Let’s just imagine that this assault took place at a predominately Black university and the victims were white, this would’ve been front page national news. […] It seems to me that this story has remained local to the North Carolina area. Their media is covering the story completely, but what about the rest of the nation. You can’t tell me that this isn’t newsworthy. It sure is newsworthy to African-Americans.

To which you said:

He’s right.

So let me get this straight: If the media writes too much on the case they’re guilty of hyping up issues of colour. But otherwise, they’re guilty of not hyping up issues of colour enough.

Robert’s beaten me to the real punch with his insightful observation:

When the media covers black on black violence, they’re castigated for presenting a picture of African Americans as violent and bestial. When the media doesn’t cover black on black violence, they’re castigated for treating African Americans as unimportant.

The media is chastised for reporting on the race of a perpetrator when the perpetrator is from a minority on the grounds that it promotes negative stereotypes. But when the alleged perpetrators are white, they are held up as being representative of a greater white male privlege. Would you agree with someone who held that a case in which a white woman was raped by a black man was representative of black male privlege? Of black criminality?

On the statistics of violent crime, 12.1% of all violent crimes commited against blacks have white perpetrators, and 12% of all violent crimes against whites have a black perpetrator, according to the US DoJ National crime victimisation survey. So while intra-racial crime is much more common that interracial crime, blacks and whites commit interractial violent crime at the same rates.

That’s not true. Blacks commit slightly more violent crime against whites then blacks.

Thanks, Igor. Now, I’ve got to clean the green tea off of my monitor. Where did you come up with an assertion like this?

if these were black players or any other players of color, they would have already been jailed and kicked out of school”“no DNA tests needed.

I agree, especially if the woman had been White. They would have probably round up other Black men in the area to “question” as well.

I’ve heard of them going into schools and pulling Black male students out for DNA testing in front of their classmates here, when White women have been raped. They didn’t ever find the rapist in either of those cases. As for women of color, well too often that’s still not seen as a crime occurring at all. In some sense, I’m amazed that a crime against a Black woman by White men was even given any attention at all, except that most of the coverage has been about the White men from this exclusive private school involved, plus the titillation factor that taints so much news coverage.

I’ve met four Black men accused, arrested or charged with rape, who were cleared by DNA tests. None of them were even identified by the victims as the assailant, and two of them were either the wrong race or were darker than the description. If there had been no DNA testing, they could have faced prison and the men who committed the crimes would still be free.

i’m not black or white and don’t think this a white trash or class issue. if it had been a white women with 46 blacks, it would get 10 times more attention and the men would have no protection from the media, similar to what this woman is getting. this isn’t unreal it’s surreal. we’re living in the 50s (or 1865) when it comes to race.

The Black men would have had no protection from the legal system either. They would have been locked up with high bail, not shielded by a team of attorneys.

Oh and what Mickey said, in response to Igor. The second statement even if it were true doesn’t contradict the first.

That’s not true. Blacks commit slightly more violent crime against whites then blacks.

Igor, that is untrue both in terms of percentages and real numbers.

That’s not true. Blacks commit slightly more violent crime against whites then blacks.

In the end it is the outing of the social crimes that are part of Duke that most likely got the coach dismissed and the email writer suspended. This in the end may not be a bad thing. It may turn out that this women was not raped it may not, but this does put out into the open things down there that are pretty ugly and I’m sure Duke would have just as soon were never
made public.

The comments all over the web on this case opened my eyes more than the case itself though. The overt misogyny and racism in so many of the comments was downright scary.

I am not disagreeing with this — but this is not the case you were making in your blog. The focus of your blog was that race was driving the mainstream media’s coverage of this case. And in general that’s a theory that can be applied to many situations, but not, in my opinion, to this particular news story. In fact it was several brief radio newscasts before I even learned the accuser was Black, and in the original print news articles that came out nationally it typically wasn’t until the very end of the articles that it came out that she is Black. Not that any of this “proves” anything, of course, and I’m certain that at the Duke campus from the start the racial tensions surely must have been a huge part of the local and student news coverage before this story made it into the national news.

My point is that any elite athlete or athletic team — professional or collegiate — is considered newsworthy by the national media for *any* alleged run-in with the law and that this has been the case for at least 20 years. Usually they make news for alleged crimes not involving rape or assault of women; check out the near-weekly news headlines. On top of that, collegiate athletes fall into the whole host of issues regarding campus violence generally, the treatment of elite athletes at these universities and the privileges they receive, etc. etc.

The alleged gang-rape of any woman by a major university’s national championship team is going to be national news; race is not what is driving the news coverage. Yes, racial and classist and sexist stereotypes have since come into the “discussions” on the national news talk programs and have been used gratitutiously. And no, the legal ramifications of whether a team of all-Black elite athletes alleged to have gang-raped a woman — as in whether they already wouldhave been arrested — are almost certainly not the same as for an all-white team. (But then see Kobe Bryant). But thats is not what the leading theme of your blog was; you clearly state in your opening paragraph that The Spectacle of It All that you’re referring to is the national media coverage of this case, which you proceed to argue has been driven by race. And I simply disagree on this point.

Come on Duke alumns, get your collective heads out of your collective you-know-whats and reach out to the Durham community. Be better examples by teaching your kids to reach out instead of playing the deny at all costs game.

… and red herrings on an almost daily basis.

Unidentified calls to police, neighbors substantiating some of the accuser’s story, virtually everyone involved with a record of prior convictions, a shocking email that turns out to be no more than a direct reference to a particularly disgusting movie, a hyped-up claim of DNA evidence with suspense building over the week during which it was analysed. Etc, etc, etc.

This story has blockbuster plot written all over it and I haven’t yet added elements of racism, sexism, classism, athleticism and probably a few more -isms. This is CSI, Survivor and Crash all rolled into one big furball that people can debate for hours, nay days. A real-time, real-life reality series with new episodes repeated 24-hours a day, so no one has to miss anything.

I think that there would have been an instant and thourough cover up of the crime had it been the basketball team.

Actually, I disagree. The type of instant and thourough cover up you reference could happen in a sports program which deals regularly with improper athelete behavior, such as the Nebraska football or UNLV basketball programs in the early 90’s. The Duke basketball coach has done a good job of maintaining a clean image of his program.

Basketball is such a popular sport that it is covered by many more sportswriters who develop realtionships with the players over time. This makes covering up improper behavior much harder to do. Bill Walton let an SLA member sleep on his dorm room couch one night back in the early 1970’s and it’s still news today. The Duke basketball players are covered so much that sportswriters print stories discussing JJ Reddick’s instant messaging pals.

Basketball is an egalitarian sport. Anyone who has a pair of shoes can play. Lacrosse is a sport of the rich, which is why this case is much more dangerous to the elitist alumns. If such a problem happened in their basketball team, the elite alumns would discount the problem. Basketball players aren’t considered real students, lacrosse players are. The elitist alumns are more proud of their lacrosse championships than baskteball championships. Why? Because they can brag about them with their Ivy league breathren on Wall Street.

Basketball players aren’t expected to go to Wall Street - Lacrosse players are. This case damns a broad class of elistists and the entitled rich.

I think that there would have been an instant and thourough cover up of the crime had it been the basketball team. As in, the school, coaches, or whomever would have made sure that by the time the police were issued a search warrant for the party location….there wouldn’t have been a trace of physical evidence that the women had been there at all.

I agree that this is a crime of entitlement, as propogated by male elitists. And I agree that race is a factor as are most of the other issues that have been raised. I live in the deep South, and I see this every day. I also see that a great many crimes never come to light, because those with the money (and money bestows power) will protect what makes them more money. I may very well be wrong in my conclusions, but I can only speak from my experiences.

Adande is right - this case is about entitlement. First and foremost, this case is about a group of elitist young men planning a party with the intent of demeaning two ladies from a different class. This is the most damning point in this case for which all the young men are guilty - period.

This case is a revealing damnation of the culture which promotes this elitist element on the Duke campus. The frenzied rush to dismiss this case is a thinly veiled attempt to deny the evil of this elitist culture.

This case is also about race because the young men apparently asked for two black entertainers and were heard yelling racial epithets. Racism remains in North Carolina.

Finally, this case is about a sex crime. Sadly, it is only because of the accused crime that these other grander issues are brought to light. I don’t mean to belittle the horrible issue of rape, but sadly it will be difficult for us to know the facts of the crime because of the need to protect the larger evil - the need for a class of elite to maintain their entitlements.

Natalee Holloway–news! Tamika Houston–not so much. That’s reality.