October 23, 1989 - In Boston, MA, Charles Stuart blames "a black gunman with a raspy voice" for carjacking, robbing and shooting Stuart and his pregnant wife Carol. After his wife and baby son died -- she on the night of the incident and the infant 17 days later -- Stuart continued his lie that there was an unknown black assailant. Stuart concocted a description of the alleged assailant and on December 28, he picked Willie Bennett out of a lineup. Bennett had nothing to do with the crime. Stuart's brother Matthew confessed to being part of Stuart's insurance fraud scheme a few days after Bennett's arrest and implicated Stuart in the murders. Charles Stuart jumped to his death off the Tobin Bridge on January 4, 1990.

October 25, 1994 - Susan Smith tells the police in Union, SC that an unknown black man carjacked her and sped away with her two young sons, Michael and Alexander, still strapped in their car seats. After appearing tearfully begging for her children to be returned to her on every morning news show, notably saying, "your mama loves you..." and keeping the story going for nine days, she finally confessed that there was no black man, no carjacking at gunpoint, that she had actually rolled her car into a local lake. The apparent motive was to facilitate a relationship with wealthy local businessman who didn't want her children from a previous marriage.

April 23, 1994 -- Six Yonkers, NY police officers got into a fight over which of the officers would have to do the paperwork necessary to report a burning car. The fight spilled over from teh scene of the burning car to the precinct house. One of the officers was beaten so badly he had to go to the hospital for treatment of his injuries. To cover their tracks, the officers claimed that a tall black man in a blue jacket had assaulted the white officer. There was no black man in a blue jacket.

May 29, 2005 -- While on an unofficial school graduation trip to Aruba with 124 other seniors from her high school in Birmingham, Alabama in Natalee Holloway disappeared after a night of partying. She was last seen with Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. As the investigation unfolded, van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers blamed, "a dark man in a dark shirt" similar to the uniforms worn by hotel security guards. The police arrested two dark-skinned Arubans former security guards apparently on the basis of an identification by van der Sloot and the Kalpoe brothers. The men were released and all charges dropped. Holloway has never been found. Van der Sloot remains the primary person of interest in the case.

April 26, 2005 - Jennifer Carol Wilbanks ran away from her fiance, looming nuptials and her home and family in Duluth, GA. A nationwide search for the 'runaway bride" ensued with tearful family and finace pleading for the safe return of Jennifer, who turned up days later in Albuquerque, NM claiming she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a Hispanic man and his white woman accomplice. No such persons existed. One supposes had she been in a community with a larger black population she wouldn't have strayed from the script.

October 22, 2008 -- Ashley Todd, a campaign volunteer for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, told Pittsburgh, PA police investigators that a 6 foot 4 inch black man assaulted her as she was withdrawing money from an ATM. Todd claimed that when the man saw her McCain bumpersticker he knocked her to the ground, punching her and then carving a "B" for Barack into her cheek. Two days later, Todd admitted she carved the "B" into her own face, and that there was no black assailant.

May 29, 2009 - Bonnie Sweeten dials 911 to report she and her 9 year old daughter were carjacked and stuffed into the trunk of a black Cadillac driven by two black men. Several days later, she turns up in Disneyland. She was never carjacked or kidnapped or held against her will. There were no mystery black men who tried to boost  her vehicle. She went to Disneyland. On someone else's dime. To the tune of between $300,000 and $700,000. Of money she had allegedly embezzled from a local Bucks County, PA charity.

These are just a few in the long list of fictitious black assailant stories where the accuser's lies are discovered early. We also know that there are hundreds of cases where the falsely accused black "assailant" ended up in prison, convicted on the basis so-called "eye witnesses" or by false testimony offered by the victim. Just this morning, catching a rerun of a Law & Order episode where the victim/perp blames his gunshot wound on the unknown black assailant to hide his actual involvement in the rest of the crime. (I know someone will bring up the infamous Tawana Brawley case. Fine. It's one example of the reverse "blame game.")

The question we must ask ourselves is: What does it say about our society that one group of people routinely finds it acceptable to blame persons of another race for their crimes? To get to the heart of question I'd like you to consider -- how we feel about one another -- we must set aside from this discussion the standard worn and tired arguments of which race commits more crime, and who is in prison and true inequities in our justice system, and return to something much more basic.

How do we really feel about each other? When, where, why and how did you learn that initial response -- when in trouble, when you want to get away with something -- blame the other race? How is this something that is so entrenched in being "an acceptable ruse" that it is not just the stuff of television scripts, but real life repeated again and again? Where did you learn that response? Is it racist behavior? Is that gut reaction counter-balanced by "white guilt?" What assumptions do you carry with you that you are unaware of? Have centuries and generations of racism become so second nature that you don't even realize you're doing it? How did we get here?

A comment made elsewhere in the ongoing "Southern" battle deserves further examination and refutation because it shows, in my opinion, a lack of understanding with regard to the Supreme Court -- something that we are seeing with the overheated Republican reaction to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the high court. The comment suggests that "northern" justices were responsible and deserve derision for one decision and "southern" justices have been overlooked and deserve credit for another. (That is the argument boiled down to its essence.)

Recently, we've read a similarly structured argument about slavery: that "the north" started it. (FACT: Jamestown, Virginia was the first US colony to accept 20 slaves as payment for repair supplies from a slave ship damaged off the shores of Jamestown. That started this country's long and painful history with slavery.) [AUTHOR'S NOTE: See sidebar, below.]

Although some would point to the distinction of "legalizing" slavery came first in the North as justification for its continuance in the south. I would retort that in the game of "geographic who's more guilty," Virginia once again upped the ante by changing the initial "legalization" from what amounted to "indentured servitude" from which descendents of slaves could be born free, into enslavement into perpetuity, for not only the slaves but all of their descendents for always and forever. (Even those determined to have just one drop of Negro blood.)

But (if you want to go there) the point is not who started it, but rather, who ended it.

The eleven states that chose to forcibly secede from the nation (and had to be forcibly returned), in part at least to preserve their "heritage" of slavery, will always be remembered for that. Just as Arizona will always be remembered as the last state to approve the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

(This argument reminds me of pleading with my parents that I was not as culpable as a sibling when we were bickering over this or that, because he or she "started it." An argument that got no traction then, and gets none now.)

The variation on the "he started it" argument now comes with the suggestion that Plessy v. Ferguson (the "separate but equal case later overturned by Brown v. Topeka B.O.E., which is included in this variation on a theme) was decided by a majority of justices from "the north," and that Brown was decided by justices from the South.

Let me state that this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial system -- particularly the appellate court system -- in this country. Trial courts are the finders of fact. To the extent that geographic location might play a part in the outcome of a case, it would be at the trial level.

From US Courts.gov: "The federal courts often are called the guardians of the Constitution because their rulings protect rights and liberties guaranteed by it. Through fair and impartial judgments, the federal courts interpret and apply the law to resolve disputes. The courts do not make the laws. That is the responsibility of Congress. Nor do the courts have the power to enforce the laws. That is the role of the President and the many executive branch departments and agencies."

At the appellate level, particularly the federal appeals system, the facts of the case have already been determined, and the case is within the juridiction of the appeals court if the matter is a:

"State courts are the final arbiters of state laws and constitutions. Their interpretation of federal law or the U.S. Constitution may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court may choose to hear or not to hear such cases." (Also from US Courts.gov.)

From US Courts.gov: The Founding Fathers of the nation considered an independent federal judiciary essential to ensure fairness and equal justice for all citizens of the United States. The Constitution they drafted promotes judicial independence in two major ways. First, federal judges are appointed for life, and they can be removed from office only through impeachment and conviction by Congress of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Second, the Constitution provides that the compensation of federal judges "shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office," which means that neither the President nor Congress can reduce the salary of a federal judge. These two protections help an independent judiciary to decide cases free from popular passions and political influence."

So the decisions handed down by the appellate courts, as well as the Supreme Court, are not dictated by the home state of the judges or justices presiding. That is because the judges and justices are responsible for the interpretation of a range of laws and at the US Circuit Court of Appeals, each of the 13 districts may hear cases from a number of states.

Now, could we, by some stretch of the imagination arrive at the conclusion that "home state" influence plays a part in the role of impartial judgement of the constitutionality of a ruling or (without being circumlogical) equal protection under the law? No. Although judges and justices on both the federal appeals bench and the Supreme Court may come from various geographic locations, and their alliances may morph into stranger configurations than an amoeba, the fact that they are limited in the scope of what may be considered to render a decision prevents this geographic alignment.

In short, we cannot come to some conclusion that our country's tawdry racist past is the fault of one region over another. We can argue -- and history supports -- that the eleven states which opted to secede from the union did come from one section of the country. We can argue that the de jure segregation which plagued this nation for the century after Emancipation was centered in one region of the country. We can categorically state that although de facto segregation was pervasive throughout this country, north and south, its most despicable displays were in one particular region of the country.

This is not a question of who started it. It continues to be a question of who ends it. And when.