Last week, we learned that a vile racist was on the loose at tiny Albion College in Jackson, Michigan. How do we know? Well, we saw the images of racist graffiti with our own eyes. We saw the N-word, multiple references to the Klan, and a Star of David shot through with “666” right there in the stairwell of an Albion dorm.

So it must’ve been the work of a racist, right? Well, yes, but not the kind of white male racist we’ve been conditioned to think about whenever this hardy perennial rears its ugly head. No, as it turns out, this racist is a 21-year-old black male — sort of a low-budget version of Jussie Smollett, but without the elaborate staging and laughable denials of culpability, and with the added indecency of Jew hatred thrown in for bad measure.

As The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow reports, “On April 6, after reviewing campus security footage, a 21-year-old black male student was brought in for questioning by the Albion Department of Public Safety. The student reportedly admitted to writing most of the graffiti, with the surveillance footage supporting his statements. Police Chief Scott Kipp told MLive that the student was released after questioning and that after the department has completed its investigation, the Calhoun County Prosecutor’s Office will determine if any charges should be filed related to the incident. Charges are unlikely in such a case, as fears of being called racist abound even when a student has committed a hate crime hoax.”

Therein lies one of the problems. When we refuse to prosecute fake hate crimes as hate crimes, we only encourage more of them. Look at the Smollett case, for example. If ever a high-profile criminal case demanded swift and sure justice, this was it. Instead, we’re more than two years removed from that preposterous fake hate crime, and he still hasn’t been brought to justice.

The other problem? We presume a guilty white culprit in all these cases, when our criminal justice system demands the presumption of innocence. How many times are we going to allow ourselves — good, decent Americans of every race, ethnicity, and political persuasion — to be punked by these dimwitted racial arsonists?

Henceforth, the burden of proof should be on the accusers. And if no eyewitnesses come forward, and no videotape evidence can be produced, our collective response to cancerous stories such as these should be, Oh yeah? Prove it. Prove it wasn’t just another in the long and well-documented line of fake hate crimes.

At $50,590, annual tuition at Albion College seems like some kind of bad joke. But it isn’t. The question is, why do certain parents keep forking over that kind of loot to these craven and gullible institutions? For the “white privilege” of allowing their children to be beaten down by woke supremacists and shamed into racial submission? No thanks.

As Schow continues, “This incident is merely the latest in a long list of examples where claims of racism — or sexism — on campus have turned out to be hoaxes. In November 2020, The Daily Wire reported that a black teenager who claimed to have found racist messages on his SUV had written the messages himself. Earlier that year, another student who claimed to have found racist messages on their vehicle was also determined to be the culprit. It’s not just students who commit the hoaxes. An Oregon politician claimed he received a racist letter, but it was determined he wrote the letter to himself.”

You get the idea.

If a single worthwhile lesson can be taken away from this racial hoax and all others like it, let it be a reaffirmation of the law of supply and demand: If instances of real racism weren’t in such short supply, these twisted individuals would have no need to make stuff up.