About a month after members of the Duke lacrosse team were falsely accused of
raping a stripper last year, 88 members of the Duke faculty fanned the flames of
hysteria by signing a letter announcing that they were "listening" to students "who
know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism."
Maybe they should have been listening to the accused, several of whom had iron-clad
alibis. Now the professors are going to need a new example of "racism and sexism"
at Duke since their case in chief has turned out to be a fraud.
In lieu of a gang rape perpetrated by high-stepping white male athletes against a
poor black woman, the Duke lacrosse case has turned out to be another in a long
string of hoax hate crimes in which whites are falsely accused.
The lacrosse players denied that any rape had occurred and immediately submitted
their DNA to the state, confident that the DNA would prove them innocent.
It did: Not a trace of DNA from any of the lacrosse players was found on the
accuser, though this girl had more DNA in her than a refrigerator at a fertility
clinic.
She had DNA from five other men, which ought to have raised suspicions about her
story that she had not had sex with anyone for the week before the alleged gang
rape. Well, that was one of the several versions of events the accuser has offered
police to date, although my personal favorite was the one in which Elvis came back
from the dead and sexually assaulted her. (I think that was version No. 3 — I'd
have to check my notes.)
This is the second time this woman has accused a group of men of gang-raping her.
One more time and it's officially considered a hobby.
And yet despite the vast privilege, untold wealth and bright shiny whiteness of the
defendants, they are still under criminal indictment in this case. Three of the
players face up to 30 years in prison for a crime every sane person knows they did
not commit. Ah, the life of the privileged!
Duke English professor Cathy N. Davidson recently wrote an opinion piece defending
her signing of the "listening" letter, noting that it was "not addressed to the
police investigation," but rather "focused on racial and gender attitudes all too
evident" after the alleged rape. She explained that the letter had merely "decried
prejudice and inequality in the society at large."
This would be like defending a letter written during the Dreyfus affair on the
grounds that the letter did explicitly accuse Alfred Dreyfus of treason against
France, but simply took the occasion of his arrest to decry the treasonable
attitudes of the Jews in society at large.
If poor black women are constantly being raped by rich white men, then how about they produce one case?
Professor Davidson's column — written when it was clear to everyone except Nancy
Grace that three innocent men were facing 30 years in prison for a rape they did
not commit — notes that she remains "dismayed by the glaring social disparities
implicit in what we know happened on March 13" and says the incident "underscores
the appalling power dynamics of the situation."
OK, this one they made up, but the case still illustrates a larger truth!
If anything, our awareness of the "power dynamics of the situation" is too high.
What we need is a little of that skepticism liberals bring to every single criminal
case that is not a white-on-black crime or a rape case involving Bill Clinton.
The truth, as opposed to the larger truth, is that the allegedly powerful white
males are at risk of losing their freedom at the hands of a lunatic accuser and a
power-mad prosecutor. Meanwhile the allegedly powerless poor black woman has
destroyed people's lives with her false accusations, for which she will walk away
scot-free.
Don't liberals ever have to pony up at least one example of a powerful privileged
white male trampling on the rights of a powerless black woman in order to keep
droning on about powerful privileged white males? Every real-life example
invariably turns out to be a hoax, among the most spectacular the Tawana Brawley
case and now the Duke lacrosse case.
According to the Los Angeles Times — in an article about another hoax "hate crime" on a college campus — false reports of racist hate crimes on college campuses have
averaged about one a year for 20 years.
Liberal professors believe that crying wolf is valuable for calling attention to
the societal problem of wolves, even though there's never a wolf in any particular
case. Evidently, awareness of an alleged societal ill — of which we have no actual
examples — is worth ruining the lives of three innocent people. After all, they're
just powerful white men.
At the next White Males of Privilege meeting, someone ought to bring up how they
can use their vast power to win the right not to be put on trial for crimes they
didn't commit.
