Put yourself in the place of Lamar, S.C., Mayor Darnell Byrd McPherson, who on Feb. 7 discovered that her and her husband’s cars both were covered in a “sticky, yellow substance.” McPherson, who is black, did what any member of a protected class would do in this era of instant self-victimization. Jumping to the conclusion the cars had been vandalized by racists, she phoned the police to report a hate crime.
It was a “grainy substance” like industrial spray foam used to patch concrete and “looked like little pebbles,” McPherson explained, according to the Daily Mail. She then went on to release a statement, which read:
During the 70s, crosses were burned in the yard of our home when my mother was involved with the civil rights movement.
Again, we are grateful the person or persons did not try to take our lives but the culprits will be identified and prosecuted.
Love conquers hate and my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetrated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred.
Love may conquer hate, but it doesn’t conquer the laws of nature, which have a nasty tendency to deposit things like dew and pollen on parked cars. In McPherson’s case, it was the latter:
…[A]n incident report obtained by Newsweek claimed the Mayor and her husband streaked a finger over the tarnished parts surfacing the car.
She told the magazine that the couple ‘realized it was not paint and that the substance could be removed with a finger; similar to pollen.’
She also claimed that there were no words or symbols drawn on the cars. ‘To me that was the message,’ she said.
But it wasn’t the message from the outset, which is the problem in cases like this.
