Duke's Lacrosse Team

At the behest of a former roommate, I will address the growing story surrounding alleged rape allegations against Duke University’s Lacrosse team. I’ll start by saying that it is way too early to really speculate about what happened; whether the allegations are false and frivolous, or whether the University could’ve done something different to prevent the incident if it turns out to be true. Be that as it may, I’ve been watching extensive coverage of the case over the last few days, and I (of course) have some opinions based on all I’ve seen and heard.

So here’s the skinny: A college student that works part-time as an exotic dancer (i.e. stripper) was performing at a house party that several Duke University Lacrosse players attended. Sometime during the night she claims to have been taken to a bathroom by a handful of the players and sexually assaulted there.

Tragic as this situation is, whether the allegations are true or false, what has really caught the attention of the media with this case is our good old friend, Race. After the incident came to light, the police obtained DNA from all but one player on the team. The one player that wasn’t tested was not tested because he is the only Black player on the team, and the victim said that her assailants were White. So, I won’t get into the allegations, but I will discuss some of the racial things I’ve heard since the story first broke.

If you’ve never been to the South of the USA, you might not know that there is yet much racial tension that exists in many areas. Durham, North Carolina is certainly one of those places. So much so that Duke University is sometimes referred to as “the Plantation.” Many affluent and opulent (largely White) college students feed their money into the private institution, which serves to bolster Duke’s image. Yet the city that houses Duke is home to many who cannot afford to attend Duke, but needs Duke in order to function. And of course, many of the Durham residents that cannot take advantage of the education that Duke has to offer are Black.

That causes problems…racial problems!

As an avid news junkie, I caught an argument made by MSNBC’s Dan Abrams (a lawyer that I have a great deal of respect for, and often agree with). Abrams was calling the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to task because there hasn’t been an outcry by the organization over the blanket DNA testing of the White Lacrosse Players.

The ACLU often raises a big stink about police departments and Courthouses that screen accused groups of people because such screenings are often only based on race, and the race of people screened is determined by the person who (sometimes falsely) made the accusation. Essentially, many innocent people are hassled by law enforcement officials because of their race and a false accusation.

Why does the ACLU care? Because the racial targets of such screenings have historically been minorities; primarily Black people.

Abrams point is that if the ACLU has a problem with blanket DNA testing based on race, then why don’t they cause a fuss over the Duke players being tested, minus the one Black player. Idealistically, I agree with him. Unfortunately we don’t live in an idealistic world, and the idealistic view ignores hundreds of years of history.

Anyone that watched Michael Moore’s (the leftist film director) movie Bowling for Columbine may remember that he did a section on America’s guilty group of people; Black men. He cited several examples in 1990’s America. I myself can immediately think of 2 examples where White women falsely made claims that Black men committed crimes against them.

One instance, from 1920’s Rosewood, Florida, led to the lynchings of dozens (some reports hundreds) of Black people in less than a week’s time because a White lady claimed she’d been raped by a Black man (to explain away bruises on her body) when she had really been cheating on her husband with another White man. The other instance that comes to mind was in the mid-1990’s when a white lady named Susan Smith drowned her children by strapping them into their seats in her car, and then driving the car into a lake. She falsely claimed that a Black man made her do it in a carjacking attempt. (A notion that I just laugh at because clearly she planned to kill her kids, and that’s the best alibi she could come up with. Unfortunately America believed her in the initial moments after she made the claim, until she confessed to killing them.)

These days I often don’t agree with the cases that the ACLU takes on. And in this instance I think Abrams has a good point. However, I don’t think he’s fully considered the breadth and depth of history that might afford the ACLU a pass because the tables have been turned (accused White assailants, Black victim).

To finish, I’d just like to point out that the Lacrosse team played 2 games after the allegations were made. The school President finally banned the team from playing anymore games while the investigation was ongoing, yet the team still held regular practices for weeks until yesterday. Yesterday the Lacrosse coach resigned and the team was suspended for the rest of the year; weeks after the sexual assault claims were made. And the DNA results haven’t been made public yet.

We’ll see how things pan out.

-Maelstrom

PS: here’s a website with an article about Susan Smith:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/07/06/smith.yates/