Air Force Academy says racial slur a hoax
Supposed victim, a cadet, actually the perpetrator
After someone wrote the words “Go home n----r” on dormitory message boards at the Air Force Academy prep school in September, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, the academy’s superintendent, delivered a blistering speech on tolerance. With 4,000 students standing at attention, Silveria said, “If you demean someone in any way, you need to get out.”
The speech went viral, garnering more than 2 million views on YouTube.
Now the academy says one of the five African-American cadet candidates thought to be a victim of the slur was actually the perpetrator. The student is no longer enrolled, school officials said Tuesday.
The prep school, which offers a year of training for academy prospects who need academic help, wouldn’t offer details on the circumstances surrounding the hoax. But The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, citing anonymous sources, reported that the unidentified student wrote the messages “in a bizarre bid to get out of trouble he faced at the school for other misconduct.”
The incident is the latest in a string of hoaxes around race, ethnicity, politics and religion. In Ann Arbor, Mich., police said in December that they planned to charge a Muslim student at the University of Michigan with filing a false report after she claimed a man threatened to light her on fire if she didn’t remove her hijab.
They later declined to charge the woman.