A tale of two hate crimes: a hoax unraveled and a plot foiled

Wilfred Reilly is a political science professor at Kentucky State University, a historically black university in Frankfort.

But at heart, he is, as he says, “a regular dude from Chicago.”

As such, he can feel concern about a rise in right-wing extremism and warnings from hate trackers that unscripted angry presidential rhetoric could lead to violence against minorities. But to him, at least, hate has become far more egalitarian than that.

“When I go to the gun range, there’s a whole selection of targets you can buy: There’s Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman; there’s the redneck racist looking guy with a beer belly and the black urban thug in a ski mask,” says Professor Reilly, an African-American and author of the just-released book, “Hate Crime Hoax.”

The symbolism of those gun range targets really struck Reilly as he pondered last week’s events: the arrest of a gay