Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Duke Lacrosse Players Got Played

Betsy brings up the Duke rape media feeding frenzy, reverse racism and unjust parts of the justice system. She says:

I'm looking for people to start going further and examine where we are at as a society that a woman could make these sorts of horrible allegations and a district attorney could conduct such a seemingly shoddy investigation violating all sorts of professional ethics and there isn't a thing that the defendants can do. Even if they're found innocent, they have no recourse against the district attorney and the Durham city system that has been so unjust to them. What does this say about the power of a district attorney in our system? Is there a lesson of reverse racism that we have seen play out in this story? Was the media, particularly the local media such as the Raleigh News and Observer, totally biased in the early days of this story in favor of the accuser? Do we have a politically correct system that protects the privacy of the accuser but does little to protect those accused? I'm ready for some journalists and analysts to go beyond dissecting the weaknesses of the DA's case and to start in after the these other questions.

LaShawn Barber has said that this case has an aura of the Scottsboro Boys in reverse. If that is at all true, don't we want to figure out why this has happened. And will analysts be willing to examine that the role that reverse racism had in making the DA actually more likely to believe the accuser's story and to bring the case to court and made those 88 professors more likely to write their disgust at the team's supposed behavior? Yes, the young men are alleged to have said some pretty ugly racist comments to the women. But, the women, at least the second dancer, are allged to have made some racist comments first. That part of the story doesn't receive a fraction of the attention that the comments the Duke players are supposed to have said. Are we seeing the media's discomfort with clearly looking at the behavior of the black women in that little detail?

If the boys are totally innocent of the charges of rape, we have been witnessing a very disturbing side of what can happen in our justice system plus in how organizations in the media and at the university have reacted. Is it possible, that rich white defendants, contrary to all of our history and all of our stereotypes, are actually receiving more discrimination now than if they hadn't been wealthy white jocks? Who is going to write that story?
Who is going to write that story?

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