Still, the synapses in the Reverend Howard M. Haywood's mind fired on instinct, in a weary reflex that comes from being black in America. Oh, no, he thought, I hope a minority didn't do it. That was not his only thought, of course. But there is a cruel and unsubtle myth that twists rape and race into a knotty braid, the sinister and irrational fear creeping through the nation's collective psyche that there are savage black men out there soiling pure white women. There is no historical truth to it.
Rapes committed by strangers are an aberration.
And interracial crime of any sort is still an exception to the rule of criminals preying upon their most convenient targets, who mostly happen to be their racial brethren. In Newton, where Haywood has lived his entire life and where he preaches each Sunday to black folks who worship at Myrtle Baptist Church, there was perhaps no reason at all to fear a racial complication to one terrible event. There have been slights over the years, Haywood says, minor episodes of racial animosity, real or perceived. But Newton's citizens could not, by any stretch, be considered hostile to their 7,600 minority neighbors, only 1,700 or so of whom are black. Still, Reverend Haywood is not naive.