(Hat-tip to The Renegade Institute for Liberty) Jason Arday’s death is a genuine tragedy, and no one should celebrate it. But I think it also reveals something uncomfortable about why his story was believed for so long without real scrutiny. Academics and journalists were desperate to embrace the archetype of the self-made black intellectual, and that desire overrode the skepticism they’d normally apply to extraordinary claims. The irony is that we already have real examples of this exact story: Thomas Sowell, Roland Fryer, Glenn Loury, people who overcame genuine hardship to reach the top of their fields. They just don’t get celebrated the same way, because their politics don’t serve the same psychological purpose. I make the case that this isn’t really about one man’s fabrications. It’s about what white guilt does to our collective judgment.