Ypsilanti, in case you missed it, is back in the national news. According to Eastern Michigan University’s chief of police, Robert Heighes, they believe they now know the identity of the vandal who, on three occasions last fall, spray-painted vile, racist messages targeting black students on University buildings. Here’s how the story in the Washington Post begins.

Yes, you read that right. The suspect isn’t one of Richard Spencer’s local acolytes, as many of us suspected would likely be the case, but a young, black, former EMU student. And, as you might imagine, the conservative blogs are having a field day, holding the story up as evidence of the fact that anti-black racism no longer exists in America, the same way, every time we get a big snowfall, people on the anti-science right invariably emerge to pronounce that the existence of winter proves climate change is a hoax.

The truth, as most of us know, however, is that racism is alive and well in America, regardless of who might have been responsible for the graffiti spray painted at EMU. One doesn’t have to look too far for examples. Some, I’m sure, would even argue that the University’s response to the graffiti in question was racist, seeing as how members of the administration appeared, at least at first, to be more interested in punishing those black students who were protesting than addressing the existence of racism on campus.

But, yes, it sucks when things like this happen. It sucks when people lie about serious issues like this, and, in the process, make it more difficult for real victims of crimes like these to come forward and be taken seriously. In the past year alone, we’ve had both a young University of Michigan student claiming to have been attacked by a safety pin-wielding Trump supporter, and a young Muslim woman in Ann Arbor claiming to have been forced to remove her hijab by a white man, neither of which, it would seem, turned out to be true. And it’s not just a liberal phenomenon. As you might recall, there was also a College Republican in Ann Arbor not too long ago who claimed to have been attacked by liberal thugs. And who can forget the story of the young Republican who said that supporters of Barack Obama had carved the letter “B” on her face?

There are some 325 million people in this country, and, guess what? Some small percentage of them have serious issues… issues that compel them to insinuate themselves into current events, weave false narratives, seek out attention, etc. And, as I see it, it’s our job to guard against cynicism that comes along with knowing that.

So, I know it probably goes without saying for most of you, but just because the perpetrator in this case may have been a black man, does not mean that we should just assume, the next time something like this happens, it’s probably not real.

Some people have suggested that I should apologize for having covered the story in the first place. I guess they think I should have just looked the other way when I’d heard that someone had spray painted “KKK” and “Leave N…ers” on the side of a University administration building, or, at the very least, I should have added a sub-head alerting people to the possibility that the perpetrator may not be a white man, but someone aiming to make white men look worse than they already do. I just don’t see how that kind of cynicism really helps move us forward, though. Quite the contrary, I think it would likely give rise to an environment where women are more reluctant to come forward with stories of sexual harassment, people of color are more reluctant to share their experiences, and kids are more reluctant to tell us when they’re being bullied. And wants to go back to that? So, yes, I acknowledge that, every once in a while, we’re manipulated by people who, for whatever reason, attempt to insinuate themselves into the truly big, important narratives of our day. I refuse, however, to stop listening.