The more things change, the more they stay the same. A powerful essay with a strong ring of truth to it.
"A man and a woman had me," a sobbing Runaway Bride, Jennifer Wilbanks, told her jilted fiance when she finally phoned home. But not just any man: It was specifically a Hispanic man -- abetted by a white woman -- who supposedly had snatched her from the mean streets of Duluth, Ga., on the eve of her wedding. She told police a graphic tale of horrifying sexual abuse at the hands of this Hispanic beast, whose mobile den of iniquity was a blue van.
It was all a bunch of lies, of course. That Wilbanks and her patience-of-Job boyfriend will pocket a half-million dollars for her flakiness and mendacity (the poor guy has earned his share, in my view) would be a good subject for a future column. But this one has a different purpose: to welcome my Latino brethren into the fraternity of those eligible to be falsely accused of ravishing the delicate flower of white American womanhood. ( Bienvenidos , guys.)
For the nation to become hooked on the story of a Damsel in Distress, certain ingredients are apparently essential -- the woman at the center of the story has to be young, white, attractive and preferably middle class or better. But another spice is often added to the stew -- not always, to be sure, but often -- to make it irresistible: the specter of a brutish, dark-skinned villain.
snip
I have to think that there's something at work, perhaps at a subconscious level, that draws television cameras, baying legal analysts and rapt cable news viewers to the myth of the dark intruder and the innocent white female victim. I think liars resort to it because it feels credible to them, and so they believe it will be credible to others.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062701320.html
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