Duke Rape: Racism?

[Khalaf]

Alleged Rape at Duke Plays to Stereotypes

 

By ALLEN G. BREED

AP National Writer

 

 

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- The case seems to fit the stereotypes so perfectly. The accused rapists are white, the woman is black.

 

The men go to Duke University, the expensive private college with the championship sports teams and big TV deals. The woman studies across town at chronically underfunded and oft-overshadowed North Carolina Central University.

 

The men are lacrosse jocks, many of them recruited from tony Northern prep schools. She's a 27-year-old divorced mother of two who went to the Duke students' house to do some exotic dancing and make a little extra money.

 

It's so easy to see the incident at the shabby university-owned house - just a mile from the iconic Gothic Duke Chapel - in terms of powerlessness and privilege, town and gown, black and white. Many on campus and in the streets of this gritty working-class vertex of the famed Research Triangle are framing it just that way.

 

But not everybody is comfortable with that.

 

"I think along with the awfulness of the incident has come a real desire to condemn a lot of the Duke students because they are people of privilege, maybe," Durham resident Paul Montgomery, who is white, said as he stood outside the Trinity Park house where the party occurred. "I just hope people kind of take into account that there is ... more than meets the eye."

 

The white, three-bedroom house with the crumbling black shutters sits on the edge of Walltown, a predominantly black and poor neighborhood outside the school's low stone wall where many residents still refer to Duke as "the plantation."

 

On the night of March 13, a black woman made a tearful call to 911 to complain that a white man from the house at 610 N. Buchanan Boulevard - which was being leased by three lacrosse team members - had shouted a racial slur at her and a friend. She told police that someone had recently defaced a neighborhood car with the letters "KKK."

 

"I'm just so angry I didn't know who to call," the woman sobbed in impotent rage. "They didn't harm me in any way, but I just feel so completely offended, I can't even believe it."

 

That same night, a woman says she and a partner went there expecting to entertain a bachelor party of five, but that they soon found themselves surrounded by more than 40 drunken men barking racial slurs.

 

"We started to cry," she told The News & Observer of Raleigh. "We were so scared."

 

She told police she and her friend left the house. Jason Bissey was smoking a cigarette on the front porch next door and said he heard some of the party demand a refund.

 

He heard one shout, "Hey *****! Thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt."

 

Someone from the house apologized and coaxed the women back inside. It was then, the woman says, that she was dragged into a bathroom and raped, beaten and choked for a half hour.

 

Police say medical evidence is consistent with a sexual assault. Officers recovered the woman's makeup bag, cell phone and identification from the house - as well as four red-polished fingernails she says were broken off during the struggle.

 

A judge ordered 46 members of the team to submit DNA samples. Because the woman says her attackers were white, the squad's lone black member was not tested.

 

People on and off campus were outraged that it took police nearly three days to search the house. They were even more incensed that it took two weeks for the university to make the decision to suspend the team's season.

 

Protesters have marched almost daily, banging pots and pans outside the white house and demonstrating in front of Provost Peter Lange's home. Signs alternately condemning and supporting the players have appeared and disappeared from the players' now-vacant house.

 

The team captains issued a statement Wednesday expressing "sincere regret over the lapse in judgment in having the party." But they say the DNA tests will prove "that any allegation that a sexual assault or rape occurred is totally and transparently false."

 

Durham is a fairly racially balanced city; blacks and whites each comprise about 45 percent of the population. But Duke does not mirror the community at large - only 11 percent of the 6,244 undergraduates are black.

 

The economic chasm between the university and the town is also large. It costs about $44,000 to attend Duke - $3,000 more than the mean household income in Durham, and about $34,000 more than the in-state cost of attending North Carolina Central.

 

Slightly more than half of Duke's lacrosse team came from private schools, including the lone Durham native, but assistant sports information director Art Chase said many receive some form of financial aid.

 

Duke says it wants to be a good neighbor. University President Richard Brodhead said the school recently bought the house on Buchanan Boulevard and 14 others because of complaints of raucous parties and uncivil behavior.

 

"When we decided to purchase these properties, it was our intention to turn them around and sell them to single families, to do something good for the neighborhoods," he said last week.

 

Duke does have a history of outreach in Walltown and the larger community. Durham native Maya Jackson remembers fondly how Duke students would come to her elementary school to help out.

 

But the 23-year-old junior sociology major at NCCU also acknowledged that there has always been "an air" about Dukies.

 

"Some of them came off as snooty," said Jackson, who is black. "That can be said the same for Central students ... It just comes off a little bit stronger when it involves Duke students."

 

Said Rayone Bland, a black divinity student at Duke: "There is really a sense of, `I'm entitled to do what I want to do.' It's kind of like the staff and judicial affairs and everyone is just here kind of to keep the country club running and to keep everyone happy. So there's really not any accountability, I don't think, for students.

 

"So being told `No' for the first time, I mean, is mind-blowing for them."

 

All over town, there is a sense that battle lines have been drawn. One afternoon, Jeff Shaw, 20, a sophomore from Winston-Salem, sported a brand-new Duke lacrosse T-shirt he bought to show his support for friends on the team.

 

"I feel like it's Duke and Durham against these people" on the team, he says.

 

On Wednesday, several hundred people gathered on the East Campus for a "Take Back the Night" march from the student union to Duke Chapel. The annual protest was planned months ago, but recent events gave it a special urgency.

 

As Flannery Hysjulien waited for the rally to begin, she bent low in front of a garbage can and stared at a flier plastered there. It bore the heading "PLEASE COME FORWARD" - and the names and pictures of nearly the entire lacrosse team.

 

The 25-year-old Durham native, a white student in social work at the University of North Carolina in nearby Chapel Hill, says she has watched Duke try to build bridges with the community. She says it is a difficult task only complicated by this latest incident.

 

"I really think there is a feeling that this connects to a history of racism in Durham and discrimination in Durham that is still very much felt by residents of Durham," says Hysjulien, who was on campus for the march. "I think we're a city that remains quite divided, although we're attempting to become a more unified community."

 

As the crowd massed, a white man with a bullhorn leaned out of a nearby dorm window and shouted, "The lacrosse team is innocent." Another walked across the quad, pumping his fist and shouting hoarsely, "They're innocent."

 

Freshman Addison Nuding stood on the grass divide with his Frisbee and bemoaned the rush to judgment - on both sides.

 

"With a school of this prestige, I think that we're always going to be the target," says the 19-year-old wrestler from Reading, Pa., a white whose friends on the lacrosse team have assured him no rape occurred that night. "It's an easy target."

 

Jeannine Carpenter, 30, who is studying linguistics at Duke, doesn't think the incident should reflect on the Duke community as a whole. But for many people, the white Ph.D candidate knows it inevitably will.

 

"There's a stereotype of white Duke privilege that can't always be denied," she says. "I think that there's always historical truth in stereotypes. Whether it's present day or not is definitely a question."

 

Source

 

More Info about case

 

:mad: :mad: B*a*s*t*a*r*d*s! True racist colors come out in US, let these white rich suckers get away with this-No JUSTICE. :mad:

 

Peace out

[J.Lee]

I have always believed that the only just punishment for a rapist was and will always be castration so I say to her, "dismember that lacrosse member!"

 

 

There is only two ways this could play out:

 

On one hand, we know she was sexually assaulted but by whom exactly? Was it almost the entire team or just one Dukie? What if it was consensual? Think back to the bathroom scene in the Life of David Gale (if you watched it) and the consequences that followed to discredit his integrity? It's not so far fetched.

 

 

On the other hand, even if there was evidence that supported her case and proved that they [he]raped her, their [his] rich families [family]could bribe the police dept. and keep the DNA fingerprints from ever seeing the light of day.

 

Either way, it's a no win situation, they could either argue that she initiated it, put the focus of attention on her lose Jezebel like morals (her being an exotic dancer being the "proof"). Also on her dire financial situation and that she did it for a monetary gain!!! Or they could cover it up and the Police can release a statement that would mollify the parents and pacify her supporters: that is that she was raped after she left the party.

[Kashafa]

She's a

27-year-old divorced mother of two

who went to the Duke students' house to do some

exotic dancing

and make a little extra money.

You just gotta love them euphemisms. Madam yet-to-be-named was a stripper. Her job description is unprintable here on SOL. Now, I don't know much about the stripper business, but I do know a thing or two about occupational hazards. If one decides to embark on a career as a sensual gratifier, rape and STDs come with the territory. The norm rather than the exception.

 

In her case, she accepted to 'perform' for a bunch of rowdy college kids. Alcohol + large empty house + Testosterone = sex was a foregone conclusion. It was just a question of whether she was gonna give it up, willingly or not. Madam yet-to-be-named suffered the consequences of her career choice. It was bound to happen. That said, the lacrosse guys need to be punished for this, whether they're guilty or not. They're rich, they're white, and they're infidels. Who cares ? Maybe the local press-men can run a train on'em real quick, show'em what it feels like to be violated and exploited.

[Khalaf]

Salaam,

 

 

Brother this woman’s job description has nothing to do with what happened. There are women strippers, prostitutes, whores, seductive temptresses but rape doesn’t come with the territory as u put it. This logic would be like saying cause you live in dangerous neighborhood u ask for getting shot. This takes away responsibility from perpetrators.

 

Nacaam the chances are increased, but the murder is still guilty and should be punished (I am sure we both agree). And punishment is not usually carried out against those who are rich, white that commit it. The woman is black; these suckers are white and rich. This is black vs. white, rich vs. poor.

 

I hate this topic “rapeâ€, don’t want to discuss it to be honest. Just putting it out there. This is topic all over the news and am pissed off on how it’s being handled, largely due to this woman’s race, income, and job. A crime is crime weather it against a noble woman or a whore.

 

Who cares? Cause they infidels, she is whore? Again that is not relevant. This is a brutal crime-gang rape regardless of who the woman is. At the end of the day-she is a human being a mother who has been violated without her consent-thus she deserves justice. That’s my last two cents.

 

by J. Lee

“I have always believed that the only just punishment for a rapist was and will always be castration……….â€

 

----Cruel :eek: ! U don’t mean that it, and it won’t solve the problem. None of the laws of mankind will solve the horrendous crimes man commits. The best and only way to rid of evil is to apply the Law of Allah and follow it strictly. Fitnah has increased world over, because of the absence of Islam as the leader of mankind.

 

Peace

[NaaiMa]

You just gotta love them euphemisms. Madam yet-to-be-named was a stripper. Her job description is unprintable here on SOL. Now, I don't know much about the stripper business, but I do know a thing or two about occupational hazards. If one decides to embark on a career as a sensual gratifier, rape and STDs come with the territory. The norm rather than the exception.

Wow that is umm disgusting. No one will disagree that her job as an "exotic dancer" puts her in many dangerous situations, but to say that rape comes along with the job description leaves me speechless. It was a terrible crime against her, and no matter what her job was it should not have been commited and should not be expected.

 

I also couldn't agree more with kalaf's analogy. What you are saying, is taking away responsiblity from the perpertrators whom I do believe should be castrated as well!

 

 

Fi'amanillah

[Ibtisam]

You just gotta love them euphemisms. Madam yet-to-be-named was a stripper. Her job description is unprintable here on SOL. Now, I don't know much about the stripper business, but I do know a thing or two about occupational hazards. If one decides to embark on a career as a sensual gratifier, rape and STDs come with the territory. The norm rather than the exception.

 

In her case, she accepted to 'perform' for a bunch of rowdy college kids. Alcohol + large empty house + Testosterone = sex was a foregone conclusion. It was just a question of whether she was gonna give it up, willingly or not. Madam yet-to-be-named suffered the consequences of her career choice. It was bound to happen.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Kashafa]

^^ Whassa matter, bonita ? 'Chu no like me ?

 

Listen folks, I'm just pointing out the obvious here. Both Lady Stripper and Lacrosse Punks are guilty(presumably). She by exposing herself to danger, disease, and death, and in the process also endangering her kids, by engaging in her chosen profession ; They by raping her. Putting it that way does not make the Whiteys any less guilty.

 

I don't see this as Black vs White. I see this as Horny vs Easy Target. They took it. Guilty as hell, no doubt, but I don't think they raped her just because she was black.

 

I know, I know, it's not fair. Women(and men too) should have the right to take off their clothes in front of complete strangers and get jiggy wit it without fear of assualt. It's in the Constitution somewhere. Yeah, umm: Stripper Protection Act of 1973.

[Ibtisam]

^ :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: cloth come off, whether she wore more or less would not have made a difference regardless, and her profession is neither here nor there. i see you are trying to say as polite as possible that she should have expected it, due to her chosen profession. which is load of Crap.

 

as for me liken you, lets just say your bit backward for my taste

[J.Lee]

Kashafa, you are funny in a depressing way but she was asking for it miyaa sheekadaa wadid?

 

I know, I know, it's not fair. Women(and men too) should have the right to take off their clothes in front of complete strangers and get jiggy wit it without fear of assualt.

You damn Skippy they do! Just like you don't deserve to be assaulted because you are a teller at some bank.

 

Every job has a hazard but you don't anticipate it to be expressed especially in a such a ugly, brutal way.