In late September, several news outlets ran the story of Amari Allen, a 12-year-old sixth-grader. She attends the Immanuel Christian School, a private religious school, in Springfield, Virginia in Fairfax County. The school is known because Vice President Mike Pence’s wife works there two days a week part-time as an art teacher. Amari Allen alleged that three boys held her down at recess and cut her hair which was dreadlocks and allegedly said that her hair “was ugly and nappy.” At first, this would appear to be a case of bullying taken to an extreme. What made it worse to the media is that Amari Allen is black and the Vice President’s wife works there part-time.

It did not take long for school authorities and the police investigating the incident to find out that the whole hair-cutting incident was a blatant lie. Surveillance coverage showed no such incident. Almost immediately after the report of the alleged sixth-grade hate crime, the Allen family had hired a lawyer. The local NAACP chapter had predictably weighed in.

The family then issued an apology to the school and the accused boys. Allen’s guardians should have been suspicious from the start as the cut dreadlocks were discovered days after the alleged incident while the grandmother was fixing the girl’s hair.

Although the young girl made false accusations and wasted the time and resources of the police and school officials, the head of the school, Stephen Danish, released this ridiculous statement (emphasis mine):

While we are relieved to hear the truth and bring the events of the past few days to a close, we also feel tremendous pain for the victims and the hurt on both sides of this conflict. We recognize that we now enter what will be a long season of healing. This ordeal has revealed that we as a school family are not immune from the effects of deep racial wounds in our society. We view this incident as an opportunity to be part of a learning and healing process, and we will continue to support the students and families involved.

There were no “victims and (the) hurt on both sides of this conflict.” There was hurt inflicted on one side by a person on the other side. Three white boys falsely accused of something that required a police investigation are the only victims here. Ms. Allen is not a victim. And how someone falsely accusing someone of what would amount to a hate crime hoax reveals “the effects of deep racial wounds in our society” boggles the mind.

This was a hate crime hoax plain and simple. NBC’s follow-up coverage of Ms. Allen admitting she lied about the incident received considerably less coverage than the actual lie. In fact, they linked to a study by some college professor who claimed that hate crime hoaxes are “extremely rare.” That seems to go against the findings of another professor at Kentucky State University, Wilfred Reilly, who actually compiled data and found that less than 33% of reported hate crimes are legitimate.

However, the list of alleged hate crimes is long and the list of hoaxes or false charges just as long:

a gay bar burns down in Chicago against charges of homophobia; the owner is convicted of arson and insurance fraud;

black students in Wisconsin report death threats and a noose sent by white students; black students wrote the notes and left the noose;

a gay pastor in Texas accuses Whole Foods of selling him a cake with a gay slur; video showed no such thing;

signs designating black and white bathrooms in a college in Buffalo are posted; a black student is discovered to have placed them.

These are just a few of the incidents cited by Reilly in his study. So why do hate crime hoaxes persist? The answer is that there are people vested in racial animosity in this country- civil rights organizations, the legal profession, and professors in any grievance studies department on college campuses.

The fact that the Allen family hired a lawyer within hours of finding out that Amari Allen had a few dreadlocks missing is telling. Victimhood is a profitable venture. Whether through lawsuits, crowdfunding on the Internet, gaining a cooing audience on national television, or a few plaudits from your professors on campus, there is something to be had from these hoaxes. Convince people of the crime and presidential candidates will seek you out.

Most disturbing is the reaction by people after the hoax is revealed. In almost all cases this writer knows, the follow-up reaction is identical to the thoughts expressed by Mr. Danish above: the hate crime hoax either opened up an important conversation, or it reveals “the effects of deep racial wounds in our society.”

The fact is there are precious few real hate crimes perpetrated in the United States. There are lots of reports of hate crimes, but a report and the truth are often two very different things. So what is a good Leftist to do? They go shopping for a hate crime. Reporters like Sabrina Eberly at Rolling Stone created a story that the media fell for wholesale. If not telling outright lies, the definitions of “racism” and “homophobia” are expanded to include tiny infractions which they label “microaggressions.”

We live in the most tolerant of times when it comes to women, racial groups, and gays. If anything, we have overcompensated in these areas where lies, slanders, and hoaxes are tolerated because they “open a conversation” or show “racial wounds in society.” The only conversation should be that the perpetrators are liars and the only perceived racial wounds are just that- false perceptions.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this phenomenon is that it anesthetizes the public when a real hate crime occurs. If you are the boy (is that a microaggression?) that cries wolf too many times, no one believes you when the real wolf appears. Perhaps, women, gays, and racial minorities should revisit their Aesop fables.

Or perhaps the victims of a hate crime hoax should fight back financially against their false accusers. Making the Allen family pay for the police who investigated the alleged crime in Virginia, or Whole Foods suing the gay pastor in Texas for slander, or a college in Wisconsin expelling black students who send themselves racist notes and hang nooses on their own doors may be the answer.

But instead, the targets of these hoaxes signal their virtue and extend the usual platitudes about racial wounds and a needed conversation on “something.” Instead of fighting back, the real victims in these stories curl into a ball. But there is an upside. Perhaps the CIA can hire these liars to run some false flag operations. They do a great job of fooling the American media.