False Angels, False Demons

The moment I heard Bonnie Sweeten's story, I knew it was a lie.

Sweeten, as you may know, is the 38-year-old Bucks County, PA mother of three who recently faked her own kidnapping and then high-tailed it to Disneyworld in Florida with her nine-year-old daughter, where she was apprehended several days after her frantic 911 calls to police.

It appears Sweeten, the picture of suburban perfection, had a pot full of problems simmering just below the surface of her apparently well-ordered life. 

I live only a few miles from Sweeten, and though I don't know her, I knew her story was bogus from the get-go.

Not only do I live only a few miles from Sweeten, I live barely a mile from the intersection where she claimed she and her daughter were snatched and stuffed into the trunk of a car after a fender bender with two black men driving a Cadillac at 2:30 P.M. on May 26th.

According to Sweeten's very convincing calls to local police, she was rear-ended, and she got out of her SUV to check on the damage.  At that point, Sweeten claimed, she was grabbed by the two black men driving the Cadillac and she and her daughter were forced into the trunk of the men's car. 

No way, I thought.

I live in bucolic Bucks County, just north of the Philadelphia county line.  And as with most suburban enclaves, while our neighborhoods are usually quiet and lovely, we are, by necessity, surrounded by some heavily traveled roads, leading us to our little pieces of nirvana.  Bonnie Sweeten claimed to have been snatched from her car at one of the busiest intersections in our area at 2:30 in the afternoon, and no one saw a thing.

But the fact that no one saw a thing wasn't what caused my suspicion.  It was the fact that Sweeten claimed two black men committed the crime and no one saw a thing which immediately tipped me off.

There are no black men in my neighborhood.

Two black men having any interaction with a white woman and her child on a street corner in my neighborhood would not only have been noticed, it would have caused a gaper delay as drivers slowed down to stare.  The police would have been there in 30 seconds.

And that, more than anything else, is what makes me sick about Bonnie Sweeten's story.

I live in a decidedly un-diversified area.  While I love Bucks County, I have, many times over the years, lamented to my husband about the homogenous make-up of our neighborhood.

Now don't misunderstand.  I'm not in any way implying that my neighbors are racist or we try to keep others out.  Unfortunately, it just happens to be the way things are.  We don't have any black neighbors.  Or Asian neighbors.  Or Muslim neighbors.

So over the years, as I've raised my children, I've tried to impress upon them that people are all the same, despite differences in appearance.  It's not easy with such limited interaction with different people, but I think we did an okay job.

Then, along comes Bonnie Sweeten, who, because of her own private demons, chose to stir up all sorts of racial ugliness with her "demonizing" of black men.  And for a while, however brief, people believed her.

As a white woman living in suburban America, I'm embarrassed.  I feel the need to apologize for something I did not do, but which still runs as a terrible undercurrent in our culture. 

So here it is:  I apoligize to the black community and to everyone who is not white and living in America.  I am sorry that there are still Bonnie Sweetens in the world who make it impossible for people of color to just be.  I am truly distressed that the simple phrase "two black men" can still inspire fear.

I don't know what to do about it, other than to keep talking to each other.  If we do, maybe someday, when the next Bonnie Sweeten comes along telling her lies, all hearers will immediately say...

"No way."

This is an original post to Philly Moms Blog.  Mary Fran Bontempo also writes at www.maryfranbontempo.com