Another bum rap

Boston’s African-American community was framed. It is bizarre to consider a whole community being caught in a frame-up, but that is what happened. When Charles Stuart asserted that he and his wife were shot by a black robber in Roxbury, the reputation of the whole community and all its black residents suffered a debilitating blow.

Now it turns out that there was no black robber. Charles Stuart apparently shot his wife, who was seven months pregnant, and then shot himself. He gave the gun and his wife’s purse to an accomplice, and then drove to a black neighborhood and called the police on his car phone.

Stuart was a manipulative person who knew how to win public sympathy and conceal his own infamous act. He understood that if he blamed a black he would be instantly believed. What if the incident had occurred in Reading and the alleged assailant were white? Stuart would immediately have been considered a suspect despite the severity of his wound. There would have been public doubt rather than instant sympathy. The police, the District Attorney and the media chose to ignore many aspects of Stuart’s account which should have raised questions. Would a robust man drive away from a well lit, heavily trafficked intersection to a dark secluded area at the behest of a crazed gunman? Why were there no fingerprints of the robber in the car? Why would the robber reach over the seat and shoot Stuart in the abdomen at such an awkward angle? Why were the police unable to find the wife’s purse and other effects of little value in the area?

If none of those questions aroused the suspicion of the Homicide Division, why did they not become aware that something could be wrong when the hospital discovered that Stuart was a cocaine user? There was at least the obvious possibility that the shooting was related to Stuart’s involvement with drugs.

And the media went blithely along ignoring those questions and accepting the reports of the police and the District Attorney. No one seemed to dare to raise a question about Stuart’s veracity. After all, it was only the integrity of the African-American community that was being compromised.

The essence of the situation was summed up by a comment attributed to District Attorney Newman Flanagan at his press conference after Stuart’s suicide. When Flanagan asserted that Stuart was a suspect from the beginning, a reporter asked why that information was not revealed. Flanagan reportedly replied that he did not want to impugn the reputation of an upstanding citizen. Charles Stuart — murderer, thief, drug abuser, liar — an upstanding citizen? What about all of the honest, hard working, African-American citizens of Boston who had to bear the stigma of this infamous act since October?

Racism in America has caused African-Americans to identify and empathize with one another. Blacks were ashamed that a member of the community would commit such an infamous deed. It was as though a member of the family were guilty. It is doubtful that whites in a community relate to one another in the same way. That is why blacks are incensed over the cover-up. Blacks in Boston should learn from this incident. Now they know where they stand.