THE U. of IOWA STATE RACIAL HOAX

Here we go again.

Last week we were told about a disgraceful racial crime, in which a young University of Iowa State student, Marcus Owens, was severely beaten by three White men, who hurled racial epithets at him.   Not surprisingly, this sent shock waves through the campus and generated angry calls for justice.

Except it didn’t happen.

Excerpted from Blake Neff’s article at powerlineblog.com:

A savage hate crime at the University of Iowa that sent shockwaves across campus turned out to be just another hoax, police said Tuesday.

The case of Marcus Owens caused a deluge of outrage when it first emerged in early May. Owens claimed on the night of April 30 he was attacked, out of nowhere and without provocation, by three white college-age men, who beat him bloody while screaming racial slurs and landed him in the hospital.

But after a two-week investigation, Iowa City police have concluded, after interviewing witnesses and viewing surveillance footage, that no hate crime occurred at all, and that Owens’ account of his injuries was almost completely false.

In Owens’ account, he arrived at the Eden Lounge, an Iowa City bar, around 9 p.m., stepped out for a phone call around 10 p.m., and was then attacked.

But footage, which was released by police, shows a very different series of events. The footage shows Owens entered the bar close to midnight, and then getting involved in a massive bar melee around 1:35 a.m. He was kicked out of the bar, and then proceeded to get in two additional fights within the next 10 minutes. In all of the fights Owens is acting aggressively and throwing punches, and police say he appears to have been the instigator in at least one of the fights.

While at least one participant in the fighting does seem to have yelled a racial slur, that’s not enough to justify a hate crime charge, police said.

Owens and his family have issued an apology, blaming his actions on a mixture of alcohol and embarrassment.

Isn’t that great?  Marcus Owens lies about a racial attack, and when the lie becomes so clear that there’s no way to fake it, he and his family say “Gee, I’m sorry”.  Problem over.  No harm no foul.  He gets a mulligan.

Suppose the three White men really had committed the racial attack Owens fabricated, lied about him starting it, and when the lie became evident they just apologized for it?  Would they be able to walk away free and clear?

Elsewhere in the article it is pointed out that a student asks “How many Black students must be a victim of a hate crime before an alert is sent out”?

Maybe the right question is “How many Black hoaxsters must lie about being victims of hate crimes before no one believes Black people who make such claims – even when the hate crimes are real”?

Marcus Owens and his family didn’t apologize for that, did they?