was that Owens, apparently quite drunk, was an instigator, not a victim, in three fistfights inside a bar and on a downtown street.

“The original altercations stemmed from a disagreement between two students who are members of fraternities,” said the police news release. “According to witnesses, the ‘n-word’ was used by one individual at the time of the second altercation … (but) the FBI determined that the facts of this investigation did not meet the criteria necessary to be labeled as a hate crime.”

The police news release also said, “According to multiple witness accounts, Owens was reported to have made statements being concerned about his injuries sustained during the altercations and how he was going to inform his family.”

Of course, the Social Justice Warriors got engaged:

Student and faculty supporters staged a protest on his behalf charging the university with insufficient urgency in response to a racially inspired attack (which did not take place on campus). They created a Twitter hashtag #explainiowa to whip up concern and anger.

“It is being applied to communicate moral indignation of Marcus Owens’ attack,” Cassie Barnhardt, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership studies, told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The hashtag was intended “to provoke a response from university administrators, and it is serving as an invitation of sorts to prompt others in the community to think about and pay attention to acts of racial aggression and bias.”

There have been many such bogus racial incidents in the last few years. They are fueled by the fact that campus leftists immediately accept the narrative of black racial victimization, and don’t feel the need to wait until the facts are in. After all, instances of anti-black racism make them feel self-righteous. Blacks exploiting race undercuts a narrative in which they have a huge emotional investment. The campus leftists are, in effect, both encouraging bogus claims of racial victimization, and being exploited by people like Marcus Owens.