Apologia for a Disaster

Today’s N&O features an impassioned apologia for the Group of 88 from one of its most temperate and reputable members, English professor Cathy Davidson. One day short of nine months since the appearance of the Group of 88’s statement, Davidson is defiant, confident that she and her fellow signatories did nothing wrong. Though she doesn’t come out and say so, both the tone and the content of her op-ed suggest that she shares the view of Karla Holloway, who told the Duke Chronicle that she would sign the statement again “in a heart beat.”

Trying to blunt the widespread criticism that in signing the ad, the Group of 88 was exploiting their own students to advance their personal, pedagogical, or ideological agendas, Davidson claims that she was protecting Duke students. She asserts,

The ad said that we faculty were listening to the anguish of students who felt demeaned by racist and sexist remarks swirling around in the media and on the campus quad in the aftermath of what happened on March 13 in the lacrosse house.

The insults, at that time, were rampant. It was as if defending David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann necessitated reverting to pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women.

The decision to draft the statement, penned by Wahneema Lubiano, came sometime shortly after March 29. The Group of 88’s ad appeared on April 6. The indictment of the first two players targeted by Nifong—Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty—came on April 17. Dave Evans was indicted four weeks later.

So who, exactly, was using “pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women” to defend Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty between March 29, the earliest date when the idea for the ad could have originated, and April 6, when the statement appeared? Davidson doesn’t say.

During the time period before the statement appealed, who was defending Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty at all? No one “in the media” knew their name: a Lexis/Nexis search indicates that the only media mention of the names Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty came in the N&O’s publication of the infamous “wanted” poster, which hardly exemplified “pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women.”

And on campus? Again, Davidson is simply reinventing the past. Between March 29 and April 6, activist students on campus distributed the “wanted” poster. Some pressured Brodhead for more forceful action against the team. During this week, virtually no student support came for the lacrosse team in general or for Seligmann and Finnerty (who weren’t even targets of the investigation for most of this period) in particular. Or is she saying that heretofore unrevealed Duke students were engaged in a whispering campaign at that time, defending the lacrosse players through racist “insults” about the accuser? Could Davidson actually be broadening her assault on Duke students beyond the Group’s attacks on the lacrosse team?

Davidson further notes that her decision to sign the ad was a result of seeing “many black students at Duke disappeared into humiliation and rage as the lacrosse players were being elevated to the status of martyrs, innocent victims of reverse racism.”

In late March, when the idea for the Group of 88’s statement originated, who—either on Duke’s campus or in the media—was elevating the lacrosse players “to the status of martyrs, innocent victims of reverse racism”? Certainly not the protesters to whom Davidson and the other Group members said “thank you” in their statement. The protesters whose work earned the gratitude of Davidson and her colleagues, it’s worth remembering, held signs saying things such as “Castrate,” “Sunday morning, time to confess,” and “Real men don’t defend rapists.” Between March 29 and the issuance of the Group’s statement on April 6, were members of the media or cable news network talking heads elevating the lacrosse players “to the status of martyrs, innocent victims of reverse racism”? Who, exactly, does she think she’s fooling?

The statement, claims Davidson, had nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the lacrosse players. That it appeared at just the time Nifong’s inquiry was peaking, and after one aspect of his procedural misconduct was apparent (his improper statements) is just a coincidence. What words were in the ad?* “To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard.” But the ad had nothing to do with the players’ guilt or innocence. That ESPN reported that its author, Lubiano, understood that some would view the statement as driving a “collective stake” through the “heart” of the lacrosse team is just a coincidence.

(The link above, by the way, is to a reproduction of the ad, which suddenly vanished from Duke servers shortly after a Chronicle article appeared last fall, highlighting the increasing criticism of the Group of 88.)

After working through some gratuitous criticism of the lacrosse team—whose “sleazy” behavior brought her “shame,” and whose hiring strippers reflected the “appalling power dynamics” in American society—Davidson reaches out to the accuser. Is she a “liar,” as Susan Estrich claimed? No, states Davidson: “Who is that exotic dancer? A single mother who takes off her clothes for hire partly to pay for tuition at a distinguished historically black college. Of course the lacrosse story makes Americans of conscience cringe.”

Finally, Davidson gets to the real victim—herself, and her 87 colleagues. She has been victimized by “right-wing ‘blog hooligans’,” who have criticized the ad.

Davidson is a professor of English. I can only assume that she deliberately chose the word “hooligans,” to imitate Nifong’s insult of the lacrosse players.

And who are these “blog hooligans”? Again, Davidson doesn’t say. The three major blogs who have criticized the Group of 88: Johnsville News, a non-ideological crime site; Liestoppers, which as far as I can tell has no ideological bent at all beyond a hostility to Mike Nifong; and this site, which is run by a centrist Democrat who’s vehemently pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and who’s backing Barack Obama for president in 2008. If this is the “right wing,” then I wonder if Davidson, safe in the “groupthink” environment at Duke, has ever met a real right-winger. Or perhaps Davidson is referring to mystery blogs, like the mystery legions of people who were elevating the lacrosse players to the status of martyrs between March 29 and April 6.

Oh, by the way, for any reader who makes it to paragraph 14 of a 16-paragraph op-ed: Davidson offers some qualified criticism of Nifong: “I refer to a prosecutor who may well have acted unprofessionally, irresponsibly and unethically, possibly from the most cynical political motives. If it turns out that Mike Nifong has no evidence (as he insisted he did back in the spring), he will have betrayed the trust of an entire community and caused torment to these young men and their families.” [emphases added] Has he done so? Davidson doesn’t say.

In Davidson’s mind, “I am positive I am not the only professor who was and continues to be adamant about the necessity for fair and impartial legal proceedings for David, Collin and Reade while also being dismayed by the glaring social disparities implicit in what we know happened on March 13.” With “defenders” like Davidson, the players need no enemies.

*--corrected item to note the "it just isn't Duke" was in the ad, too.

[Update, 10.26am: A brilliant response by Michael Gustafson to the Davidson op-ed can be found here.]