Danielle McLaughlin
My family and I cast off this week for Puerto Rico. A long-planned trip to seek refuge from February’s frigidity, we returned to an area of San Juan we know well. We wanted to spend our tourist dollars in an area hurt badly by hurricanes Maria and Irma just 17 months earlier. We were curious to see how the recovery was going. We wanted to escape not only the cold, but the onslaught of political and societal tumult we experience daily.
It almost worked.
Like everyone else this week, we learned of the apparent hate crime hoax by Empire actor Jussie Smollett. Smollett alleged that he had received racist, homophobic hate mail, and had weeks later been attacked in Chicago by two men who shouted slurs at him, assaulted him, told him he was in ‘‘MAGA Country’’, and poured bleach over him.
He conducted a veritable media tour, terrible and sympathetic as his story appeared to many. It was a high-profile story that seemed to personify ugly facts about America today – 2018 saw a record number of crimes by white supremacists, and a record number of hate groups in existence.
It was all, apparently, a lie. According to the Chicago Police Department, Smollett sent the letters to himself, and paid two brothers to stage the attack. The actor’s alleged motive to construct his victimhood was money. He was dissatisfied with his US$65,000-per-episode salary. Yes, you read that right.
The details of the Smollett story are perhaps less important than its symbolism.
Americans’ views are, of course, shaped by their experiences. But they are also formed – and reinforced – by wildly divergent media outlets. Americans are drawn into a constant parade of narratives (both true and false) that they either accept or reject, in part because of their implicit biases.
Those who have visibility on rising hate crimes and who believe that the MAGA movement is exclusionary and bigoted believed Smollett, because they saw the incident as reflecting a new and awful reality. Cynics felt in their bones that Smollett’s story was fake, because they do not see discrimination in the president’s vow to ‘‘Make America Great Again’’.
We’ve been here before. And recently. The MAGA hat-wearing Catholic school student Nick Sandmann and Native American elder Nathan Phillips. Depending on your view, either the teen smirked, condescending and arrogant, as Phillips tried to defuse a confrontation. Or the teen was simply smiling, listening to Phillips’ music and standing his ground as Phillips pushed his way into the group of boys.
And it’s not just Americans. Supporters of Brexit characterise Europe and European immigrants in a vastly different way to supporters of the ‘‘stay’’ movement. The gilets jaunes rioters in France consider President Emmanuel Macron’s fuel tax increase to be the arrogant manoeuvering of an elite completely out of touch with the struggles of the working class. Others see it as a necessary step to protect the environment and thwart fossil fuel reliance.
Which brings me back to Puerto Rico. When we asked about Maria, we often heard about sixhour waits at petrol stations to purchase fuel to run home generators. Maria quickly took out Puerto Rico’s dilapidated electricity grid. It took almost a year for power to be fully restored to the island.
We also heard a more unusual story. On our last day, we met Enrique, a waiter, who asked the age of our three-month-old daughter, telling us he had a four-month-old girl named Adriana at home. With bright eyes, he told us that Adriana was a ‘‘hurricane baby’’.
He explained that Maria’s terror and carnage led many Puerto Ricans to figure out what was really important to them. His then-girlfriend Zailene came looking for him after the storm had passed. He knew, he said, after years of dating and some equivocation, that she was the one.
As Enrique told it, Adriana was born in an unusually busy maternity ward a year after Maria’s devastation. Looking to substantiate his story with data of other hurricane babies, and cognisant of the fact that Adriana was conceived a few months after Maria, I uncovered no research on Maria specifically, and conflicting research on the phenomenon of so-called ‘‘disaster babies’’.
Still, it was a beautiful story. The silver lining in Maria’s devastation was a raft of new beginnings. It was a narrative I wanted to believe in.
And so, I do.
Danielle McLaughlin is the Sunday Star-Times’ US correspondent. She is a lawyer, author, and political and legal commentator, appearing frequently on US and New Zealand TV and radio. She is also an ambassador for #ChampionWomen, which aims to encourage respectful, diverse and thoughtful conversations. Follow Danielle on Twitter at @MsDMcLaughlin.