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.
Pingback: Creative Destruction
Pingback: Sixteen volts
Pingback: abyss2hope: A rape survivor's zigzag journey into the open
Pingback: Dru Blood - I believe in the inherent goodness of all beings
Pingback: feminist blogs
I think the fear is that saying, “it happens all the time”, leads many people to say, “there’s nothing we can do about it”. There probably won’t be a deluge of new activists from this case– people who are already interested/involved in mitigating violence against women probably have had much closer, personal exposure. However, it does provide an opportunity to display privillege, which is something that’s normally difficult to bring up.
I suspect that this issue is getting press because we’re (slightly) more sensitized to the plight of working poor and impoverished blacks after Katrina. While reports have slid to the background, it’s easier to bring the issues up, because it’s a reminder– you don’t have to prove the system’s broken, because that’s been clearly demonstrated. You just have to point out something that’s screwed up and people are predisposed to see the structural faults. That wasn’t true (or wasn’t as true) pre-Katrina.
Sorry that my thoughts are so tangled. Hope there’s a useful springboard in here for you.
blackademic, that’s brilliant.
as a woman, i disagree that the phrase “it happens all the time” leads people to think “there’s nothing we can do about it.” when people say “it happens all the time” after this case or the haidl case, it highlights the ubiquitousness of the problem of violence against women.
it shocks mostly men when they hear it happens all the time because women already know it happens all the time and sometimes this shock turns into action.
Isn’t it also possible that the publicity is due to the fact that these are Duke students?
As I see it, people are not worried by the threat — if these players are guilty, they want them to go to jail. But, this is shocking for many people: that well-to-do, educated, sportsmen would savagely rape a poor woman. For a vast majority of people, going to college – a well-know college at that – is reflective of some sort of high moral status. That these men could have done this is inconceivable.
Even for rapes, this is a rare case, is it not? Aren’t most rapes committed by people close to you? (This is my understanding from this weblog). I think that we should want to keep this an “exceptional”, and hence, “newsworthy” instance of rape: everyday prevention needs to be focused at something else.
Part of what you’re talking about is what should be considered to be “newsworthy”. There are a lot of injustices about which we do not read daily, both in the US and abroad. So we end up reading – and sometimes, caring – about only the most gruesome cases.
FWIW, I do believe that if this were an accusation from a black woman to a, say, predominantly black basketball team at a well-known institution (I know nothing of college sports, so I can’t give an example), this would be news.
I know I for one am so tired of the debate about what happened, when we don’t even know all of the evidence. I put in an update thread about another case I have been following–Black female victim, Black man charged with the crime, and of course, nobdy has a damn thing to say about that.
The fact of the matter is that interracial crimes make big news as do interclass crimes. It is part of the spectacle of race and class in America.
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?
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 can perhaps be forgiven for concluding that blacks will not be happy with crime coverage involving blacks regardless of what is actually covered, and so they might as well just please themselves and cover whatever gives them the best revenue stream.
Blac(k)ademic writes:
I disagree completely that any individual issue should be made into an emblem of “violence against women”. This case should absolutely be about DNA, defense lawyers, and evidence. If I were accused on any crime, I would certainly want to case to be about the facts and evidence, not about any larger theme.
The larger theme is important. The problem comes in stating (prospectively, before all the evidence comes on — pro or con) that any individual incident is a symptom of some larger problem. It may or may not be — after all the evidence comes out. I feel like too often both sides are too eager to “take sides”, and support the “racist rape” or “lying girls” cause before there is any evidence publicly reported at all. Inevitably, one side or other has to either eat crow, or turn it around a claim the system doesn’t work because they didn’t get the outcome they wanted.
So violence against women is a serious issue. Too serious, I believe, too rally all the troops around one alleged rape, and then hope with fingers and toes crossed that it’s one of the 95% of the cases where the women were telling the complete truth, and not one of the small number of cases that fall apart when the victims’ stories don’t match up with the objective facts.
It wouldn’t get nearly as much attention. Most rape cases even gang rape cases don’t, especially those who impact women of color. For one thing, what if you are a woman of color who is raped by a man of color and the police come out and tell you flat out no crime has occurred? If it had been a White woman raped by a man of color, I’m fairly sure those words wouldn’t have been said, even though in actuality interracial rapes are rarer than those within a race. That’s the stereotype of rape in this country.
It’s shocking because too many people already have it set in their minds who rape victims are, and who rapists are and often, it’s based on stereotypical depictions. Often many people aren’t aware how entrenched these belief systems are, until they emerge in situations where rapes occur, including those close to home.
Men who attend colleges and universities(including any Ivy Leagues or others enjoying similar social status) have raped women many times. Many rapes in colleges and universities go unreported by victims and underreported by those insitutions in the interest of portraying their campuses as safe places to be.
I can tell you almost for certain that if the woman had been assaulted and raped by Duke’s basketball team that not one word would have been printed or heard. Even though the LAX team is a big deal, it pales in comparison to the basketball team that generates so much money for the school.
I believe many of us who understand the enormity and scope of this problem feel the same way about all victims. I think the profile of a particular case gets raised when it has drama of it’s own. In this case, it was the refusal of many people to let Duke University continue the school year as if a serious crime hadn’t been reported.
Why are we only important when whites are involved?
Most crimes are committed within racial groups — rape, robberry, homicide, etc. So any crime that crosses racial groups becomes newsworthy by virtue of novelty and (in this case) class. White on white crime isn’t newsworthy either, unless it is spectacular, like a mass killing (a crime commtted almost exclusively by whites).
Black on black and white on white crime are both so common we mostly accept it as the background noise of society. You may perceive it as a personal racial slight, but it’s just a fact of our attention spans. There’s only so much outrage a person can generate on a daily basis and between Iraq, the economy, our own lives, etc, most people have little left over for more than a handful of “issues” that don’t impact us personally.
Sorry, this case *would* have been as highly publicized had it been Duke’s basketball team, Mendy. Absolutely it would have. The reason it was first publicized had to do with the fact that it was (1) a college sports team — and national champs at that. Have you not noticed that sports figures in general — national or school sports figures and teams — and regardless of race are in the news an awful lot since the mid-1980s because of all the havoc they wreak in society in regard to violence, drunken this, assault that, get-me-out-of-this charge, etc. ? But first off you had news headlines because it was a big-time school, Duke, and it was a national championship team.
The case has remained in the news day after day because dribbles of news come out via a proseuctor (up for reelection) spouting off at news conferences about DNA, run-ins with the law on the part of the woman, and then no DNA linking the team members to the woman. When you have a stripper with run-ins with the law making the accusation, I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter her race, you are going to have all of these aspects about her and that go to her credibility become part of the news coverage of accusations of gang rape against a major college’s national championship team. Look at the woman who accused Kobe Bryant if you doubt (was she even a stripper?). No it’s not fair but all of this would be publicized regardless of race, even if she were white, even if the national championship team were all black and the woman was black.
Finally, it remains in the news at this point precisely because *no DNA evidence was found*. That’s news. That’s definitely news. There could be all sorts of reasons DNA evidence wasn’t found, including that the team used foreign objects to rape her of course. But it’s definitely news. All the more so because the prosecutor (up for reelection) shot his mouth off at a news conferece about his confidence that Dna evidence would abound.
I say all of this agreeing with the general statement that rape and class and race are treated terribly and miserably in the media. But when you go to this case specifically, I’m sorry. I can’t agree that what’s motivating the media here is that this is a white team and the woman is black. Sorry. I mean I say this as a former national reporter. That’s just not what’s been driving the coverage of this, in my opinion.
Here is why I think this story continues to play nationally: The players not only come from the same class, but went to the same schools as many national media types. They find it more interesting when one of their own class is involved — either as a perpetrator or a victim. The same phenomenon pervades the so-called Mommy wars, where working women and stay at home moms face off about their “choices” without regard to the fact that most women don’t occupy the privileged perch that gives them the same choices that well-educated mostly white writers have. It’s news through the prism of privilege.
I think this story would be big locally under a lot of different conditions. Certainly, it was very newsworthy in the Washington D.C. area when the basketball coach at the U.Md. more or less threatened female students who were victims of alleged sexual assaults by some team members. If you didn’t hear about this nationally it’s probably for the reasons I stated.
Right– so this case got attention because it’s about privilege and whiteness just like the OP said. My bro went to Duke in the 80s and he says it was very privileged and white.
Again, SORRY. Athletes, be they national collegiate champs or professionals, have been the focus of many many national press stories since the mid-1980s, twenty years ago when the trend started being documented in books. They’ve been the focus of entire books on the small teeny tiny minority of the population they make up and the huge amount of run-ins with the law they create, so disproportionate to the rest of the population, be they Black, white, individual, team, whatever. Not just that but in college athletes there are books and studies on the huge privileges they receive that are illegal under NCAA rules, nevermind “privielges” in their mind they think they are entitled to, Black, white, or ANY class they come from but make it big as a collegiate athelte. I mean we could have whole blogs on this issue alone and no doubt they exist.
I swear on my life as a former Off Our Backs radical feminit collective member and as a former member of the Washington press core that this ase DOES NOT make headlines almost every day because the players’ privilege and whiteness is threatened with the possibility of jail time or having to register as sex offenders. We are talking about a major university’s NATIONAL CHAMP team alleged to have gang-raped a woman.
Whether she was Black or white, this would have been news.
Whether the team was predominantly Black or white, this would have been news.
That the woman is a stripper would have been news, regardless of race or class.
That the woman has past run-ins with the law would have been news, regardless of race or class.
That no DNA linking the team members with the woman was found absolutely would have been news. ESPECIALLY after the prosecutor (up for reelection — yet another key news angle you cannot dismiss) spouted off about his confidence in finding DNA evidece aplenty. It’s news.
I’m sorry. It’s news. It’s news when the national championship team — any national champs — of a major university — any major university or professional team — are accused of gang-raping a woman — any woman, regardless of class, race, whatever –it’s news. It’s news. You could say we’re talking about i’s own elite weird class when we talk about athletes and violations of the law; that is what it has become in the past 20 years; this is an elite group, regardless of class, race, or background, that is ALWAYS news in regard to even minor infractions with the law because of how disporportionate their infractions are when compared to the rest of the population.
And regardless of class, race, whatever, the accuser of any such elite athlete or team is news. Period. It is. You don’t have to look far to see it doesn’t matter whether it’s race on race (Mike Tyson), white woman v. black man (Kobe Bryant), or black woman v. white men (this case). For crying out loud look at all the non-rape crime news about elite collegiate and professional atheletes on an almost weekly basis, whether we are dealing with black-on-black (Andre Risen) or drunken driving citations erased because of the athlete’s standing.
Oh. And I forgot to mention the newsworthiness to everything already listed when the woman is a SEX WORKER. (I am pro-sex worker, by the way.) But I mean for crying out loud. Given everything that already makes this a national news story there’s that on top of it. And the fact that she’s had prior run-ins with the law. I mean it honest to God does not matter her race or class; of course this is news in this story. AND THEN the fact that there is no DNA linking the men to this woman. OF COURSE this is news. I’m sorry. It’s news. I’m sorry sorrry sorry! But of course this is news for reasons having nothing to do with the race of the team and the race of the woman or, and this is MY biggie, the class of the team or the class of the woman.
Which is not to say stereotypes and bullcrap regarding race and class haven’t been flung to the ether region in “discussion” of this case.
I’m just saying this particular case would have received the same amount of attention regardless of the race of the accuser or the team members. An all-Black national championship team of wrestlers, for example, from the University of Michigan accused by a white stripper of gang-raping her would have received the same national media attention is what I’m saying. Absolutely. No question. None whatsoever.
This is only the second blog on Alas I’ve posted a response to and coincidentally or not the original blog in question was posted by Blac(k)academic, both original posts of which I found not just offensive but weirdly correct in theory but totally off when applied to reality. Maybe it’s that I see so many Class issues in these topics that mirror Race issues that it strikes me as just Wrong when the two don’t parallel each other, which is to say, the vast majority of my political feminist experience has been that Black women’s issues and class issues — or to put it in words that resonate more immediately to those who empathize and those who don’t — White Trash issues often are along exactly the same lines, though not always of course. But so far I am not liking at all from any political viewpoint Blac(k)ademic’s posts, obviously; they make sense to me in broad theory but not when applied to the reality of how this world works. So sue me. I’ve come to believe there is only so much contribution an academic of any sort can make if she/he is disconnected from reality. Period.
laylaola–
i am not seeing your point or your argument as to how my ideas are so far from any reality? oh wait, probably because i am not blogging about white feminism like everyone else is.
black women’s issues are not always in line with “white trash issues”
get a clue. not everything in this world revolves around whiteness.
by the way, i am a female.
I’m just saying this particular case would have received the same amount of attention regardless of the race of the accuser or the team members. An all-Black national championship team of wrestlers, for example, from the University of Michigan accused by a white stripper of gang-raping her would have received the same national media attention is what I’m saying. Absolutely. No question. None whatsoever.
now that is far from reality.
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.
are you people for real?
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Experts answer: What Does DNA Evidence Prove?
You know, I’m pretty sensitive to class issues, but it’s disingenuous to insist that poor Blacks and poor Whites share the same issues. They share many of the same issues, yes. But there are plenty of instances of outright racism towards Black people that Whites–even poor Whites–do not have to sweat. Poverty is an issue, but it’s also an issue that a larger proportion of Black people than White people are poor. And when it comes to violence against Black women, sorry, it’s no contest. It doesn’t matter unless it’s extra sensational.
Natalee Holloway–news! Tamika Houston–not so much. That’s reality.
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.
I think there’s one reason why inter racial rape cases get all the publicity that everyone has missed. They expose very clearly that women are still regarded as property, that every man is entitled to own that property, and the real crimes are the property herself daring to think she’s human, and one group of guys using another guy’s property. It’s a pissing contest. When it’s white-on-white or black-on-black everyone just shrugs—-after all, it’s guys doing what guys are entitled to do. Change one race, and it becomes a territorial thing with guys. That’s why these trolls are defending the right of white boys to rape. Women aren’t human, and they’re ranked in terms of value by how used they are, and how much of a challenge they take to crack. Getting a virgin to give it up is an accomplishment; a stripper is assumed to be accessible to all. She’s cheap property, and in fact she should be grateful for the attention. Or at least that’s what’s clear from these fuckers’ attitudes.
Sadly, the media circus is blurring the lines of the issues here.
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.
My point wasn’t about race so much as about class and money. Duke’s basketball team makes them (the school and other interested parties) lots of money, and how many times has it happened that a victim is “hushed up” using money.
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.
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.
Very few people can resist a good mystery, and this case has all the aspects of a good Agatha Christie yarn. An accuser hidden behind a veil of secrecy and whom the media can easily paint as not credible regardless of her true character, a multitude of suspects who can be placed in the same room as the accuser at the same time, a newly appointed DA running in an election against a former prosecutor whom he fired.
… 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.
Sadly, there are those who wish to sweep this under the rug by claiming no crime was committed. We’ll find out more in the coming weeks about whether any legal crime has been committed. We already know that social crimes were, and will continue to be, unless we discuss them. The hiring of a high powered attorney to protect the image of Duke University only excacerbates the problem.
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.
Blac(k)ademic said in her responding poast: “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 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.
They are a National Championship Lacrosse Team and it would have been covered regardless. I disagree with the premise that the media coverage was race driven at least originally; if that was the case Jesse Jackson would have been down there immediately. It was driven originally by the need for sensationalism due to the publics craving for it. The American public is numb to anything that is not sensationalized. It is almost unfortunate the way the histrionics of those such as Nancy Grace and Rita whatever her name is from MSNBC and in the opposite direction Fox News has used this, but they make their living off of the frenzy they create around it.
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.
“Most crimes are committed within racial groups … rape, robberry, homicide, etc”
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.
Plus, your actual assertion that “Blacks commit slightly more violent crime against whites then blacks”, even if true (which it very much isn’t), wouldn’t contradict the first assertion that “Most crimes are committed within racial groups … rape, robberry, homicide, etc” unless whites latinos, and all other racial groups commit so few crimes in comparison to 10% of the population (? – sorry, don’t have time to look it up, but I know it’s much less that a third or even a quarter) that the crime commited by that 10 percent completely skews the statistics.
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.
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.
Igor, you’re wrong. The vast majority of crimes are intraracial.
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?
What makes this case so atractive to the media? And, in particular, what makes it so attractive to the feminist blogosphere? It’s not the race of the victim, as you’ve already noted, black on black rape goes virtually unnoticed. Could it be the race of the perpetrators? White males are the fashionable target these days, and this case was seized upon by a lot of people who wanted to turn it into a case study of supposed white male privlege.
Robert’s beaten me to the real punch with his insightful observation:
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.
Hahahaha! Just doing some extra googling on the subject found this, from your own blog, no less. You quote Life in the Chocolate City as saying:
To which you said:
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.
I think when we’re dealing with elite professional or collegiate athletes, we’re dealing with a category of people who I think are treated by the population and the media and the legal system as very similar to celebrities. They receive different treatment than most people, regardless of race or class. It can be a Black athlete or celebrity and Black-on-Black crime against a woman (Mike Tyson), it can be a Black athelete or celebrity and Black-on-white crime against a woman (O.J. Simpson), it can be a white athlete or celebrity and white-on-white crime against a woman (Robert Blake), or it can be a white athlete(s) or celebrity and white-on-Black crime against a woman (Duke lacrosse team). Celebrities/elite athletes generally tend to be treated differently — almost make up their own class in this celebrity/athlete culture in the United States — regardless of race than a person of the same race who is not a celebrity or elite athlete accused of the same crime.