Scholars examine the impact of conspiracy theories on African Americans
Have you checked the numbers on your social security card yet? Rumor has it that the federal government keeps track of Black folks by assigning them social security numbers that contain an even number in the fifth digit.
If you are now rifling through your wallet looking for your social security card, stop. The rumor is untrue. But it is one of several that have been burning up the Internet in recent months, causing African Americans of all walks of life to wonder, if only momentarily, about the validity of these conspiratorial rumors.
Conspiracy theories are as American as apple pie, according to Dr. Anita Waters, a sociologist at Denison University, who describes such theories as "ethnosociologies." Yet, what makes Black belief in conspiracy theories so difficult to interpret and evaluate is that in many recent cases the rumors are based in fact.
Black America's willingness to entertain beliefs in conspiracy theories, sometimes referred to as "urban legends," has been widely studied and analyzed by a variety of scholars -- most particularly, by those in the fields of folklore, political science, medicine, and public health.
Most who investigate these tales believe that they are a significant phenomenon in African American culture dating back to the earliest contact between Africans and Europeans.
Dr. Patricia Turner, a professor of African American studies at the University of California-Davis has made an exhausting compilation of African American rumors and conspiracy theories. She believes that from Black Americans' encounter with racism, "folklore emerges in which individuals translate their uneasiness about the fate of the group as a whole into more concrete, personal terms."
Whether scholars think that the widespread interest in rumors is a problem for African Americans also varies by academic discipline. In general, folklorists, cultural anthropologists, and sociologists tend to see these rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories as just another product of the same cultural creativity that produced the blues, jazz, and rap music. In effect, a way to confront, interpret, and resist the dominant culture.
