Racial unease arises from kidnapping hoax

BUCKS COUNTY. By the time Bonnie Sweeten's story completely unraveled — and authorities found her and daughter Julie Rakoczy in Orlando, Fla. late Wednesday — the fact that she blamed "two black men" in her elaborate kidnapping hoax went under some people's radar.

But not University of Pennsylvania adjunct professor Chad Dion Lassiter or many other black men, who Lassiter said definitely took notice of another "disturbing" example of black men becoming scapegoats in crimes they didn't commit.

"Where does this blame come from and why does it fall at the feet of black men?" said Lassiter, who is president of The Black Men at Penn and a board member of the city Prisons system. "Some will say, well say she’s troubled and we’ll sweep it under the rug. But we need to keep it front and center."

Black leaders from Philadelphia's NAACP chapter president J. Whyatt Mondesire to Mayor Michael Nutter also expressed their discontent in the last two days with Sweeten's unexplained accusation.

The 38-year-old from Langhorne remained in a Florida jail Thursday night awaiting extradition to a Bucks County prison for charges of identity theft and filing a false report, authorities said. The Bucks County District Attorney's Office did not return calls for additional details.

Lassiter said no matter how the Sweeten case turns out, black men shouldn't be complacent to stereotypes any more.

"Black men in the area need to be discussing it, but not getting angry about it," he said. "We have a moral imperative to show that we’re not rapists, savages. We just tell our truth."