It's probably safe to say that there hasn't been a story as crazy as the one involving Jussie Smollett.

The embattled "Empire" actor was just freed of his charges for allegedly staging a hate crime on March 26, 2019. And both Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and police superintendent Eddie Johnson have called Smollett's vindication a "whitewash of justice."

But what seems to be deafening about this whole Smollett debacle is the whole chastisement of Smollett since the story's breaking. The public and the media have seemed to rally around the police never before seen in this so-called era of "wokeness."

And with that being said, that shouldn't be taken as me saying Smollett is innocent. It is wrong to fake something that might have dire consequences in the future.

And, surely enough, a lot of people are saying that this whole Jussie thing will cause more disbelief over hate crimes. But realistically speaking, when has the police ever truly delivered justice for hate crime victims?

The same police department claiming Jussie is ruining the national reputation of Chicago is the same police department that has covered up hundreds of deaths involving young black people. And it's the same police department that has a gang database and undercover teams luring young boys of color into crimes.

The Jussie Smollett story shows why only calling yourself "woke" and not organizing and denouncing racism is problematic: because social media filters and posts don't check your privilege. The rabid crucifixion of Jussie in the public sphere still shows we have a long way to go in how people of color are still chastised despite the progress we've made.

There has been literally zero white outrage as big as Jussie's when it came to the execution of Laquan Mcdonald and Rekia Boyd, nor it has been the case with the ongoing Flint water crisis. It seems as if the right-wing media was waiting for one person of color to mess up and was ready to pounce: in this case with Jussie Smollett.

The main takeaway from this whole news soap opera is that the Jussie Smollett story was the first major litmus test in a while to test our implicit biases in an age where it's easy to say you're not racially prejudiced. While Jussie shouldn't have fabricated a hate crime as he did, that shouldn't permit us to burn him at the stake to the point where he wouldn't have been if, quite frankly, he were white.