Why Brian Williams got away with pandering to racial stereotypes about black gangs

Now it turns out that the temporarily defrocked NBC news anchor Brian Williams may have blatantly lied about being terrorized by gangs during the Katrina debacle in 2005. Williams repeatedly said that during his stay at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New Orleans while covering the Katrina nightmare he and other guests and refugees at the hotel were assailed, assaulted and threatened by an armed gang. Williams, as with his other dubious personal news coverage claims, got away with this whopper for years. Now guests, police officers and security personnel who were at or near the hotel say that at best, Williams wildly exaggerated the threat, and at worst, plainly lied. None said that they witnessed any gangs wielding guns or commandeering the hotel during the crisis.

But Williams’ claim was unquestioned for two reasons. One is obvious. It was Williams saying it, and after all, would the respected face of American TV journalism, lie? The other reason is less obvious, but far more insidious. The assumption was that the gangs were young black males, since the media quickly latched on to the narrative that New Orleans before, during and in the immediate aftermath of Katrina was held siege by desperate criminal bands of out-of-control black thugs. Despite all evidence that debunked this lie, it was looped so long and so often it became accepted fact.

It still is, because it rests on the pantheon of stereotypes and negative typecasting of young black males that likely had deadly consequences in New Orleans with the number that were assaulted or killed by police during the Katrina chaos. Put plainly, it’s the shortest of short steps to think that if innocents can be depicted as a caricature of the terrifying image that much of the public harbors about young black males, then that image seems real, even more terrifying, and that can produce lethal consequences for other black males.

The hope was that President Obama’s election buried once and for all the negative racial typecasting and the perennial threat racial stereotypes posed to the safety and well-being of black males. It did no such thing. Immediately after Obama’s election teams of researchers from several major universities found that much of the public still perceived those most likely to commit crimes are poor, jobless and black. The study did more than affirm that race, poverty and crime were firmly rammed together in the public mind. It showed that once planted, the stereotype is virtually impossible to root out.

In 2003, Penn State University researchers conducted a landmark study on the tie between crime and perceptions of who is most likely to commit crime. The study found that many whites are likely to associate pictures of blacks with violent crime. This was no surprise, given the relentless media depictions of young blacks as dope-peddling gang bangers and drive-by shooters. The Penn State study found that even when blacks didn’t commit a specific crime, whites still misidentified the perpetrator as an African-American.

Five years later, university researchers wanted to see if that stereotype still held sway, even as white voters were near unanimous that race made no difference in whether they would vote for Obama. Researchers still found public attitudes on crime and race unchanged. The majority of whites still overwhelmingly fingered blacks as the most likely to commit crimes, even when they didn’t commit them.

The bulging numbers of blacks in America’s jails and prisons seem to reinforce the wrong-headed perception that crime and violence in America invariably comes with a young, black male face such as those in New Orleans that Williams claimed terrorized him and the city during those horrific days.

Williams has been called out on his other exaggerations and lies and he’s off the air for the time being. But so far, he hasn’t recanted or offered any real apology for his gang terrorizing claim in New Orleans. Here’s the rub. Even if he does, it won’t change much. Millions will still think and believe that while Williams may have conned the public on black thugs in New Orleans, they are still a menace everywhere else.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.