The Duke alleged rape case is getting a lot of attention in the media and on blogging sites, not because of the woman and the violence she suffered, but because the players are white. Therefore, this case makes the headlines almost everyday since the players privilege and whiteness is threatened with the possibility of jail time or having to register as sex offenders. So I keep asking myself, are we only engaged in this incident because the media has hyped up the issues of color?

Last year, a number of black women were raped, assaulted, beaten, burned to death, and were kidnapped by other men of color. However, the media gave little, if any attention to those incidents.
Why are we only important when whites are involved?

In some ways, this case has become an argument of DNA samples, lacrosse, strippers, and defense lawyers–instead of the real issue, which is violence against women. Violence that is committed against female bodies on a daily basis. It saddens me that even in the discussions on my blog, this incident has been reduced to whether or not she had a broom shoved up inside of her. It seems to me that we are not using this as an example to critique the reasons why so many women are raped/assaulted. Instead, it’s like a damn sports event where we are taking sides and rooting for each side based on DNA samples or statistics of how many women lie about being raped.

Black women and other women are being raped daily, possibly right now as you read this and as I type it. Where are the numerous blogs dedicated to them? Have I also given into the hype?

It is very disturbing that this case has become reminiscent of the O.J. trial where black “truth” is positioned in opposition to white “truth.” If this were a team of men of color and another woman of color, would the media have given it this much attention? Would other bloggers have given it this much attention? No. Of course not–although I would hope otherwise, but that is the reality of this situation.

After this spectacle has been long gone, will we all continue to fight against violence committed against women’s bodies, or will we only blog about it when the next case happens? I am asking this question in all seriousness because this event is not just a one time thing–IT HAPPENS ALL OF THE TIME–we must remember that.

The AP reports:

DNA testing failed to connect any members of the Duke University lacrosse team to the alleged rape of a stripper, attorneys for the athletes said Monday.

Citing DNA test results delivered by the state crime lab to police and prosecutors a few hours earlier, the attorneys said the test results prove their clients did not sexually assault and beat a stripper hired to perform at a March 13 team party.

No charges have been filed in the case.

“No DNA material from any young man was present on the body of this complaining woman,” said defense attorney Wade Smith.

The alleged victim, a 27-year-old student at a nearby college, told police she and another woman were hired to dance at the party. The woman told police that three men at the party dragged her into a bathroom, choked her, raped her and sodomized her.

Authorities ordered 46 of the 47 players on Duke’s lacrosse team to submit DNA samples to investigators. Because the woman said her attackers were white, the team’s sole black player was not tested.

District Attorney Mike Nifong stopped speaking with reporters last week after initially talking openly about the case, including stating publicly that he was confident a crime occurred. He went on to say he would have other evidence to make his case should the DNA analysis prove inconclusive or fail to match a member of the team.

An amazing number of people have already posted in the comments, although I haven’t been letting the comments through because of their nasty tone. Some of the comments are openly racist, such as this one:

Why do you colored people always got to play the race card? Why can’t it just be an issue for all races and nationalitys? Now that the sisters been made out to be nothing but a lying bitch its time for the IRS to investigate her ass because we all no she aint paying any taxes on her nasty ass. plus all that those poor students on the team have been through: ( a linching is in order.”

Others are merely gloating in tone. Most fall somewhere between.

However, the DNA evidence doesn’t prove that the woman made a false accusation, as many are suggesting. The DNA evidence can’t rule out the possibility that there were men at the party who were not members of the LAX team (a possibility I brought up last week). Nor, to my knowledge, can any evidence released so far rule out the possibility that the rapists used condoms. Finally, the reasons I stated last week for believing that a rape probably did take place, have not changed.

The defense announcement about the DNA is certainly something anyone following the case should be aware of, and that’s why I’m posting the story on “Alas.” But to conclude from the lack of DNA results that the accusation has been proved fiction is unwarranted.

UPDATE: See also Amanda’s post on this subject. And this post by zong4assata at Justice 4 Two Sisters. And this comment at Ginmar’s, written by a lab tech who works with DNA. And this post at Emboldened.

This thread is open to feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly posters only. If you don’t think you fall into Amp’s definition of “feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly,” and you wish to make a comment, you may do so at the cross-post on Creative Destruction.

It seems unlikely that many “Alas” readers are fans of how the liberal website “TalkLeft” has been discussing the Duke rape case (you can find a summary of the case here) . Because although Jeralyn of “TalkLeft” is a liberal, she’s also a defense attorney, and her inclination is to suggest that the accusation is false.

Nonetheless, she’s worth reading because she is a defense attorney (and an excellent one, from all I’ve heard), and there’s a good chance that if the Duke rape case ever winds up in court, the defense lawyers will tell the jury and the press something similar to Jeralyn’s current speculations. Jeralyn’s posts on this case (so far) can be read here, here and here.

Right now, it appears that any story told by a defense attorney will need to explain these elements in particular:

• “Medical records and interviews showed that the woman had signs, symptoms and injuries consistent with being raped and sexually assaulted vaginally and anally.”
• Evidence that a physical fight took place: Bruises and injuries to the alleged victim (who I’m going to call Mary Doe from now on), some of Mary Doe’s fingernails broken off and and found at the scene, items belonging to Mary Doe (such as her cell phone) left behind.
• Mary Doe’s claim that she was raped by three men at the party. Why would she lie?

Here’s the narrative Jeralyn suggests - I’ve pieced it together from a few different places in the post and comments here:

The accuser arrived at the house at 11:30. The other dancer was already inside. They began to dance. After a few minutes, they felt threatened by the racial and sexual comments, left and got in a car outside. They both were coaxed to go back in and they did, but got separated.

There could have been a physical assault without a sexual assault… There apparently was an issue about the money. They paid up front and were angry she quit after a few minutes and wanted their money back. That could have resulted in a physical altercation.

One interpretation could be that the nails did not come off during the alleged rape but during a physical assault over the money. …

In short, it doesn’t look like anything incriminating or confirming a rape was found in the [house] or the vehicle.

The implication is that Mary Doe has made up the rape charge for revenge against the Lacrosse players who beat her up during a fight over money.

What about the medical evidence? In an earlier post, Jeralyn quoted a pathologist to suggest that this evidence cannot prove rape:

DR. MICHAEL BADEN, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Usually, a physician can’t tell consensual from non-consensual. They can tell whether there’s been intercourse or not intercourse, but not whether it’s consensual because one can have bruises and certain injuries from consensual sex and one can have no injuries from non-consensual sex.

So a defense attorney could argue that all the medical evidence shows is that Mary Doe had sex with someone before she went to the Lacross players’ house that night. Alternatively, if the DNA evidence conclusively shows that the accused men (whoever they turn out to be) did have sex with Mary Doe, it will be claimed that the sex was consensual prostitution, followed by a fight over the money.

I believe Mary Doe is telling the truth. But Jeralyn’s narrative accounts for all the known facts and probably can’t be proven wrong. If this case ever comes to a court, I expect that the defense will tell a story pretty much like the one Jeralyn is telling, and it won’t surprise me if a judge or a jury buys it.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the vile FrontPageMag.com, David Yeagley wrote an incredibly racist, woman-hating, stripper-hating article about the Duke rape case (Delusions of Mediocrity, Echidne, Sadly, No! and Feministe have fisked the article). There is simply too much offensive material to quote it all, but here’s a few examples to give you the flavor of it:

The reports say the woman is a divorced, 27-year-old “mother” of two, attending North Carolina Central University. She is not a person of note, and is said to do exotic dancing as a side job to pick up extra cash. …

For me as a reader, I had to stop in amazement at the contempt Yeagley managed to get across with the simple device of scare quotes around the word “mother.” You almost have to admire the efficiency - a lesser racist woman-hater might have taken a whole paragraph to pack in the hatefulness Yeagley can communicate just with punctuation.

Then I started reading again, and had to stop again almost instantly because the vileness of the scare-quoted mother is nothing compared to the vileness of how Yeagley uses the phrase “person of note.”

So, that black woman said, “No,” eh? First, she’s in a profession where she’s expected to do tricks for clients. Second, she’s walking into a house full of young, drunken athletes, who happen to be white. Third, she called the police and complained once; then she went back, but then left. And then she went back again! That’s a peculiar way of saying “No,” it seems to me. …

But, exotic dancing…and then to cry “abuse”? This may be pushing victimhood beyond reason. …

(Yeagley in comments:) The woman went there to “turn’em on.” That’s what she’s getting paid for. That she would three times RETURN, when she had every reason to fear, shows excessively poor judgement on her part. She was literally asking for it, for whatever happened anyway.

Remember, if you’re black, and a woman, and a sex worker, then you’ve already consented to have sex, and you can’t be raped. You’ve literally asked for it (in the figurative sense of the word “literally”). And if you think otherwise, why that’s just plain pushing victimhood beyond reason!

(By the way, “Minnobserver” at Feministe pointed out that although Yeager claims to be a adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Liberal Studies, he’s not listed on their webpage. I just phoned the UO CLS office, and the person there says he’s never heard of Yeager and doesn’t have him listed as any kind of professor or instructor.)

* * *

Yeagley is an obvious, over-the-top racist and woman-hater, and it’s hard to imagine anyone other than fellow racist woman-haters taking him seriously (not that Frontpage will suffer any blacklash among conservatives for printing this garbage).

But what’s striking to me is that if a defense such as the one Jeralyn at TalkLeft outlined works, it will work because it appeals to Yeagley-like attitudes in the jurors and in the public.

Why are people so quick to believe that if a sex worker says she’s been raped, she must be lying?

Why is it a viable strategy for a defense attorney to virtually admit that their clients are the sort of scum who’d gang up on a lone woman, beat her up, and take her money - but then ask the jury to find that their clients are credible witnesses, and the beat-up woman who claims she’s been raped is not?

Because in our society a black sex worker is not a “person of note,” but rich white athletes are. What’s rare about Yeagley isn’t that he thinks it, but that he says it so overtly.

This thread is open to feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly posters only. If you don’t think you fall into Amp’s definition of “feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly,” and you wish to make a comment, you may do so at the cross-post on Creative Destruction.

Ryan McFayden, the Duke Lacrosse player who wrote a vile email fantasizing about what a turn-on it would be to murder and skin a stripper, apparently attended “Take Back The Night,” an annual feminist rally against rape, just a few days after writing the email.

…McFadyen reportedly was one of about 500 people who attended a Take Back the Night march during Sexual Assault Awareness Week at Duke.

“I completely support this event and this entire week,” McFadyen told The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper. “It’s just sad that the allegations we are accused of happened to fall when they did.”

Yeah, that’s the sad thing.

Saying you’re against rape doesn’t mean you are against rape. Saying you’re against woman-hating doesn’t mean you don’t loathe women.

This thread is open to feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly posters only. If you don’t think you fall into Amp’s definition of “feminist, pro-feminist and feminist-friendly,” and you wish to make a comment, you may do so at the cross-post on Creative Destruction.

Today was a big day for updates in the Duke case. The lacrosse coach has resigned and the University has suspended the entire season for the team.

Here is a quote from the Raleigh News Observer:

“Coach Pressler offered me his resignation earlier this afternoon, and I accepted it,” Duke athletics director Joe Alleva said in a statement released at 4:36 p.m. “I fully support President Broadhead’s decision to cancel the remainder of the season as well as his outrage at the latest developments involving the men’s lacrosse program. I believe this is in the best interests of the program, the department of athletics and the university.”

However, the most important update comes from the newly released affidavit for the second search warrant. The Smokinggun has a copy of the search warrant here. While the search warrant reveals more details from the case, the biggest news is the following email message sent by one of the players just after the victim reported being assaulted. The email sent by Ryan McFayden says,

To whom it may concern
tommrrow night, after tomights show, ive decidedto have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome..there will be no nudity. i plan on killing the bitches as soon as the walk and proceding to cut their skin off while cumming in my Duke issue spandex.. all in besides arch and tack please respond
41

Well the young man who wrote this email has been suspended from Duke University. His lawyer says for his own safety–it’s rather hard for me to buy this one, but this is his lawyer. The email was anonymously sent to the police (looks like somebody is cooperating behind the scenes).

A close read of the affidavit, insinuates possible premeditation because the men intentionally used the wrong names and said they were part of the Duke baseball or track teams. She also noted that the man who called himself Adam, was called Dan by people at the party. However, I would need a little more evidence to definitively say it was premeditated.

The email alone is enough to make me sick. It doesn’t prove he raped someone, but it sure shows he has depraved fantasies.

The email above is clear evidence of the lack of character (my edit: depravity) of at least one of these young men.

Also posted at Rachel’s Tavern.

A great number of posts have criticized me and other folks for forming an opinion about the Duke rape case before a jury has weighed in. Steve of “A Republic, Madam” writes:

Liberals, stick to your guns! The accused deserve the benefit of the doubt up to a certain point, and that point has not been crossed. Do cries of rape trump civil liberties and criminal protections? I sure hope not. … My support of the lacrosse players, at least in lieu of more evidence, is grounded in liberal, not conservative, thought.

I believe very much in “innocent until proven guilty.” If and when the police make arrests in this case, I want the accused rapists (whoever they turn out to be) to have their day in court, to be able to present a defense aided by legal council, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. Then, and only then, should they be sent to prison for what I hope is a long miserable stay.

But “innocent until proven guilty” is a courtroom standard. My opinion is not the same as a courtroom, and blog posts don’t put anyone in prison. Nothing about the American system of justice requires ordinary citizens to refrain from having opinions; and it’s not inconsistent to want Courts to adhere to “beyond any reasonable doubt” while holding my personal opinions to a less stringent standard.

Furthermore, there’s a difference between being morally guilty and legally guilty. As Jeff puts it in comments:

Admonishing one side to “leave it up to the courts” (and it is only one side; I’ve never heard anybody told they shouldn’t assert an accused rapist’s innocence because the jury hadn’t rendered a verdict) equates a legal standard with a moral one, and sends the message that it’s not really rape if they can get away with it.

At this time, unless new evidence completely changes this case, it seems clear that a brutal pack rape happened. That deserves our moral outrage, even without a court’s verdict.

Jeralyn Merrit - who has discussed this case on mainstream TV news - writes:

Rape is a serious charge. It is easy to make and difficult to defend.

I’d love to bury this centuries-old sausage. (It goes back to the mid-17th century at least, when Matthew Hale called rape “an accusation easy to be made, hard to be proved, but harder to be defended by the party accused, though innocent”). I’d like to remind Jeralyn of the OC pack rape case - in which the victim, Jane Doe, has endured (and continues to endure) years of her character being trashed in public. Her friends were recruited by the defense to tell lies about her, and private detectives chased her from school to school, because she dared to press charges against her pack rapists. It took two trials to obtain a conviction, even though the rapists videotaped the rape.

Was that charge easy for Jane Doe to make? Was the rejection and abuse from the community around her easy? Was the defense’s burden - in which even a videotape of the rape taking place almost wasn’t enough for a conviction - too heavy?

Jane Doe’s experience was extreme, but hardly unique. The defense strategy of attacking rape victims goes back decades (centuries?), and guarantees that rape is not a charge easily made. In particular, when a working-class black stripper accuses wealthy whites of rape, it’s all but guaranteed that if it comes to a trial the defense will put her through hell. To call this accusation “easy to make” shows an appalling blindness to how our court system often puts rape victims on trial.

Jeralyn then sums up the case - but in her effort to spread confusion and create reasonable doubt, she gets her facts wrong. Here, she discusses the 911 call so many people have gone on about:

The women leave the party. One goes back in. She leaves again and meets up with the second woman. At some point, the second woman calls 911 to complain about racial epithets hurled at her by one or more males at the house. (listen to the call here.)Within two minutes police arrive, there is no sign of the woman.

But in fact, according to the News & Observer, “Police said they don’t know who made the 911 call to report the racial slurs.” So why does Jeralyn believe she knows something the police don’t?

(And why does it matter? Jeralyn doesn’t explain how this call - no matter who made it - is evidence that no rape took place.)

Jeralyn also quotes from “Inside Lacrosse,” which according to her has “the best coverage of the story”:

Of note are two phone calls received by the Durham Police that night, the first made by a woman who said she was driving by the house at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., about an hour before the alleged rape took place, at which point, according to transcripts of the conversation, she was met with racial slurs.

About an hour before the alleged rape took place? That would be a blow to the accusation of rape, if true - because the police showed up a few minutes afterward the first 911 call, and found the house quiet and seemingly empty (although filled with the detritus of party). But according to this time line of events (which Jeralyn herself linked to), the next-door neighbor saw the women enter the house at about midnight and drive away between 12:45 and 1 a.m. - so if the rape occured, it occured in that time range. But the first 911 call was made at 12:53 a.m. So it’s extremely sloppy of the “best coverage of the story” to claim the call was made an hour before the rape.

That wasn’t Jeralyn’s point; I just commented on it because the bad fact-checking was so blatant. Jeralyn’s point, I think, is that the first 911 caller’s story had inconsistent details - was she walking or driving? How many men used racial epithets? But these inconsistencies don’t prove anything. First of all, there’s no evidence that the first 911 call is connected to the rape victim. Second, people who call 911 can’t fairly be expected to present a well-organized story, without any stumbles or misspeaking; on the contrary, from the recordings I’ve heard, 911 callers are often flustered and confused.

So how does a 911 caller, who may or may not have ever seen the (alleged) rape victim in her life, mixing up “walking” and “driving” prove that no rape happened that night? Jeralyn doesn’t say.

Then there’s this:

In an article filed by the Herald-Sun on March 29, Angel Altmon, the security guard who made a 911 call at 1:22 a.m. on March 14 […] claimed the driver of the car said she was not at the party with the alleged victim. […]

But in an article in the Duke Chronicle the following day, Kammie Michael, public information officer for the Durham Police Department, told the Chronicle the woman who drove the alleged victim to the grocery store was in fact the second dancer at the party.

Well, that certainly proves there was no rape!

Uh, wait. How does it prove anything? Explanation of relevance, Jeralyn?

Maybe Altmon misheard. Or maybe not all strippers are eager to tell total strangers what they do for a living. There are a lot of reasons this sort of very minor discrepancy can happen; you need more than “there were minor discrepancies in the 911 calls” to put together a plausible case for false rape accusation.

(You can read the transcripts of the two 911 calls here).

Jerelyn then quotes a forensic pathologist:

Usually, a physician can’t tell consensual from non-consensual. They can tell whether there’s been intercourse or not intercourse, but not whether it’s consensual because one can have bruises and certain injuries from consensual sex and one can have no injuries from non-consensual sex.

What Jerelyn doesn’t mention (and perhaps doesn’t know) is that the girl was beaten up. As the girl’s father told a TV news reporter:

The man described what his daughter looked like when she was released from a hospital. “Her face was all swollen up, her jaw. She couldn’t half walk. One of her legs was hurt.”

To me, that kind of injury doesn’t sound like the result of consensual sex for anyone but an extreme BDSMer. It sounds particularly unlikely for a stripper, who depends on her looks to feed herself and her children. (Maybe the father was lying - but it would be a very stupid lie, since the police would have taken photographs.)

Why do I think this story is true?

1) The victim’s story seems both plausible and similar to other pack-rape cases I’ve read about.

2) Both the medical exam and her father’s comments about her injuries are consistent with her story of being violently attacked and raped.

3) The police, when they searched the house where she claims she was raped, found her makeup bag and five of her torn-off fingernails. Again, consistent with her story.

4) Elements of her story are supported by the testimony of the next-door neighbor, Jason Bissey (see the timeline).

Do I think that’s absolute proof? No. It’s possible that further evidence could come along which would change the way things look entirely. (Always a possibility, with any crime.)

But at this moment, the evidence that a rape took place is pretty straightforward and convincing, whereas the evidence that a false accusation took place is… I’m not even sure what it is. “A couple of 911 calls were not perfectly consistent, therefore a false accusation has taken place!” seems to be the gist of it. That’s not convincing. That’s not anything.

* * *

P.S. Jeralyn links to this awful Findlaw article, which proposes that anyone who makes a rape accusation should be put on trial without an attorney or the chance to present a defense. Here’s my comments on that proposal from the last time Jeralyn linked it, in 2003.

This is an essay on racism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I took it out of the archive, but it is also fitting to talk about the desire to ignore racism. I have been hearing the same argument in the Duke rape case, and any other cases where race is clearly an issue.

A few days back, I wrote about the differences between race and class. I think it is very appropriate to talk about this because many people are debating about why so many people were left in New Orleans for days without being rescued. The fact that the people impacted in the city of New Orleans were overwhelmingly Black, and mostly likely poor, has not been lost on the mainstream news media and many bloggers. But the debate that always emerges in these situations is the “Race vs. Class” debate. The key question here is: were people left because they were poor or because they were Black? However, as a sociologist who studies racism, I see this clearly for the false debate that it is. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, in reality it is both race and class that matter. But unfortunately, very few people want to talk about race; it is much easier for Americans to talk about class because of the political climate I mentioned in the link above.

What is somewhat depressing is how many commentators and bloggers have mentioned race only to follow it up with comments like…”there were poor Whites there too,” “now is not the time to talk about race; we need to rescue people.” (Could you imagine people after 9/11 saying now is not the time to talk about terrorism? We need to rescue people.) The reality is that this is a great time to talk about race; the effects of racism have never been clearer. The institutionalized racism that has denied the African Americans of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama educational and economic opportunities over the last few hundred years is one of the biggest reasons that so many African Americans were unable to get out. Sure they were poor, but it is racism that has lead to the disproportionate poverty among African Americans and other people of color.

Racism also played a factor in the media coverage and the perceptions of the media coverage in New Orleans. Numerous reports were made of looting and violence especially at the Civic Center and the Superdome. The TV anchors at the news desk kept repeating this, giving the impression that these areas were too violent to enter, but I noticed something very different from many of the reporters who actually made it into these areas. Tony Zumbado and Carl Quintanilla from NBC both were at the Civic Center and they reported that the people were not violent, as did several other reporters (including Fox News’ Shepard Smith). Even Harry Connick, Jr. entered the Civic Center and came out saying the people were desperate but not violent. This is not say that there were not acts of violence, but in spite of evidence to the contrary, people refused to believe that the vast majority of the people in New Orleans were not violent.

The violence stereotype of African Americans is very powerful. In the 2000 General Social Survey Americans were asked to rank African Americans on a scale of 1-7, with 7 being the least violent and 1 being the most violent. 47% of Americans (and there is little difference between Blacks and Whites) ranked Blacks 1-3, while only 15% say Blacks are not violent prone, and the other 37.% camped out in the politically correct middle category. Given the number of people who think Blacks are prone to violence, it is not surprising that people refused to believe the reporters actually at the Civic Center. I think this is much more about race than it is about class. Even though many think poor people are violent, the media and the public very explicitly racialized this violence. The media did so by showing countless pictures African Americans and describing them as looters before acknowledging that fact that they had no food, no water, no diapers, and no way to get money (What were they suppose to do let their children dehydrate until the ATM worked again?).

Numerous message boards, such as New York Craigslist were full of blatantly racist messages further promoting the racist angle on this. Here are a few quotes. In a post entitled “The Hurrican shows us the animal world of blacks” this poster said,

“The Hurricane struck the mostly white towns of Mississippi even worse than New Orleans. But there was no looting, there were no rapes. People helped each other. But in New Orleans, once again, we see the lowlife nigger world. Once again, fat black mammys on welfare clutching bastard kids (the future muggers of America) screaming that no one is doing for them.”

In another post,

“The more Kanye no talent, Al Sharpton, and the biggest racist of them all jesse jackson keep talking, the more we realize that those criminals are not worth saving. Apparently, welfare checks and government cheese arent enough. Now we have to relocate a bunch of boderline homeless each with a dozen kids. The superdome was like a maximum security prison with children for these thugs to rape and murder. I challenge anyone to show me a news clip or article that shows those animals banding together to try and help themselves.”

These are just 2 quotes out of hundreds I have seen on message boards echoing similar sentiments. If race didn’t matter and if this was just about class, people wouldn’t be saying these things.

This is not an argument that class doesn’t matter. I think this is a big factor, but we can’t ignore the racism this exposes. It is not impolite to discuss race in a time like this. It is unconscionable not to talk about race. Many of these people are poor because of the racism that continues to plague our society, and rather than being mad at the messengers, we should be mad at the message. Then we should do something about it.

This is an oldy but goody from the Rachel’s Tavern archive. I thought it was fitting to talk about the tendency for people to avoid talking about race in an honest and direct manner, especially since many people have admonished me not to talk about race in this case. What do you think about the general avoidance of frank discussions of race?

I should start by reminding everybody that Justice 4 Two Sisters is following the case closely. So many bloggers have been following this story closely. Feel free to put your links to your postings in the comment section or links to particularly good analyses.

I don’t expect that we will be hearing much about the case until the DNA evidence comes back in a few weeks, but I did read at least one report where the DA was saying that if they don’t have DNA he doesn’t want to go ahead with the case. I’m nor sure if that report is correct or not because earlier he was saying that he is confident that he can win the case without DNA. We’ll see what happens.

1. The victim’s father speaks out to a local TV station. Including this statement,

The man described what his daughter looked like when she was released from a hospital.

“Her face was all swollen up, her jaw. She couldn’t half walk. One of her legs was hurt,” he said.

The alleged victim, an N.C. Central University student, mother of two and part-time exotic dancer, had been hired to perform at a party. That was when she claimed the sexual assault took place. The attorney for the lacrosse players said the men are innocent.

“There is no doubt in my mind, because I’ve seen the look in her face. I’ve seen the bruises on her face,” the alleged victim’s father said.

The man said his daughter’s physical scars pale in comparison to the emotional ones, and that he hopes his daughter finds new ways to make ends meet.

2. Duke University Student Government. Also includes an interesting link to a pro-feminist men’s group.

3. The lawyers representing the players call the media hype a “lynch mob” and give a hint at what their strategy is going to be–the victim staged it and the DA is out to get re-elected (classic condemn the condemners strategy).

4. Student activists continue protesting. It seems that some students are quietly posting banners supporting the team, while other are openly protesting. They have also noted that this is not the first incident where a LAX player has been accused of racism (one put a black face picture on Facebook and the other is said to have made comments about Black fraternity members eating watermelon and chicken.)

5. National and International media descend on Duke. (So my claim that this would not make national news was wrong. Thank goodness.)

6. This is a very good story from the Raleigh News Observer. They say that the police are confident that the earlier call about the racial slur did not come from the victim. They also say when police showed up at the house to investigate the slur no one answered. I also encourage people to listen to the full 911 tapes posted on this page. I am confident that the first caller is a White woman. (Definitely worth reading if you are following the case. The Raleigh paper has had much better coverage than the national media.)

7. The Duke Chronicletakes a decidedly apologist turn in defense of the lacrosse team, saying things like the racial slurs were alleged. The headline says, “White, Black-or Duke?” a very typical colorblind phrasing. (I have not seen that neighbor who over heard the racial slurs back down one iota–I guess the student paper is insinuating that the victim and the neighbor are lying. Here we go.) Here is a markedly different editorial from a Black woman at the school (make sure to read the anonymous comments left at the bottom and note that at 3PM on the 31st eastern time there were not comments on the White, Black-or Duke? article.)

8. An article out of Australia that uses the stop snitchin’ analogy like similar to the one I made in the earlier post.

9. The local Durham paper has some quotes from the district attorney Mr. Nifong. We probably won’t be hearing anything for a while.

10. A good story from the local paper that details how forensic evidence is collected in rape cases. It also raised the question as to why it took so long to gather evidence.

11. Some are questioning the timeline of the two calls to police. Here is the link to the story.

12. And last but not least someone who says, he believes that the “Duke Raping” never occurred. If you want to see more conspiracy theorists like this feel free to come to my blog Rachel’s Tavern, folks with this view are trying to take over the comments section. Please feel free to come do battle with them.

Update:Tiffany at Blackfeminism.org has an excellent post to elaborate of how the slang of the late 80s ended up leading to the media and police incorrectly coining the concept of wilding.

The Duke Lacrosse team rape case has really touched a nerve with me, and one of the things that bothers me most is the discrepancies between how White men’s crimes and black men’s crimes are covered in the popular media. Since it is no longer politically correct to use blatant racist language or explicitly racial terms in these cases, we have to look beyond the surface. Black men who are accused of committing crimes against Whites, especially White women, are not directly labeled “scary Black men” but everything about the way the story is told promotes the “scary out of control Black man persona.” One of the most troubling ways this is done is by the use of special terms coined in honor of Black men’s crimes or criminal involvement.

The most famous example of this is the term “wilding.” The term wilding was used to describe the attack of a White woman in Central Park in the late 1980s. Scared Whites suddenly worried that groups of young Black and Latino men would descend on innocent White women and attack them, like that has supposedly done to this woman. The term was almost exclusively used for young Black and Brown men, and as such has became synonymous with them. What is even more striking it that through DNA evidence and a confession by an imprisoned man, we later found out that this group of young men didn’t attack the Central Park jogger and in 2002 their sentences were vacated (DNA evidence confirmed that it was a lone attacker, who was a Latino man.). Why not use the term wilding to talk about what the rape survivor said happened at Duke. One of the regular commenters on my blog, Anthony, reminded me of this term, when he argued that the attack at Duke was an example of wilding. I wondered if popular media outlets will use the term wilding, or will they come up with some special code word that referred to groups of young White men who attack women (especially Black women). Probably not. When White men behave badly it is usually framed as a problem with the individual White man or the small group of White men involved, but it is almost never a collective statement about the problems with White guys in America.

Another example of this is the whole “Stop Snitching” phenomenon, which has been labeled as a huge threat to the criminal justice system. The term “Stop Snitching” has been connected with an underground video out of Baltimore. “Stop Snitchin’” has also been advertised on T-shirts that have become very popular mostly among young urban Black and Brown kids. If you watched shows like America’s Most Wanted or the nightly news, you would think the “Stop Snitchin” phenomenon is new and young Black men created it. However, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the idea of not snitchin’ has been around for a long time, way before Hip Hop and way before the T-shirts. In fact, I was watching the Abrams Report, since he has been covering the Duke case, and he kept alluding to the editorial that he was going to do at the end of the show. The editorial was about “Stop Snitchin.” My initial reaction was good somebody finally gets it. These Duke boys are living by the “Stop Snitchin” code of ethics. It’s not just poor Black and Brown people and Hip Hop artists. Well much to my chagrin Abrams didn’t even connect the Duke case to this phenomenon even though it was so blatantly obvious…the Duke lacrosse players need to start snitchin.

The trend of giving special labels to Black men’s bad behavior (or in some cases alleged bad behavior) makes it seem as if Black men invented gang rape or the code of silence that prevents snitchin. If the young wealthy White men can hide beyond their attorneys and say they are not “snitchin” on advice of counsel, the outcome is the similar…the crime is harder to solve. If a group of these White guys decide to have a party where they invite strippers and engage in wilding, the outcome is similar–another woman is sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, most people(especially White folks) in American culture don’t see these behaviors as similar. They think that one Black person’s bad behavior is somehow representative of all Black people, not the individual Black person or people involved. They think subconsciously or consciously that Black men are dangerous and White men are the innocent boys next door. So next time you hear a special lable for Black men’s bad behavior. Please think twice.

PS–And just as a side note, the attorney for the Duke lacrosse players needs to think twice before he decides to describe the rush to judgment of these young men as a “lynch mob mentality.” Lynch mobs didn’t kill White men who were accused of sexually assaulting Black women. Read your history.

Also posted at Rachel’s Tavern

Above: Photo from a vigil held outside the house where the rape took place.

* If you want to follow this story, the blog to read is Justice 4 Two Sisters.

* 15 of the lacrosse team members have been arrested before - mostly minor stuff, like drinking.

* Duke has canceled all lacrosse games until there is a “clearer resolution.”

* From the blog Life In The Chocolate City:

One of the young ladies was held down, beaten, choked, raped and sodomized. The police reports say that in the house they found her fingernails, her make-up bag and her cellphone. This is certainly the customary items a woman leaves behind after entertaining a group of athletes right? It’s typical for a white guy to holler out “Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt” while getting a lapdance from a Black woman right? Of course it isn’t. […]

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.

He’s right.

And regarding the details of the rape: These are mainstream, clean-cut, normal young American men. But look at the miles-deep reservoirs of woman-loathing and Black-loathing they were carrying around, just waiting for the right (wrong) situation.

Are all men like this? God no. But too many are - too many for it to be called abnormal. Cultural masculinity is a sickness that can turn men into monsters, and men in college sports are exposed to more of this virulent stuff than anyone. Do I excuse these rapists? No, of course not - they are responsible for what they’ve done, and I fervently hope they rot behind bars. But until our culture completely changes the way we construct masculinity, boys with their heart set on demonstrating their masculinity to their friends/teammates/frat brothers/whatever are going to keep on committing gang rapes.

Porn spam I routinely delete from comments sometimes uses phrases like “teen rape” and “black bitch gets raped” for a sales pitch. Why do they think they’ll make money with ads like that? Presumably, because they are making money with ads like that. Ordinary men, drawing on their own internal woman-loathing and Black-loathing, are plunking down money to masturbate to porn labeled “black bitch gets raped.” How awful is a culture in which that’s seen as no big deal?

Anyhow, more posts and articles worth reading:

Blackfeminism.org

I’ll put the race issue aside. This is also the result of universities allowing a negative athlete culture. More than a few studies have shown that athletes and frat boys are more likely to rape than other men, in part because all-male environments encourage aggressive and violent displays of manhood.

Q Grrl: Background From The Local Community

The town is pissed. Royally. And we’ve been pissed at the lacrosse team players and coach for the last ten years … even though the players obviously rotate out after 4 years. The team is notorious for it’s disruptive behavior in the neighborhoods around Duke. I lived across from the main lacrosse house for 7 years … and I can no longer count my calls to 911. In fact, a call I made a few years back resulted in 67 citations for underage drinking … the coach didn’t bat an eye. Similarly, I know that at one point, campus women were aware of sexual assault and harassment by lacrosse players. The house they lived in was repeatedly toilet papered … and once, upon seeing the black-clad women tp-ing the house I asked why. Their reply: to warn other undergraduate women that a woman had been assualted while at a lacrosse party.

Pinko Feminist Hellcat: Race, Entitlement and Rape

Don’t doubt for a minute that these women will be slut-baited. We already know what happens to women who are deemed sexual–they are sluts, whores, asking for it. They are suddenly trying to recapture lost virute. They are golddiggers trying to get cash on a false rape charge. Maybe they’ll be deemed crazy and therefore uncredible. Maybe the defense will decide that they really, really need their medical records and–ooops!–just release them accidentally on purpose. It’s happened before.

David Wright: Message to Duke Lacrosse Players

There are only two possibilities I see here. Either you come forward with the truth that reveals none of the criminal allegations actually happened or you come forward with the truth that at least with respect to some of your teammates, some or all of the allegations are true. To refuse to come forward with either version is to take the absolute worst course of action. If indeed that girl was raped, she is certainly some father’s little girl, and she could be some brother’s sister. If she was your sister, would you refuse to come forward with the truth to protect the “code” among your teammates?

(See David’s other posts on the subject, here and here).

Ruth Sheehan: Team’s Silence Is Sickening

Jill Hopman: Duke’s Lacrosse Players Still Defiantly Partying

Reflections of a Redhead: Break Room Conversation
Wouldn’t it be great to live in a country which had gotten beyond “well she deserved it” attitudes?

Dreams Into Lightning Pulls Together A Lot Of Interesting Connections

The iPinions Journal discusses how media coverage varies according to race.

Sporlitics

Lacrosse has always been chock-full of the same types that later commit the white-collar crimes like Enron: rich, white kids whose only possession greater than their wealth is their cockiness and general sense of untouchability. The only difference between them and what they will become thirty years down the road is a total misunderstanding of consequences, a dangerous ingredient.

* * *

Backwards Assholes Read Newspaper Websites
The readers’ comments at the News Observer blog are pretty appalling. Some examples:

These men have been hanged in the court of public opinion, justice and liberty be damned. Witch hunts in days of yore are referenced by feminazis as examples of historical misogony. They don’t question their own actions however when they are the ones hunting for punishment.

Yes, because getting angry and demanding an investigation is exactly the same thing as burning innocent people to death.

But what do I know, I’m still assuming that if 3 actually are guilty, forty some other guys aren’t. But that’s crazy, men are evil, right?

I don’t think that men who watch and do nothing as three of their buddies drag an unwilling woman into a bathroom are innocent. I’m not sure what exactly it is that they’re guilty of, but I sure hope a courtroom soon finds out.

Praising protestors (who may have in fact been trespassing) for supporting a woman who may very well have been breaking the law (in working for an escort service) due to her allegations that have NOT been proven to be true is shoddy writing, no matter if the writer is a reporter or a columnist.

Yes, trespassing; that’s what we should be focusing on here. That, and laws broken by the victim.

I am making it my personal mission to get the word out this terrible story. 46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don’t want people to think about this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those “if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it” stories.

Here’s what the local paper said happened,

The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40.

Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing.

“We started to cry,” she said. “We were so scared.”

The women subsequently left the party, but decided to come back after one of the men apologized. When the women went back into the party, “Two males then pulled the victim into a bathroom as three men sexually assaulted her for an approximate 30-minute time period, according to the warrant,” according to the student newspaper

The woman was able to get away and call the police, and she was subsequently admitted to the hospital. When the police came to the house to investigate, the men refused to cooperate, and now the police are testing 46 out of 47 of the men on the team ( I saw one report saying that the victim’s cell phone, purse, and an acrylic fingernail were found at the house when they finally got in.). I understand that these young men are legally innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case seems very strong.

On a more positive note, the student paper is reporting that about 250 students and community members have been protesting for 3 days outside of the house where the incident happened. It seems that the house has receive complaints from neighbors in the past.

The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college.

The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about our power structure in this country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can’t help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don’t even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman’s life is worth?

One of the people quoted in the student paper said that the school spends so much time protecting students from the people in the community, but in this case clearly shows how the people in the community also need to be protected from the students.

I encourage people to put up the story on their blogs, and put pressure on the University to investigate the team and level some sort of disciplinary actions, and of course this legal system also needs to do its part to put these men behind bars. I think one way people in the blogosphere may be able to help, in addition to agitating for the full force of the law to come down on these men, is by setting up some sort of fund to help this young woman pay for college (if anybody knows how this can be done). (Thanks to Baft Rage for the heads up on this.)

Also posted at Rachels Tavern