Cultivation and Crime

A few weeks ago, a horrifying story made national headlines. While walking in a park, Bethany Storro claimed that an African-American woman walked up behind her and asked her, "hey pretty girl...do you want to drink this?" Bethany then claimed the woman splashed her face with a cupful of acid, giving her severe burns. It was this week that Bethany Storro admitted that her story was a fabrication. There are many questions about the incident (namely, why would she do this), but one detail stood out to me. When she chose to make up the identity of her attacker, she said that her attacker was African American.
I believe cultivation theory played a significant role in Bethany's description of her attacker. Cultivation is the idea that media shapes our perception of the world to a certain 'reality'. For example, Americans, after watching news outlets, may perceive black people to be much more likely to commit crimes than white people. This would be a result of repetitive stories highlighting crimes perpetrated by black people while underreporting crimes perpetrated by white Americans.

(A composite sketch made from Storro's description of her attacker. From mynorthwest.com)

Bethany Storro confessed to planning the fake attack, so she certainly gave thought to who she would blame her attack on. She was concerned with making her story as believable as possible. At a certain degree, we as a society have been cultivated to perceive African-Americans as dangerous criminals. That allows a non-existant African-American woman to be the perfect scapegoat for a fake attack. Although police now claim they were suspicious of her story from the beginning, news outlets were much slower to write about inconsistencies in her story. It is just one disturbing aspect of a deeply disturbing story.

A link to the story on ABC news