Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Just because a person holds a title of profesor and works for an educatinal facility, doesn’t mean that she’s not an idiot. I believe that there are 88 faculty who joined the pack of wolves attacking the innocent lacrose team.

Thanks for pointing to a superb post, Steve.  I thought the money quote was the one from the Duke professor (1 of 3) who had spoken up for the accused students.  How ironic that at Duke only a professor of engineering makes this observation (in public, anyway):

“We have removed any safeguards we’ve learned against stereotyping, against judging people by the color of their skin or the (perceived) content of their wallet, against acting on hearsay and innuendo and misdirection and falsehoods. We have formed a dark blue wall of institutional silence; we have closed Pandora’s box now that all the evils have made it into the universe; we have transformed students from individual men to archetypes—to ‘perfect offenders’ and ‘hooligans’ — and refused to keep their personhood as a central component of all this. We have taken Reade, and Collin, and Dave, and posterized them into ‘White Male Athlete Privilege,’ and we have sought to punish that accordingly.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think Nifong needs to be disbarred at a minimum, and I think the actions of the Duke faculty are inexcusable.  On the other hand, KC Johnson’s column became laughable when he asks us to “imagine” the race and social status roles in the case reversed.  As though the United States really needs to “imagine” a scenario where a poor black man has been railroaded by the criminal justice system over a wealthy or white victim!  If the roles in this case truly were reversed in North Carolina some thirty years ago we would be lamenting that the local prosecutor had failed to press charges against the white mob that lynched the three poor black men accused of whistling at the white girl.

Again, there is no excuse for the behavior of Nifong and the Duke faculty, but a sense of decency and history would recommend tempering the level of outrage over this incident.  Privelged white male atheletes, including the three currently charged by Nifong, will likely come out OK in spite of unethical prosecutors and a biased faculty.  I’m willing to bet that all three boys will be successful professionals ten years from now.

The problem with this entire incident is that everyone behaved so badly that all points of view on the political/cultural spectrum can pick any group as proof of racism/political correctness/academic McCarthyism/athletic privilege/prosecutorial misconduct.  There are no winners here, no victims.  All parties involved behaved badly. “A pox on them all” seems to strike the right tone.

In response to wcz’s comments:

Many years ago, I might have agreed with your comments.  No more.

Read the FBI statistics about black on white rape, as opposed to white on black rape.  It is not a racist fantasy that black men are commiting rape against white women in enormous numbers.  It is statistical truth.  White on black rape is, by contrast, infrequent.

I suspect that the same has been true for decades.

In short, the view of the past that you are presenting is probably false.

"In short, the view of the past that you are presenting is probably false.”

I really can’t comment on the current FBI statistics for the past decade because I have not seen them.  However, statistics for valid rape allegations/convictions really aren’t the topic here.  I was talking about past cases in which poor black men were either convicted or lynched for rape allegations with questionable evidence at best, particularly in the southern United States.  I’m sure the Southern Poverty law Center could provide a wealth of statistical evidence regarding this shameful period of the American criminal justice system.

My point remains that the level of outrage over this incident has gone a bit over the top from some areas.  One shouldn’t wonder what the Israeli reaction would be to massive German outrage over a German tourist being murdered by an Israeli criminal in Israel.

> Privelged white male atheletes, including the three currently charged by Nifong,

They’re white, male, and atheletes, but are they actually privileged?  Or are we using a “special” definition of privileged that is implied by the rest?