Gallup began polling opinions of race relations back in 2001. At that point, 70 percent of black Americans graded race relations as “very good” or “somewhat good,” while 62 percent of white people agreed.

Think about that… Eighteen years ago, black people were more satisfied with race relations than white people.

For another dozen years, outside of a bump here and a hiccup there, those numbers held. On average, more than 60 percent of black people and around 70 percent of white people gauged race relations as good.

In 2013, all was still good. More than two-thirds of blacks and whites were optimistic about race relations, and then it all collapsed. We went into a five-year dive we have still not recovered from. In the latest polling, only 55 percent of whites and 49 percent of blacks view race relations in a positive light.

So what happened in 2013?

What suddenly killed everything?

The answer, sadly, is an organized media hoax: the death of Trayvon Martin.

In February 2012, George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man, shot and killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense.

But if you recall, in February 2012, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign was just starting to gear up, and after three years of failure, he needed a cause to turn out his base. And so the media came running to his aid and turned the Hispanic Zimmerman into a white man, turned an act of self-defense into a white man hunting down a black teenager, and went so far as to try and frame Zimmerman by fabricating evidence against him.

CNN and NBC News both manipulated Zimmerman’s 9-1-1 tape to twist him into a racist. ABC News practically airbrushed a photo of Zimmerman’s scalp to remove the wounds he received in his struggle with Martin.

Although exonerated in a court of law, Zimmerman was tried and convicted by the media using lies, fabricated evidence, and outright racism; and to their forever disgrace, President Obama and the Democrats milked this hoax for all it was worth.

You see, it was at this point when the media and Democrats went all-in on identity politics, and in the five years since, they have never looked back. The result has been an endless series of hate crime hoaxes that the media are either complicit in manufacturing or eagerly advancing. And nothing can stop them, not the damage to their own credibility, not even tragedy and death.

The summer of 2014 was the summer of the Michael Brown hoax — the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” hoax, which ended with the burning of large parts of the predominantly black, working class city of Ferguson, Missouri, and countless attacks on police officers, including assassinations.

After Donald Trump won the presidency, the media’s hate crime hoax machine went into overdrive, starting with Charleston, Virginia, where the media falsely accused the president of saying there are good Nazis (He did not.) and falsely claimed he did not condemn the white supremacists who gathered there. (He did, more than once.)

On top of that lie, there were…

The anti-Muslim hoax at the University of Michigan.

The bisexual hate mail hoax at North Park University.

The black woman accosted by Trump supporters hoax at a Philadelphia gas station.

The Muslim who had her hijab ripped off her head by a MAGA-hat wearing racist hoax in Louisiana.

The guy who spray-painted “Heil Trump” on his own church hoax in Indiana.

The Muslim woman attacked by Trump supporters hoax in New York.

The Whole Foods wrote “fag” on my cake hoax in Texas.

The white guy paints “nigger lover” on his own garage and sets his own cars on fire hoax in Texas.

The Muslim woman who slashed her own face hoax in New York.

The Muslim student writes hate graffiti on his own door hoax at Beloit College.

The black student who wrote racist notes hoax at St. Olaf College.

The guy in the Air Force who wrote “Go home nigger” to himself hoax in Colorado.

The man who wrote racist slurs on his own car hoax in Kansas City.

The non-white guy who wrote racist slurs in a bathroom hoax in Missouri.

The waiter who wrote a racist note to himself hoax in Texas.

The waitress who wrote a racist note to herself hoax in Texas.

The woman who slashed her own tires and wrote a note to herself hoax in Long Island.

The student who wrote racist notes to herself hoax at Drake University.

The black church burned in the name of Trump by a black parishioner hoax in Mississippi.

The Great Chipotle Race Hoax of 2018.

And on and on and on….

Almost all of these hoaxes received a massive amount of local and national media attention, and almost all of them were exploited by the media, Democrats, and left-wing activists to divide our country and advance the cause of identity politics.

Already in 2019, a year that is not even two months old, the media have perpetrated two massive hate crime hoaxes.

In January, the media deliberately smeared a group of totally innocent Covington High School boys as racists simply because they are white, Christian, and wore Make America Great Again hats.

Not satisfied with that, the media then jumped with both feet into the Jussie Smollett hoax, even though they were skeptical of it from the beginning, which is something they are only admitting to us now.

Tell me again how the media are not the enemy of the American people.

What does an enemy do if not use lies to divide us, to create hostility where none existed before?

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.