Rumor in African American culture

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Some gossip, urban legends, hoaxes and conspiracy theories are particular to African-American culture. Methods of transmission include oral tradition, community grapevine and black talk radio, newspapers and celebrities. Mainstream media and politicians contribute also.

When stories are acknowledged to be false, the cause and solution are a matter of contention. One side emphasizes that these rumors are misreading of real oppression and that rumors will not cease until racial intolerance and inequity are fixed. The other side emphasizes the responsibility of the black community in accurate reporting and the history of racially inflammatory reporting in the media.

The explanation for why African-Americans might be more susceptible to believing rumors of paranoia is that there have been true incidents. The one most cited is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This is 40 year clinical study conducted from 1932 to 1972 around Tuskegee, Alabama. 400 poor, mostly illiterate African-American sharecroppers were not treated for their syphilis in order to study the natural progression of the disease. This was especially scandalous after 1947 when penicillin became available. The study was conducted by the black university Tuskegee Institute and the Center for Disease Control. Fear of the CDC would be a feature of future black rumors.

Contents 1 Examples 1.1 Accusations against businesses 1.2 Accusations against government 1.3 Riots 1.4 Physical Attacks 1.5 Other 2 Further reading

[edit] Examples

[edit] Accusations against businesses

• In April, 1991, rumors appeared in black neighborhoods that the soft drink Tropical Fantasy sterilizes black men and is owned by the Ku Klux Klan. The actual owner, the small family-owned soft-drink maker Brooklyn Bottling Group, suffered attacks on its drivers before slowly regaining trust through a massive publicity campaign. [1]
• During the 1980s, Church's Chicken was rumored to be owned by the Klan and to have an ingredient in the chicken that would sterilize black men. In 1984, a congressman had the FDA analyze Church's chicken to see if there was any truth in it. [2]
• Al Copeland, CEO of Church's, rumored to have given $25,000 to ex-KKK Grand Wizard David Duke's campaign and that Copeland stole his chicken recipe from a black maid that worked in his home despite the fact that his family did not employ domestics.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken has been claimed to be owned by the Klan and that the chicken is laced with a drug that makes only black men impotent. Ironically, the franchise is actually owned by an African-American.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders' will rumored to have left 10% of KFC's profits to the Ku Klux Klan [3] [4]
• Snapple's original label, with an old picture of the Boston Tea Party as background, was completely redesigned in 1994 after false rumors arose claiming the picture showed a slave ship. ABC's 20/20 empanelled a group of African-American consumers to discuss their suspicions about several consumer products, including Snapple. [5]
• Clothing designer Liz Claiborne rumored to have said on the Oprah Winfrey television program that she didn’t like to see black people wearing her clothes. She has never even been on Oprah's show but many blacks threw out their Liz Claiborne dresses. [6] [7]
• Marlboro rumored to be owned by the Ku Klux Klan [8]
• The company that makes crown-shaped air fresheners rumored to be owned by the Ku Klux Klan. [9]
• Timberland's logo is a tree which inspired a rumour that they were owned by the Klan and the tree represents one from which blacks were lynched. [10]
• Designer Tommy Hilfiger allegedly announced on a TV talk show that he does not want blacks and Asians to buy his clothes. [11]
• No Fear, Inc., a popular retailer, rumored to be the same as the European American Rights (N.O.F.E.A.R.), a white supremacist organization. [12]
• Rumors surfaced in Oakland, California that Troop Sport clothing was owned by the KKK, and that the name stands for "To Rule Over Oppressed People." Troop was established in 1985 by Teddy and Harvey Held, who are Jewish, and William Kim, who is Korean. This fact did not dissuade the rumoring and Troop went bankrupt. [13]
• Microsoft Word Thesaurus if given the phrase "I'd like all niggers to die" will suggest "I'll drink to that". [14]
• 40-ounce malt liquors rumored to contain "psycho-bio chemically engineered drugs" to undermine the mental and reproductive capabilities of the black consumer. [15]
• Coors allegedly finances Nazi groups. [16]
• KOOL menthol cigarettes rumored to be owned by the KKK and that menthols are part of an insidious plan to do away with African-Americans. [17]

[edit] Accusations against government

• Fourteen black colleges are about to be closed. [18]
• Legislation guaranteeing blacks the right to vote in the USA will expire in 2007. [19] [20]
• Texas governor George W. Bush "refused to sell his home to Blacks." [21]
• The United States Postal Service is discontinuing the "Black Heritage" series of stamps and destroying the remaining stock. [22] [23]
• Congress will be voting on a bill that would prohibit the use of affirmative action measures in admissions procedures at any colleges and universities that receive federal funding. [24]
• Night Doctors went around at night to round blacks up for medical experiments. [25]
• The U.S. government assigns Social Security numbers on the basis of race, a practice which permits employers to prescreen applicants to weed out those of color. [26] [27]
• Certain symbols displayed on the packaging of a variety of grocery items signify that their manufacturers have paid a secret tax to the Jews.
• A 2005 survey by the Rand Corporation and the Oregon State University showed that 25% of those surveyed believe that "poor and minority women are sometimes forced to be sterilized by the government". [28]
• The "powers that be" facilitated the crack epidemic and the AIDS epidemic. U.S. scientists created AIDS as a possible weapon and tested it on Africa because it did not care about the people there but could not stop the spread to America and Europe.
• In a 2005 survey of 500 African-Americans released by the Rand Corporation and Oregon State University, nearly half of respondents said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was created by scientists. Twelve percent attributed the creation and spread of AIDS to the CIA. According to a story in The Washington Post, 44 percent of the respondents regard people who take new HIV medicines as government guinea pigs, while another 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people. [29]
• The Atlanta Child Murders were the killing of 28 young African-American males between 1979 and 1981 for which 23 year old Wayne Williams was convicted. The rumor is that the FBI used parts of the 28 blacks for Interferon research.
• At Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi in 1943, more than 1,200 African-American soldiers in the 364th Infantry Regiment were supposedly massacred. The rumor didn't emerge until 1998 and has been refuted by still living soldiers of both races. The History Channel aired a documentary, "Mystery of the 364th" that encouraged this rumor. [30]
• Conspiracy to remove blacks from positions of power: various groups (e.g. FBI, CDC, etc) have been accused of being behind the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X and the halted careers of Adam Clayton Powell and Marion Barry. A cluster of such conspiracies exist around Clinton Administration figures Ron Brown, Lani Gunier, Jocelyn Elders, Henry Foster and Alexis Herman.
• Conspiracy to frame blacks for crimes they didn't commit: O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant. This conspiracy theory is lampooned in episode 807 ("The Jeffersons") of South Park.

[edit] Riots

• Amistad rebellion was set in motion when a mulatto cook told the captives that the whites intended to eat them. [31]
• 1917 Houston riots occurred when a rumor circulated that a Houston policeman had killed a black soldier in the Fourth Ward. [32]
• July 27, 1919, Chicago, 17 year old Eugene Williams crossed an unofficial color line in the water where he was bathing. As whites threw rocks in his direction, he panicked and drowned. Lifesaving measures were attempted by both whites and blacks without success. Rumors spread that the boy died from a rock hit. Another rumor stated that a police officer refused to arrest the white man who had thrown the stone but did arrest a black witness. Blacks rushed the police and there was violence for several days.
• 1935, Harlem, rumor that a white policeman had killed a 16 year old black shoplifter in a Harlem department store. Although an altercation had taken place, the man was not physically assaulted or murdered. No one was killed in the resulting riot but many white-owned businesses were destroyed.
• 1943, Harlem, a white police officer tried to arrest a black woman on disorderly conduct charges. A black military policeman objected and in the resulting argument, the white officer shot and wounded the black MP. Word spread that the soldier had been killed and a riot ignited resulting in no deaths but destroyed white property.
• The June 1943 Detroit race riot was started when Leo Tipton and Charles (Little Willie) Lyons falsely told a black crowd at the Forest Social Club that whites had thrown a black woman and her baby off the Belle Isle Bridge. [33]
• On August 11, 1965, in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, police officers stopped an intoxicated black driver in South Central Los Angeles. He resisted arrest and was forcibly subdued. A rumor quickly spread that the officers had beaten a pregnant black woman. The incident snowballed into a five-day riot with the mostly black residents destroying a thousand businesses. Thirty-four people died, more than 1,000 were hospitalized and nearly 4,000 were arrested. [34]
• On July 12, 1967, in Newark, New Jersey, black cab driver John Smith was arrested for a traffic violation and arrived at the police station badly beaten (supposedly incurred while resisting arrest). He was later taken out the back entrance to a local hospital but witnesses not seeing him leave spread the rumor that he had been killed. In the resulting riot, 26 people died. [35]
• In June 2003, Benton Harbor, Michigan, a two night riot erupted when motorcyclist Terrance Devon Shurn died from a crash while eluding police and a rumor started that the police car intentually bumped the motorcycle [36]
• In May 2004, Cincinnati, a riot erupted when police pulled over Antwand Yett who immediately shot himself and a rumor started that the police shot him instead. [37]
• In October 2005 in Birmingham England a rumour that a black teenage girl had been gang raped in an Asian beauty parlour, spread on pirate radio stations, led to several days of riots which killed two people. [38]

[edit] Physical Attacks

• On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley claimed she was raped in Wappinger Falls, New York by six white men, including a police officer and a member of the district attorneys office, and the word "nigger" written on her with dog feces. She changed her story to only sexual abuse when the results of a rape test came back negative. In 1998, the prosecutor, Steven Pagones, was awarded a $345,000 (though he requested $150 million) defamation of character judgment against Brawley's representatives Al Sharpton, Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason.
• In 1997, U.S. District Judge James Ware of San Jose, California, withdrew his nomination to a federal appeals court after it was revealed he had lied in claiming to be the brother of a black teen-ager killed by whites in 1963 in Birmingham, Ala. Ware had repeatedly told the story in published interviews.
• For years, James Hood, who broke the color barrier at the University of Alabama in 1963, told a chilling tale of how he watched Ku Klux Klansmen hang and burn his uncle in Alabama in the 1950s. In May, 1998, Hood admitted he made it all up. [39]
• In June, 1998, a black man who claimed that three white men dragged him alongside their car, taunting him with racial epithets, admitted he lied to cover up a bungled drug deal, police said. Cornelius Weaver, 23, of Slidell, near New Orleans, confessed that he was hurt while trying to get back three rocks of crack cocaine after two white women paid for the drugs with a crumpled piece of paper, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Department spokesman James Hartman said.
• In May 2005, a 16-year-old black Valencia High School student called 911 and falsely reported a race riot on campus. [40]

[edit] Other

• The word "Picnic" rumored to be a shortening of two words meaning hang a black man while having lunch [41]
• The word "Buck" for dollar rumored to be a reference to black male slaves. [42]
• Elvis Presley allegedly once said, "The only thing a nigger can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." [43]
• 311's innocuous name accused of masking ties to white supremacy, because 'K' is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, and 'K' repeated three times equals 'KKK'. [44]
• An email message claims to be the transcript of an interview with tennis star Serena Williams in which she states that it is better to date white men than black men. [45]

[edit] Further reading

• Turner, Patricia A. I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Rumors in African-American Culture. ISBN 0-520-08936-7.
• Fine, Gary Alan, Patricia A. Turner. Whispers on the Color Line : Rumor and Race in America. ISBN 0-520-22855-3.
• Fine, Gary Alan. Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend. ISBN 0-202-30746-8.
• Fine, Gary Alan. Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends. ISBN 0-87049-755-3.
• Pattillo-McCoy, Mary. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. ISBN 0-226-64929-6.
• Odum, Howard, Bryant Simon. Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties. ISBN 0-8018-5757-0.
• Knopf, Terry Ann. Rumors, Race, and Riots. ISBN 0-87855-063-1.
• Russell, Katheryn K, Katheryn Russell-Brown. The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions. ISBN 0-8147-7471-7.
• Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. ISBN 0-202-01092-9.
• Conspiracy beliefs among African-Americans
• Roots of Conspiracy Theory in the Black Community
• Conservative critiques of African-American culture
• Botha's plan for blacks