Monday, January 15, 2007

Race, Racism, and the Case

This case began with one unequivocally racist act: a lacrosse player, as part of a racially charged, post-party argument with Kim Roberts, shouting the n-word. In her interview with 60 Minutes, Roberts made clear she provoked the comment; she equally, and correctly, made clear that using the word was unacceptable in any circumstance. A second player, as was widely reported at the time, made the “cotton shirt” comment—a tasteless rip-off of a Chris Rock joke.

Since March 14, race and racism have played a consistent, and sometimes depressingly noticeable, role in this case. In the Wilmington Journal, Cash Michaels has frequently quoted from anonymous racist e-mails that he has received; on the Duke campus, Karla Holloway has claimed to have received similar e-mails. Anonymous e-mails of any type, it seems to me, should be criticized; racist emails are contemptible.

That said, I’ve received dozens of anonymous, race-baiting e-mails since starting this blog; I don’t consider those e-mails any more representative of the Group of 88’s thinking than I would consider anonymous racist e-mails to reflect the mindset of the Group’s critics.

Beyond the one lacrosse player and these anonymous e-mails, however, evidence of anti-black racism as applied to this case has been difficult to discern. In her controversial N&O op-ed, Cathy Davidson claimed that the Group of 88 reacted to racist statements defending the three players Mike Nifong ultimately targeted. She stated,

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.

I’ve spoken to dozens of people at Duke, and have received a consistent reaction: none are aware of any defenses, much less racist ones, of the three players between March 24 and April 6, when the Group of 88’s statement appeared. More broadly, I have struggled to find a record of anyone who was aggressively defending any of the lacrosse players “on the campus quad” between March 24 and April 6, much less anyone who was doing so by “reverting to pernicious stereotypes about African-American women.”

It is deeply unfortunate that Davidson elected to trivialize real instances of racism—of which there are far too many in American society—by seeming to invent episodes of racist behavior by Duke students to justify the Group of 88’s dubious conduct.

---------

Over the past ten months, we have witnessed public instances of racist behavior, most of which has passed unrebuked, certainly by people like the Group of 88.

1.) Double-standard racism.

Two examples:

i.) After welcoming to Durham the New Black Panthers, certified as a hate group by both the SPLC and the ADL, Victoria Peterson was personally celebrated by Mike Nifong after she signed on as chair of his “citizens’ committee.” To my knowledge, this action received no rebuke from any prominent Durham black leader, from the state NAACP, from the black press, or from a member of the Group of 88.

Imagine the opposite: an allegation of black-on-white crime prompted a visit from the KKK, and the chair of the DA’s “citizens’ committee” had shared the platform with the KKK Grand Dragon. Does anyone think Durham’s black leadership, the state NAACP, the black press, and the Group of 88 would have remained silent?

ii.) Karla Holloway, then-chair of the “race subgroup” of the Campus Culture Initiative, published an article condemning the women’s lacrosse players and suggesting that Nifong’s critics were arguing that “white innocence means black guilt.” Her remarks passed without rebuke from anyone at Duke, and she remained in her CCI position until last week, when she resigned to protest the lifting of Reade Seligmann’s and Collin Finnerty’s suspensions.

Imagine the opposite: after an allegation of black-on-white crime and a DA who engaged in the same type of misconduct that Nifong has, a right-of-center white professor tasked with improving “campus culture” published an article suggesting that the DA’s critics believed that “black innocence means white guilt.” Does anyone think the administration wouldn’t have immediately demanded the professor’s resignation as “race subgroup” chair?

2.) Conspiracy of silence.

Over the past several months, several Durham African-Americans of some prominence have made blatantly racist remarks. Last spring, NCCU student Chan Hall demanded that Duke students be prosecuted “whether it happened or not,” to provide “justice for things that happened in the past.” Just after the election, Nifong supporter and former Durham Democratic Party official Harris Johnson rejoiced that the result showed “that justice can’t be bought by a bunch of rich white boys from New York.” And later in November, Greg Childress, a member of the Herald-Sun editorial staff, wondered why people cared so much about innocent whites.

With Nifong himself so frequently resorting to race-baiting rhetoric, it’s little surprise that such remarks occurred in Durham. It is surprising, however, that, to my knowledge, no prominent Durham leader publicly distanced themselves from the comments. At NCCU, far from experiencing condemnation on campus, Hall was elected a junior-class senator this year, and was runner-up for Speaker of the NCCU Student Government. Cash Michaels published a piece explaining away Johnson’s comments. Durham mayor Bill Bell, City Manager Patrick Baker, NAACP “case monitor” Irving Joyner, and the African-American members of the Group of 88 all remained silent regarding the statements of Hall, Johnson, and Childress.

Does anyone believe that we would have seen such a reaction if a leading white member of Duke’s student government, a former GOP city official, and a white member of the H-S editorial staff had uttered the reverse of the Hall/Johnson/Childress comments?

3.) Unthinking racism.

A recent article by Gregory Kane on Black America Web illustrates the approach. In mocking terms, he described himself as unaffected by Nifong’s decision to drop the rape charges against the targeted Duke students. Kane was “compelled to write about how I’m so not feeling any sympathy for these guys. I say again, they got off easy.”

Why, says Kane? Because 23 years ago, a black man named Calvin Johnson was falsely accused of rape. Kane claims that no one in the media paid attention when Johnson was charged, or when an all-white jury in Georgia convicted him. (DNA tests—of the type, of course, that Nifong intentionally withheld in this case—set Johnson free.) Johnson spent 16 years in prison, Kane sneers, “while those poor, oppressed Duke lacrosse players have been walking around free on bail.”

“Those who continue to defend” the Duke players, concludes Johnson, “can holla at me after they’ve done 16 years on a jive humble charge.”

In other words: because black people in the South have been wrongly convicted in the past, it is wrong to worry if whites, or Asians, or Hispanics are railroaded for political reasons today. The contempt that Kane feels for the Duke students, just because of who they are, is palpable.

There’s no question that innocent people are wrongfully convicted as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. There’s also no question that those so affected are disproportionately poor and minorities.

If the abuses in the Calvin Johnson case—or any case handled by the Innocence Project—had come to light during or before the trial, would a media and popular outcry have been justified? According to Kane’s logic, no. Because innocent blacks have spent years or decades in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, others should experience the same fate. This line of argument is perverse.

Kane’s basic viewpoint has appeared with depressing frequency throughout this case. On Friday’s Paula Zahn broadcast, black talk show host Joe Madison asserted, “I’m not crying tears over these guys.” On campus, political science professor and Group of 88 member Paula McClaim—who had previously rationalized Nifong’s behavior and claimed that the administration’s approach to the lacrosse was “depressing and demoralizing for [African-American] faculty”—was asked over the summer whether she would speak out in favor of due process for the three players. Her one-word answer: “NO.”

---------

Remember, again, what occurred in this case: a prosecutor deliberately exploited racial tensions, and profited politically from doing so. On this day, of all days, that record should outrage everyone.

139 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you are a Duke student, alumni, faculty or staff, please sign the following petition to show your support for Reade, Collin, and Dave.

Concerned Duke Alumni

Duke Parent

Anonymous said...

Another superb anaylsis, Professor Johnson. This is why it's more important than ever to get a Justice Department investigation of this cold-blooded frame by a dishonest and unethical prosecutor, enabled by the late March coverage in the News & Observer (the false accuser was falsely portrayed as the victim) and the attitude of numerous Duke professors, among others.

Anonymous said...

Well stated, KC. -E MD-

AMac said...

Nicholas Stix, a journalist previously unknown to me, has posted a lengthy essay on the history of the Hoax through early January, The Incredible Disappearing Duke Rape Hoax.

Stix' astringent style will offend some, but as far as I can tell, his version of the facts is correct, and his has made good choices with his supporting hyperlinks.

Stix goes into the background and context of many of the depressing racial and racialist aspects of the case that KC Johnson describes in this post.

Well worth reading.

Anonymous said...

Paula McClain, a professor of political science and co-director of Duke's Center for Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences

was asked over the summer whether she would speak out in favor of due process for the three players. Her one-word answer: “NO.”

What a horror of a human being. Duke needs to clean house.

AMac said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Like racism, feminism is also fueling this case

AMac said...

By the way, Nicholas Stix (see #2 12:12am comment) proposed a moniker for the author of this blog:

"The Emile Zola of the Duke Rape Hoax."

Well said.

Anonymous said...

Why is it so hard for some people to recognize that the only way to rid the system of rogue prosecutors is to act against them when they are caught?

Is there any reason to believe Mike Nifong has never, and would never, try to railroad a poor black person? His arrogance suggests to me that he didn't see his actions in this case as unusual; since he's the prosecutor in a mostly-black area, I would be very surprised if he's never framed a black person.

Ideally, rogue prosecutors should be caught and punished even when they don't make the mistake of going after someone who can fight. And it's unfortunate that they're not. But the fact that many prosecutors get away with such things is hardly a reason to get this one go.

Anonymous said...

Racial slurs in response to racial slurs . . . . that's a toughie.

Chicago said...

Great piece KC. As we all know Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Dr. King (may God rest his dear soul) must be rolling over in his grave knowing that people in this case are exploiting the justice for all people he worked so hard for and died for standing up for.

Anonymous said...

KC,

Sorry, don't buy your argument. Name-calling is not the elephant in the room. I'll try to post tomorrow on my take.

RP

Anonymous said...

KC:

re: Gregory Kane - Unthinking racism

What was unthinking about Kane's screed?

'splain me that Lucy.

Anonymous said...

Many in the media are still claiming that the DLXers specifically requested black dancers. They did not.

Anonymous said...

Growing up in a rural Virginia town, I know racism. A family friend is call "The General" because he is still fighting the Civil War. I grew up with the n-word and being told that white girls who date black guys would never get another date. Racism is real.
When I was about 7, my mother was attempting to unlock the door to my dad's office on a quiet Sunday afternoon. She couldn't. I commented that we needed help and she pointed to a Black guy walking by and said, "We'll get this boy to help us." He walked over to us and said, "I'm not a boy. I'm a man." Then he took the keys and unlocked the door and walked off. I began to question racism at that moment. His dignity was tangible and more powerful than any racism.
I cringed when Nifong referred to the false accuser, who was 27, as a Black girl. It is not her skin color that abhore. It is her life style and lies.
It is not Prof. Coleman's skin color that I respect. It is the strength of his convictions that supercede racial boundaries.

Anonymous said...

"whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past."

Chan Hall
Durham, NC, April 2006

"In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Washington, DC, August 1963

"This goes to show that justice can't be bought by a bunch of rich white boys from New York."

Harris Johnson,
Durham, NC, November 2006

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many
of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone."

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Washington, DC, August 28, 1963.

"This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream."

ibid

Anonymous said...

JLS says...

I think it is completely unrealistic to expect a bunch of kids raised during their teen years on gansta rap to not drop an n bomb or two when they get mad at a black person. And it means nothing. Face it you are buying into the world view of the gang of 88 if you believe there are some words that it is ok for black people to say, but not white people.

I am not the least surprised nor shocked that when the con artists Mangum and Roberts [aka] Pittman tried to rip them off some ugly names were traded. They might have called them fat, they might have called them ugly, they might have dropped an n bomb. When you get mad at people and start calling them names you pick names that will irritate them the most.

It means NOTHING about whether someeone is a racist or not. It means they were mad at the women over being ripped off and their behavior. But as long as the gang of 88 and their ilk can make it so I can not even type the word out in discussing it, that a commentator can not repeat the word attributing it to someone else for fear of it being pulled out of context to smear them, the gang 88 and their ilk are still controlling the debate.

Anonymous said...

The current Black "leadership" model is sustained by perpetuating the anguish of the real past civil right abuse into a currrent sense of 'class self-pity'. I am thinking of the Jesse Jacksons, of course.

I found myself standing next to Jesse at O'Hare. It prompted me to honestly wonder if Jesse and his contemporaries have done more harm to the aspirations of the black community than any other since the arrival of the Mayflower.

I don't have the answer, and I'm not asserting that claim, but it is an honest question.

Anonymous said...

Omitted from the discussion is racist white liberal paternalists, who were greatly in evidence from the G88 and their cadre.

Among the great white hopes are:
Robyn Wiegman of the Women's Center who went on a speaking tour of the country flogging the racist lacrosse angle to buff her resume

Tim Tyson who repeatedly branded the Lacrosse team as "white supremacists" in print (N&o) and on radio (NPR/WUNC)

And of course, the whitest of the white men, H-S's Bob Ashley.

Chan Hall is just a young (racist) fool. But those white leftists above did this _intentionally_ for their own career advancement.

Anonymous said...

Riveting post once again, Professor. I plan to attend Grad School at Brooklyn C. in the fall (alas, not in History) and I hope I can take one of your courses in a future semester. I'm a CUNY employee so I get free tuition.

O/T but can someone post the HTML tags for creating links? Blogger doesn't want to post my links. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

12:23 - Racial slurs are always wrong, and racially motivated prosecutions are wrong as well.

In short, and I think this is the cardinal point KC has been trying to make the entire time, this case betrays what happens when society loses it civility and emphasis on the individual, and instead immerses itself into looking at group traits. Race was used firstly to castigate the players, to assign them all motives, then to gain votes/support from the race allegedly slighted. Reason, ethics, honesty and decency, hallmarks of a civilized society, took a back seat to hatred and insult.

Thus, the justice system was made a mechanism that instead of being used to judge personal guilt, was used to further this mode of thought. Male vs. female, black vs. white, poor vs. rich. It was an outrageous example of group punishment based on no real evidence whatsoever other than the perceived attributes of the "elite white male lacrosse player."

And in light of all of this, Gregory Kane writes an article basically saying "so what" when the roles get reversed because it happened to a Black man. The entire point is that it should never happen at all, that such considerations should never be used as the basis of a prosecution and conviction, that we should demand better for all citizens.

On that basis, I take as dim a view of some freaky pot banger saying white males should be castrated as I do some freaky guy from the sticks giving me a lecture on how all Blacks are so darn "dumb" and should be shipped back to Africa. Both betray the thought pattern that has made this absurd case possible. It also shows the surprisingly extremist positions we have taken as a society on these issues.

And I find that sadly depressing.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

As a mother of white sons, I find this prejudice against young men like mine to be very frightening. I would allow neither of my sons to apply to Duke University and I am wondering if they should stay away from all universities in the south.

Anonymous said...

12:55 - Loyola College, Baltimore.

No pot bangers need apply.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

I suspect that the excuse that the "cotton shirt" remark comes from a Chris Rock routine is an urban myth. A Google search doesn't reveal any evidence to that effect.

Anonymous said...

Please insert a 'not' in my above post. I would NOT allow my children to apply to Duke university.

Anonymous said...

JLS says....

Re: Esquire

"Racial slurs are always wrong, and racially motivated prosecutions are wrong as well."

They may both be wrong but they are not even close to equal wrongs. You should be ashamed to have put them in the same sentence like that. That was really the point Mr. Evans made on the 60 Min boardcast tonight.

Who cares if something not nice inappropriate happened at that party. People are offended all the time. The issue is was a felony committed.

Similarly a racial slur is an atom compared to the universe of a racial motivated prosecution. And to mildly equate them in the same sentences is shameful. I like your posts and your thought process are better than that.

Anonymous said...

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-809146.cfm

Durham Mayor Bill Bell spoke out Sunday on the Duke lacrosse case, expressing compassion for the parents of the three players accused of sexual assault and kidnapping, and saying he believed university President Richard Brodhead and the city have handled the situation well.

What a joke

Anonymous said...

Susan in New York--
Actually, you don't want to insert "not" into your post, which already included "neither"--that would give you a doubt negative and suggest that you would allow your sons to go to Duke--indeed, that you might insist on it.

Anonymous said...

JLS: They spring from the same rotten source. A racially motivated prosecution merely takes that attitude, that elite white males historically abuse poor black females, and uses it as the primary base for prosecuting three innocent men.

And Mr. Evans would agree. You cannot have the prosecution without its logically flawed underpinning.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

Paula McClain...ay yi yi. Another six-figure sinecure. I think to myself: these people, second- and third-raters all, got where they are because white liberals wanted black professors, and wanted them NOW. Didn't matter if they were up to it; only mattered that they were African-American. Paternalism writ large. And these black professors can't cut it. Houston Baker is a bigshot English professor...and the email he sent had more typos than a MySpace blog entry.

So the perception becomes that all these black professors are lightweights, if not buffoons. If the bien-pensants had thought it through, they would have realized this would happen.

Paula McClain does have "good hair," though.

Anonymous said...

JLS says....

Re: Esquire

I don't know Mr. Evans and you possibly do. I do think racists hurt themselves and more unfortunately others sometimes as in this case.

Still racism is a private matter. A racially motivated prosecution is a public matter.

It is nobody's business if someone is a racists or believes that little green men live in their brains. It is our business if someone is acting on either belief in our name as a prosecutor.

Anonymous said...

KC, com'on now. Surely you, of all people, know that the "world" is not yet ready for the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "I have a dream that...one day [we will] live in a nation where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." There is too much at stake here. People like Cash Michaels, Wendy Murphy, Lynne Duke, and Victoria Peterson, make their living by playing off the fears and insecurities of those who would blame every lament on racism. It is IMPOSSIBLE for many to separate the "misdeeds of the day" from the oppression of a past long "gone with the wind." Not to mention, that's how the likes of Lynne Duke and Wendy Murphy make a living. By dividing America along imaginary insidious racial lines, they profit; in the case of Lynne Duke, it's 35 cents a paper. In other words, the cry of racism is BIG BUCKS. Keep that in mind...Black leadership here,. including the NC NAACP, had many, many opportunities to take the high road. However, they threw it away. Short term profit realized, but the real prize lost...equality.

Anonymous said...

didnt kim initiate the racial words she called them limp white boys ect. and they responded with the n word

Anonymous said...

Neff in todays(1/15) n and o has a story that just kills Nifong...he's one step closer to the big house.

Anonymous said...

Earl,

You've got it: blacks now realize that whites are onto them, so they are forced to resort to trench warfare, otherwise known as racial politics. They indeed will stop at nothing to defend their sinecures.

The Holloways are much more frightened of being accused of collecting academic welfare than they are of being called a nigger.

I'll try to post on this tomorrow.

Don't expect any posts from KC Johnson on the real causes of blacks' irrelevance at elite institutions.

Martin Luther King, sad to say, were he still alive, would be a big supporter of affirmative action and other "social justice" nonsense.

The only way whites, Asians and blacks will ever "get along" is for whites and Asians to continue to succumb to the diversity pimps.

That era is coming to an end. The talented are fed up with supporting the untalented. The weaning process will not be pleasant--LOL.

Roman Polanski

Anonymous said...

12:43 said:

I found myself standing next to Jesse at O'Hare. It prompted me to honestly wonder if Jesse and his contemporaries have done more harm to the aspirations of the black community than any other since the arrival of the Mayflower.

Speaking as a black man... the answer is an unequivocal YES!!!

Given all that's seen on TV and other MSM about this case it's easy for whites to assume that the majority of blacks feel Jackson is a great leader and our spoksman. Believe me, Jackson and others of his milieu are held in very low esteem by middle and upper middle class blacks who have no political ambitions.

The blacks in the media that Zahn, and others like her, showcase do NOT accurately reflect the private thinking of most blacks.

Indeed, the tenets as espoused by Prof. Coleman are the ones that most blacks that I speak of cleave to most.

As I've said to my adult twin boys many times, 'It seems that we as a race have lost our way' And I blame it on the race-baiting and self-indulgent so-called black leaders who can not resist doing whatever they can to salve their thinly veiled insecurities with a welter of racial diatribes of hatred.'

Regards,
CFP

Anonymous said...

Some unpleasant facts about MLK:

he plagiarized his Ph.D. thesis at Boston University, and many of his speeches were plagiarized from other black ministers.

He's purely a figurehead--blacks' Moses.

Anonymous said...

<< This case began with one unequivocally racist act: a lacrosse player, as part of a racially charged, post-party argument with Kim Roberts, shouting the n-word. >>

Has anyone aside from Kim Roberts claimed that the n-word was used? Bissey (who holds no love for the lacrosse team, and seemed to be listening fairly intently at times) didn't mention it in his report of the night's events.

It's at least a theory that Kim mentioned the word being used in her 911 call because she knew it would spur action, and has since defended that the word was used to correspond her story with her actions from the night.

(As a note, the 'cotton shirt' comment, a definite racial slur, was certainly uttered at Kim that evening.)

Anonymous said...

Joe T,

This is war. Everyone, including myself, have to get spanked once in a while.

I believe that KC has misdiagnosed a lot of crucial aspects of this case, OK?

RP

Anonymous said...

The Stix artice is brillant. It is also pretty scary - do we white folk have a chance against the current Pc agenda? Knowing what would happen to those boys in prison, makes Nifongs false charges even worse. The immagration policy to limit white people coming into the country must be changed.

Ryan Paige said...

"Johnson spent 16 years in prison, Kane sneers, “while those poor, oppressed Duke lacrosse players have been walking around free on bail.”"

Well, Gregory Wallis was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 18 years in prison after being convicted of sexual assault in Dallas County, Texas.

Since Wallis is white, I assume that trumps the 16 years that this Johnson person served. Does that mean that I should sit by and defend a D.A. the next time one railroads an innocent African-American since it would be "justice" for this white guy who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit?

Anonymous said...

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/532643.html

Cheshire is a great lawyer. He has taken Nifong's excuse he did not know what was happening away.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes this case is truly confusing to think about. So many issues.....prosecutorial abuse, police collusion, town/gown hostilities, black/white, rich/poor, male/female, the statistics on false rape accusations, on black on white rape vs. white on black rape, the relative sin in hiring a stripper vs. being a stripper, the relative criminality in running down an officer and prostitution vs. urinating outdoors. There are probably more I can't think of now. Is that why this case has become so infamous? Cases like the 4 VUU students raping the U of Richmond student, or the Channon Christian case will never get any press because they are so simple and straightforward.

Anonymous said...

please spare me the crap about mlk. im black and i dont thin khe should have a holiday named after him , he was human, not some kind of supernatural being, he had flaws and he was not this great uniter

Newyorkstateofmind said...

"There’s no question that innocent people are wrongfully convicted as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. There’s also no question that those so affected are disproportionately poor and minorities."

KC, the above is one of the few aspects to this thread post that I feel needs to be placed in a broader context. I do agree that prosecutorial misconduct disproportionately affects minorities, and the poor of all racial and ethnic groups: My focus for this post will be on your comment vis a vis minorities, especially black minorities, and even more specifically black men, who commit crimes, specifically violent crimes, at approx. 7 times the rate of white men, though as I've noted on other threads on this blog, even that figure is misleadingly low because Latinos, or as the government category has them, Hispanics, commit about 3 times as many violent crimes as whites, and for reporting criminal perpetration purposes, Hispanics are considered white, thus causing a false inflation in the number of white violent crimes when comparing such crimes to the black violent crime rate.

The argument here naturally is that one would expect to find minorities generally, and blacks expecially, overrepresented among those falsely accused and convicted of crimes, because many more of them, relative to whites anyway, are committing violent crimes, and thereby drawing a disproportionate level of attention from criminal justice authorities. And of course this is so absent racism, notwithstanding the incidents of racist intention which may and do attend some limited number of police prosecutions of assorted black men. So...while it would be nonsense to say such illegitimate targeting never happens, to call the targeting systematically illegitimate is even more misplaced.

By way of analogy, many conservatives rightly point to the home loan industry as an example of how trumped up, phantom charges of racism misrepresent incidental and infrequent acts of racism as institutional and irredeemable.
As noted on "right-wing" talk radio and in "right-wing" thought columns, if it were true, say, that home loan rates to blacks in many parts of the country demonstrate racial animus on the part of homelenders, then one would expect to see black default rates lower than white rates; that is, if blacks were truly being charged illegitimately higher interest rates as a class of people, then this would be reflected in lower rates of default than whites. Of course the mortgage industry typically sees a higher default rate among blacks than whites, which means that lenders are instead preferring blacks as mortgagers (and whites as a class of people are paying a higher interest rate to make up for this irrational preference), since the loans they make to blacks--again we're talking of blacks here as a class of people--that many individual blacks are stellar mortgage and credit risks is irrelevant--are on more favorable terms than their handling of those loans supports.

Elsewhere on this thread I thought 12:46 anon is well onto the self-aggrandizing scam that white academic leftists use to engage in what in today's academy is almost guaranteed career advancement.

As noted by anon 12:46:
"But those white leftists above did this intentionally [demonized the Duke Three for racial reasons]for their own career advancement."

Agreed with some of the tenor of 12:23 Md. Esq.

The problem I have though with the notion of emphasizing individual over group rights and identities is that this whole notion--as I've argued in a similar way at least on the Coleman thread on Friday 1.12--that individual rights should trump group rights is advanced primarily by--and traditionally almost exclusively by--"white" societies--specifically the Anglosphere--that has for centuries now incorporated into their norms of social and political and economic organizing developed notions of treating others as individuals, and enlisting trust in others based on contract and the rule of law, not kinship ties. It is this ability to put aside traditional notions of "otherness," and trade and work and now even marry robustly across all kinds of disparate cultures that has enabled the Anglosphere countries until very recently to dominate the world economy for two centuries. Of course they still dominate the world economy in some important ways, but this is changing rapidly as first Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and now China and India, develop their own economies at a rapid clip.

By way of illustration, when a girl is dragged from her hovel of a home in a tiny though typical Pakastani village to be subjected to the locals idea of "rule of law" by way of a days-long marathon of gang rape from what supericially seems like half the men in the village, for the 'crime' of walking briefly down one of the village roads with a boy not of her special clan (and not an immediate relative or her husband--she wasn't married off yet), then clearly the wheels have all but come off the "train of freedom," with its attendant individual rights.

Of course, I'm citing for dramatic purposes this rather intensely gruesome case of "idyllic village life" about a rather robust--though definitionally anyway, not extreme--version of Sharia law. In contexts both more and less outrageous than this vignette here (which vignette is BTW true, and widely posted on certain Internet sites when it happened earlier this Century), one sees throughout Africa and much of Asia and Latin America a similar disregard for individual rights, nay, a consistent absence of much of the Anglo notion of what it is to have individual agency and integrity.

This is not of course to say that blacks or others whose origins date to a pastiche of Third-World countries dotting the globe cannot or will not as individuals "assimilate" to "Anglo norms" of individuality. What I am saying is that it is self-evident that blacks as a mass group of people living in the US, have not assimilated to Anglo norms of individuality; nor have Latinos for the most part--the exception being a modified respect for individual rights in Latin countries with large white populations like Chile and Argentina--both of whom have of course had long histories of tyranny. In fact, in all of Latin America, the only country with a fully developed history of democracy is Costa Rica, a country with a vast majority "white" population, larger as a percentage of the population than any other country in Latin America.

RE Md. Esq. on another thread post

You noted that the Irish took some years to assimilate, and we as a country are now truly seeing significant portions of the black population fully assimilating to American norms of what many now call 'suburban' values of soccer moms and Nintendo and at least a modest respect for education. I don't see the fullness of this same trend; instead I often see a black ghetto mentality often extending beyond the ghetto into the bowels of higher-level economic and social life in places like Orange County, California and Seattle, Washington, not exactly locales with a "history of slavery" "holding blacks down."

The interesting thing about the Irish (BTW a significant component to my heritage) is that, as recounted by Thomas Sowell and Dinesh D'Souza, in the early years of potato-famine-driven mass immigration to the US, the lowliest Irish workers in the North were sent down to the South to do the work that "slaves just won't do," to recoin an oft-heard MSM phrase minimizing legitimate concerns about our current mass immigration. More specifically, these unfortunate lads escaped the wage slave labor of the backbreaking work they were doing in Northern factories and exchanged it for somewhat higher wages in the South doing truly backbreaking, and often literally killing, work that slaveholders avoided having their slaves do for concern their property would be too diminished or even badly damaged if put to the dangerous work of clearing mangrove swamps and the like. And the Irish of that period frequently faced "no Irish" signs, not just telling them to forgo applying for work mind you, rather telling them not to even set foot in the establishment (food, lodging, drinking) they were on the threshold of.

Forwarding to the present day, it would almost be evidence of a Lyndon Larouche "Queen (Britain's of course) and Jews" conspiracy for someone to remark, half less believe, that America's "Irish" are not "assimilable."

In contrast, where is the Irish counterpart to Nathan McCall's book-cum-screed Makes Me Wanna Holler. Where lurking in our great land are the legions of Irish ruminating about how as they work side by side with non-Irish journalists at their cushy Washington Post jobs, they secretly want to bash in the heads of their officemates because of their "white skin privilege."

While I'm certainly heartened by certain measures of overall black assimilation to traditional American white norms, my head does ring sometimes from the "hollering" of Nathan McCall, and I suspect the Duke Three have had just about their fill of such hollering at this juncture in their lives.

M. Simon said...

New York 3:18AM,

I think you under estimate the railroading of the minority communities.

The Tulia scandal and the Rampart scandal (LA) are two cases with multiple victims. They are in my opinion the tip of the ice berg.

The nexus of the above cases is the enforcement of drug prohibition.

Enforcement of the prohibition laws has turned many minority communities into war zones.

Which is not to say that the racism in America is any where near what the "studies" groups think. However, I do think it is a real problem for police depts. across the country.

I do think it is a real problem for minority communities. If such cases and such policing happened with any frequency in white communities the drug war would quickly end.

Because drug cases have such high penalties, even the innocent are encouraged to plea out. Trials just jam up the works.

If you go to trial with an ineffective PD what are your chances, even if innocent? So do you roll the dice? Zero or thirty years or do you take a guarenteed five? With 15% lopped off if you keep your nose clean in the joint?

My take is that the Jailfong used the usual techniques on these boy that he was used to using on poor badly represented minorities hoping for a plea deal from the accused.

It is how "justice " works in America these days.

When we end prohibition, the slime uncovered when that rock is lifted will shake America's faith in the system.

We know all this almost to a certainty because all the same abuses were found in alcohol prohibition. It is just that the "usual suspects" were more likely to be from a different minority than the ones taking it in the neck from this re-incarnation of alcohol prohibition.

M. Simon said...

re: my 3:50 AM,

Every one in the system knows what is wrong. Every one is hoping that the end comes (and it will come) on the next guy's watch.

Please Lord let it last until I can collect my pension.

Do you see Jailfong's mind set in this? It is what they are all thinking.

M. Simon said...

Chicago's Mayor Daley II in a moment of candor some years back said he believed the drug war was responsible for 85% of the crime in Chicago.

A police Chief in New Haven, CT (I believe) came up with a similar estimate.

That is just huge. It means that we could cut back by a factor of 3 to 5 on the whole justice system and still get much better policing than we have now.

Pleae don't let it end until I can collect my pension is the rallying cry.

Prhohibition is no longer about protecting citizens from drugs. That is a sham. It is a welfare program for police, DAs, jail guards, defence attorneys etc. Every bit as much as the "studies" programs are a welfare program. In fact they re-enforce each other.

In the minority communities it is called the "prison industrial complex". It is like M&M Enterprises in Catch 22. Every one has a share.

So here we are in Durham where the fictional ghost of Nately's Whore has come home to roost.

M. Simon said...

Another irony.

You know who calls for the most vigorous enforcement of prohibition? The black community. Because they see all the devastation prohibition causes and blame the drugs.

Some black leaders point this out from time to time, but they don't get any traction because every one "knows" its the drugs and they want the drugs and the dealers out of their community.

M. Simon said...

Anon 12:22AM asks:

Why is it so hard for some people to recognize that the only way to rid the system of rogue prosecutors is to act against them when they are caught?

It will not happen in any major way because they are all to a certain extent compromised by drug prohibition. It is like the mafia. If any speak out they all go down.

Please Lord let it last until I can collect my pensiion.

Anonymous said...

Nuke Durham. Its the only way to be sure.

Anonymous said...

M. Simon> My take is that the Jailfong used the usual techniques on these boy that he was used to using on poor badly represented minorities hoping for a plea deal from the accused.

You haven't been paying any attention whatsoever. Nifong has admitted that he devotes his special attentions to the university students first.

M.Simon, take your anti-drug zealotry and yor abyssal ignorance elsewhere. You are way off topic and spamming the hell out of the thread.

Anonymous said...

this case has been eye opening to the msm. it has truely shown the power of the blogosphere to uncover the truth and to correct the initial distortions that the msm tossed about.

this was exactly the narrative that the group of 88 and the msm and "civil rights" groups have been looking for. thank goodness for kc, prof johnson and other bloggers.

i asked the question earlier if anyone was aware of a blog that posted and made a record of all of the black on white crime. that is the real threat. if there is one, please let me know. if not, one needs to be created. the msm will not cover this, but the blogs certainly can.

WINDBAG

Anonymous said...

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

Anonymous said...

One need look no further than the "explanation" of the Hoax presented on the official NC-NAACP website for months to their believing constituency.

http://z9.invisionfree.com/LieStoppers_Board/index.php?showtopic=1142

Anonymous said...

As I re-read the first month of this case, I am struck by the role of the black community in Durham over this whole thing. After the initial charges were made, the black politicians, as well as individual black voters speaking at things like the NCCU rally in mid-April, made it clear to Nifong that he had to have arrests and indictments in order to win the election.

His black opponent in the case said that Nifong was "not doing enough" and I do not recall reading anything from Ms. Black that demonstrated a commitment to due process and civil liberties. Chan Hall's infamous comments were made at the rally and were supported by the people there, and the crowd cheered Victoria Peterson's contention that the DNA results were negative because Duke University Hospital personnel had tampered with the results. People believed the accusations, or at least they WANTED to believe them.

At Duke, it is clear that students and faculty also had concluded that the lacrosse players committed rape, and they were not going to be persuaded by reason. After the DNA tests were negative, I remember reading comments from students and Duke faculty that "they probably used condoms."

In other words, Nifong was playing to a constituency that demanded he do what he did. Given the dearth of evidence, had it gone to a preliminary hearing, it might not have gone farther, and everyone could have seen that, legally speaking, he did not have a case.

However, if he could not have secured indictments, the black voters and the lefists at Duke STILL would have insisted that the players had raped Crystal, not matter how ridiculous the "evidence" presented. They believed it because it satisfied a worldview that they insist is true, even when it is not.

After the first two indictments, a black pastor in Durham at the Sunday service declared from his pulpit his joy that the "rapists" had been caught. And the black ministers in Durham still are insisting that everything Crystal says is true, even if the things she says are mutually exclusive.

Don't get me wrong. Nifong deserves whatever he gets -- and more. It is just that he was playing to people who demanded that lies be spun into "truth" and the players be charged, no matter what the evidence.

Anonymous said...

to 12:55a
"I would allow neither of my sons to apply to Duke University and I am wondering if they should stay away from all universities in the south."

Does anyone else think that this is exclusively an issue for 'universities in the south'?

Anonymous said...

KC,

I know that, for the sake of preserving the credibility of your blog, your must post these hand wringing pieces about blacks.

But, the notion that saying the word "nigger" kills black people, and that this is an odious crime, is just childish nonsense.

Your assertion that black people are "disproportionately" falsely imprisoned is also probably nonsense, inserted for the purpose of deflecting criticism.

Black men are in prison in such large numbers because they deserve to be there. The white community doesn't practice the overt racism that is just commonplace in the black community.

Anonymous said...

Don't get me wrong. Nifong deserves whatever he gets -- and more. It is just that he was playing to people who demanded that lies be spun into "truth" and the players be charged, no matter what the evidence. - Bill Anderson

So why, as whites, do we let the black community get away with this? Much to the chagrine of the Maryland Esquire who continually espouses the "individual" mantra.

M. Simon said...

Ryan,

That would be anti-prohibition zealotry actually.

Anonymous said...

RomanP at 1:54 said: "That era is coming to an end. The talented are fed up with supporting the untalented. The weaning process will not be pleasant--LOL."

So are you saying that Atlas is about to shrug? Interesting. I do think Ayn Rand would see this as an example of scheming, non-productive members of society turning their insecurity-based hatred upon those whom they hate most - the intelligent, productive individuals who themselves unwittingly enable and carry those very same haters. The risk those haters/looters run is that they will go too far, and the productive will wake up and decide to cease being victims of the people they have supported. Then the haters are hosed.

It's been a while since I read Atlas Shrugged, but the idea goes something like that.

- Jim Curry

Anonymous said...

I might be wrong but the only person who said the n word was used was the second dancer. the nieghbor never said he heard the n word. How easy to say they used the n word.

Anonymous said...

KC,

I live in Durham. My wife is a school teacher in a 90 percent black school and is almost daily called a white bitch. My kids went to 90 percent black schools and were constantly called Opie, Howdy, honkey and worse. My kids grew up being told not to use the n-word, but they heard it every day in school -- used by black kids. So forgive me if I don't take the provoked use of the n-word by a white person in Durham very seriously.

M. Simon said...

Shouting Thomas,

What about Tulia? Where the black community was targeted.

In fact black and white drug use is about equal on a per capita basis with black use slightly lower.

Why is enforcement against blacks so much stronger?

M. Simon said...

Jim Curry,

With the decline in manual labor jobs that pay enough for self support what are we to do with those now left on the margins?

The "Bell Curve" guys suggest that a safety net for them is a good idea. Those guys could not by any means be considered liberals. In fact they could be considered libertarian due to their unwavering support of individual rights.

Anonymous said...

I take it that there are a lot of strip clubs in and around Durham. the FA I assume sells her body for money, are the strip clubs required to have their dancers tested for HIV and Aids?

Anonymous said...

In fact black and white drug use is about equal on a per capita basis with black use slightly lower.

If true, it becomes hard to explain the discrepancy in HIV and other drug use associated disease rates.

Do you have a good reference?

Anonymous said...

Black and white drug use is about equal on a per capita basis? I find that hard to believe.

Jerri Lynn Ward, J.D. said...

Black leadership should be far more worried about the crap public schools their children are stuck in than the occasional use of the n-word.

I grew up in a small town in West Texas during Jim Crow. I don't remember hearing the n-word much. It was considered to be a sign of lack of class to use it and grounds for punishment.

Quite frankly, I didn't hear adults I knew start using it until forced busing started. Then, it was a case of misplaced resentment. Our real enemies were the elitist members of the judiciary who forced it upon us.

Anonymous said...

The Curse of Perceived Victimization:
Who or what is doing the most damage to the underclass portions of the black community? is it racist whites? racist schools? racist legal system? racist economy? In short, I say none of the above. What I believe is most damaging to that community is a victim mentality which leaves no room for personal responsibility. A classic case in point is inner city schools. There the blame is reserved mostly for teachers and some to the administrations. Trust me, I know there are many highly intelligent educators who frequent this forum. I could take a group of you today to an inner city school to work and guarantee, you’ll be no more successful than that horribly underpaid first year teacher. Another example is the twisted way some view our legal system. Here the logic goes that since it’s mostly black males being arrested and put in jail that some how the legal systems out plucking these guys off the street for no good reason other than they’re black. I think the pentacle of this type thinking came recently in Virginia Beach were the Feds determined the police admissions math tests to be descrimenatory since a disproportional number of blacks were failing. This was 8th grade math I believe.

Unfortunately instead of trying to help the black community by advocating self responsibility, many so called supporters encourage this victim mentality for personal gain. How else could many “black leaders” and “black organizations” maintain their grip over the masses? I also see politicians using it to corral the black vote not for the betterment of the black community, but rather for personal political gain--a tactic perfected well under communism and fascism. So who poses the biggest threat to the black community? It’s not the KKK I dare say. No the true racists who keep the black community down are not the men under the white hood, rather it’s the so-called black leaders who perpetuate the idea of victimization.

Anonymous said...

Upon investigation, you would probably find more racism at Duke than in Durham, not because of the students, but because of faculty. Any faculty member who cannot stand up for due process rights of any individual has no business teaching on a university campus. Kevin Finnerty made his point quite clearly last night on 60 Minutes that his son would not be safe not only in the Durham environment, but particularly at Duke. Just when Brodhead has an opportunity to make a profound statement, he blows another opportunity.

Anonymous said...

Anyone know if the ratings for this episode of '60 minutes' (and the other one by Ed Bradley) were higher than normal?

I don't know about drug figures per capita, but I believe some drugs are more prevalent in the black community while other drugs are more prevalent in the white community.

Anonymous said...

9:55
Very well said. thanks

Anonymous said...

12:48am Anon:

Here's the linking code:

[a href="http...."]description of link here[/a]

Replace the [ & ] with < & >.

Anonymous said...

The last time i heard the n word was when KIm Roberts, an african american, said it on 60 minutes along with my 2 sons.

Anonymous said...

2:50am gs

"Cheshire is a great lawyer. He has taken Nifong's excuse he did not know what was happening away."

Is Cheshire's letter in the wild yet? Full copy available?

I want to frame it & hang it next to Cheshire's classic bitchslap of L Wilson. ;>)

Anonymous said...

Re: Richard Brodhead

Cowardly Lion: Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?
Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman: Courage!
Cowardly Lion: You can say that again! Huh?

Anonymous said...

re: 8:07
I think poltical correctness has run amok throughout the whole university system. However, I do think the South has created an environment for the perfect storm in which egregious prosecutorial abuse can exist easily. I think there is a need to show off the "progressive South" and pander to large minority constituencies.
My experience in NC was not too dissimilar to the Durham resident(9:12) Therefore I would think twice about sending my children - especially sons - to a university that is in an area that has a large "protected class " constituency.

Anonymous said...

The lack of sophistication about what is NOW being shaped by the MSM is stunning as regards race .

Coleman is a cynical tool of the Duke agenda to save its collective ass and a convenient black man for the MSM .

IF Coleman was an independent and truly heroic avatar of truth and justice he would have by now reminded us in these interviews about the findings of his own report in regards the alleged catagorical racism of the team and by association its Coach .
A catagory that was leveraged by Brodhead and Steel to justify the firing of that Coach and the cancellation of the season .

Let's not be manipulated again shall we ?

Anonymous said...

"ome unpleasant facts about MLK:

he plagiarized his Ph.D. thesis at Boston University, and many of his speeches were plagiarized from other black ministers.

He's purely a figurehead--blacks' Moses."

Why the hate for MLK? If not for him, we'd have had a second civil war. He's a TRUE American hero and makes me proud to be an American.

Greg Toombs said...

In the face of dissipating evidence of rape, die-hard Nifong supporters, miscellaneous racists and sympathizers have generated a persistent meme, although at the moment I can’t cite specific articles or posts. I’ve also read it repeated by some defenders of the lacrosse team as a sort of, “yes, it’s horrible that these slurs were said, but the accused are not guilty of anything that should send them away for 30 years.”

The meme is the recurring claim of the use of racial slurs. It’s been repeated often, as a meta-proof of guilt or bad character, and to encourage greater division between black and white people; as if we need more of that.

I suspect and fear further false accusations of racism may out-live the prosecution in an attempt to keep agendas alive.

What I want to know is, what specific claims have been made? Which slurs?

I recall the line; “Thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt” used at the demise of the evening. Not nice given the hoax context. I haven’t heard the C.R. routine or seen the show the line comes from, though I can guess it wasn’t very nice in the original. But as Steve Martin once said, comedy is not pretty. The ‘nice cotton shirt’ statement has been juxtaposed with the ‘American Psycho’ email as if these references to pop culture markers are proof in the aggregate of racism. It’s clear to me that these aren’t racist statements but reflect a combination of college-kid media absorption with regurgitation at a very inopportune time and under a distorted magnifying glass.

Does anyone have anything else that has been specifically cited or reported?

I ask because I believe there were no other slurs used or cited, and I believe the rape supporters and sympathizers should be met head-on and rebutted at every chance.

If I’m correct, it’s past time we knocked this down and show the inherent racism or ignorance of those who continue to propagate the claim. If I’m confident that what I’ve written is correct, then I, and I hope others, will respond to future accusations.

Anonymous said...

10:26

There is nothing in this pack of lies that can stand up to cross IMO.

Kim Roberts' veracity has been destroyed and I have not heard any corroboration of the Bissey report on the " cotton shirt" .

JC uses these two things in the opening of his piece and while I understand that he means ' even IF these things are true ' .

KC ?

Anonymous said...

I fear the Duke 3 scenario may become a more common occurrence in the future if we don't take a strong stand now. The great thoughts demonstrated on this forum are of no use unless they permeate legal, administrative, and political actions.

Anonymous said...

JLS: You are correct, I do know him. I have known the Evans family for a long time. That's an Annapolitan speaking.

With that background, Mr. Evans was trying to say that you should not place an emphasis on this case on what some guy may have said to Kim Roberts. He's right. The statement was boorish, absurd, and stupid, but you feed the beast when you smear that statement on the Defendants with the thought process that because of it, they must have done something and prosecute accordingly based on guilt by association.

Racism in action, you see.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

A Duke grad student once told me: "Living in Durham will make you a racist." By this he meant that so much of what is bad about black behavior is prevalent, tolerated, encouraged and even lionized in Durham that you react negatively to it and wonder to yourself if you're becoming a racist.

Anonymous said...

10:21 Amen, Tim.

I missed most of MLK's contemporary activities, but looking back, listening to his speeches and seeing the power he weilded through his character, I'm in awe.

He included; he did not exclude. All were welcome to catalyze the civil rights movement, regardless of race, religion or national origin.

Yes, he had human foibles. Yes, he took ideas, if not whole passages, and even if he were "guilty" of the plagarims he's been accused of, I feel the ends far outweigh the means.

His focus on non-violent resistance and strains of human equality mirrored Ghandi's.

By the way, before the conservatives on board start getting their backs in a hunch at these apparently 'liberal meanderings', here's a disclosure: I'm a professional white male in his 40s, a registered Republican, and as illiberal as that description might typically imply.

James Earl Ray committed a monstrous act, ironically most monstrous to his own "people". I don't see MLK as a voice of moderation in the racial debate- he was not ultimately prepared to compromise- but he was a voice of reason and his death left what we are still seeing today: anarchy, confusion and unilateralism.

The civil rights club is closed to opposing thought. And the race-baiters are checking IDs at the door.

When MLK died, the lighthouse next to the rocks faded out, and no one's been able to light it since.

Anonymous said...

M. Simon,

Your cutesy, "please Lord let it last until I can collect my pension," rings hollow. No DAs would be fired or eliminated (or even have their salaries lowered) if drugs were legalized.

Also, you seem to be much more adept at identifying "problems" than you are at suggesting reasonable solutions. You and Milton Friedman notwithstanding, I find it difficult to believe that we will all find ourselves in Valhalla if we just legalize marijuana. Maybe the human slime that is now killing each other over marijuana would suddenly become morally-upright, admirable citizens if we just legalized their product, but I doubt it.

Newyorkstateofmind said...

Simon 3:50 and 9:18



Just to clarify my remarks from my 3:18 posts, I am including the KC quote again from today's Original Post, to aid in getting my point across.

"There’s no question that innocent people are wrongfully convicted as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. There’s also no question that those so affected are disproportionately poor and minorities."

This is an absolutely true statement, and it is true that minorities in general, and blacks in particular, are wrongfully targeted by and even convicted through illicit legal proceedings. My point was to say that it is not generally racial animus which accounts for this targeting. Instead it is the overwhelming disproportion of back-to-white criminals, be they violent and/or drug or other-related, in the urban and suburban areas where most local and Federal police resources are both located and deployed.

Logically-speaking, one would expect to see the following: since blacks consitute a large disproportion of all criminals in a given area, drug-related or not, then when authorities target such given area, even looked at randomly, illicit and railroading prosecutions--along with the legitimate ones--will fall most heavily and disproportinately on blacks and black communities at large.

BTW Simon, I do find misleading conflating white and black drug use patterns, that is, while it's true that overall black drug use is similar to overall white use, the constellation of what drugs are used by whom primarily, and how those drugs are paid for, varies greatly. In white communities, which by definition are largely middle class--how long this will remain so between the outsourcing of all jobs that don't recquire an in-person sales call or a hospital stay, who can say, coupled with the insourcing of legions of workers from the Third World to "do the jobs Americans just won't do"--like high-level software programming and analysis--where literally thousands of Americans remain underemployed while their cohorts train Indians with sham degrees from sometimes-nonexistent training programs or even colleges; all so that the tech companies which use this practice can lower programmer salaries while getting what amount to well-paid indentured servants for a period of years...but I digress--back to my original point: whites who use drugs are often using pot or more refined coke and other designer drugs, which often are less debilitating than contemporary versions of crack cocaine, which is still, when seen, largely the province of blacks. Even with drugs like heroin, where there is a lot of use by both blacks and whites among those who use heroin, whites will more readily take advantage of neddle exchange programs (which I oppose as enabling the problem) than will blacks, thus putting another factor of causation into why the black HIV rate is so much higher than the white one, at least for non-gays.

And since blacks are still significantly more likely to be poor than whites, per capita we're talking, and the gangsta culture has eroded the ever-dwindling reluctance on the part of many blacks to turn to crime to solve their problems--and since a la Simon 9:18--outsourcing of jobs and insourcing of foreign labor is decimating the potential job stock for manual-labor blacks, then black drug use is in fact associated with a lot more crime, and a lot more social dislocation, particularly in cities like New York with lots of drug enforcement.

My own take on the "War on Drugs" is that it accounts for much of the run-up in crime in the 70's and 80's, which run-up fell back substantially, and in the case of violent crime dramatically, only after incarceration rates were increased something like 5 to 7-fold. We truly do have a "prison-government complex" here in the US, with virtually all levels of law enforcement, especially at the Federal and state levels, overinvolved.

Moreover, from a systems-analysis point of view, the war on drugs can be seen as the lever the Feds have used to greatly intrude upon local and state prerogatives to enforce their own penal codes, as naturally Fed-defined drug laws define Federal supremacy when Fed laws conflict with state and local drug laws.

One of the most insidious results of all this--very relevant to this blog BTW--a la Simon's comments--the Fed practice of routinely getting drug convictions from the solicited and perjured testimony of fellow convicted drug users who exchange their "testimony,"...excuse me lies...for a reduced stay in the pokey or other favorable treatment: this appalling practice has encouraged same throughout virtually all state and local jurisdictions which prosecute a lot of drug offenses--just about everywhere in other words--the upshot being that a former tendency of truly "rogue" prosecutors to go way outside of their typical practiced (as opposed to paper--which always read like a 1950's Third grade Civics lesson, where everyone's rights are of course protected) guidelines to literally railroading substantial numbers of defendants--the drug war has in fact in many ways made this prosecutorial indiscretion the order of the day.

And this doesn't even touch on the use of Federal and now state asset forfeiture laws to do things like...raid the ranch (happened back in the 90s) in California of a law-abiding, taxpaying "salt-of-the-earth" kind of guy based on an anonymous tip that "drugs were there,"--the authorities had raided the "wrong" place, even apart from the likelihood that their original warrant was based on fabrications. Unfortunately for this rancher he was under the mistaken impression things like the Second Amendment still held sway in this country, and his temerity in responding to being rousted out of bed by a swarm of drug agents who were in full semi-military SWAT-type gear, and who had smashed his front door down to get into his place--well he was shot summarily by the intruding drug agents, for again, having the temerity to have a gun in his hand in his own house for a "crime" he had not the slightest inclination was anywhere near his horizon. Of course, that the agents could have ultimately deeded this guy's ranch to their agency, without even so much as an indictment, had this raid gone down differently, had "nothing to do" with this post-midnight raid.

Anonymous said...

newyork- brevity is bliss.

Newyorkstateofmind said...

Cedarford 7:41

Except for the Jewish angle, about which my views are all over the board, and at least for now--except for some comments here below--beyond the scope of even my tendency to write a mini-book when blogging--I agree with your post here wholeheartedly.

Here is the link to the American Renaissance website, at which one can download the Color of Crime (link toward the lower right-hand corner) documentation you referenced.

http://www.amren.com/

BTW, for those of a more liberal persuasion, don't be so quick when reviewing this website to dismiss Jared Taylor and many of the posts on this site, half less some of the blog commentary, as "irredeemably racist," or some such. My own view of Taylor is that he is not even a racist, simply someone who has analyzed society-wide trends, and made reasonable deductions about what the implications of these trends are.

The extent of social pathologies aided and abetted by the victim-creating left has grown so great at this historical juncture that we are seeing some strange bedfellows not just among the leftist coalitions, but on the right as well.

One of the major fissures at conferences sponsored by groups concerned about social dislocation caused by things like the norming of rap culture and our de facto open borders is between more hardcore, rightwing--some admittedly avowedly racist--"traditional racialists" and the ever-increasing number of Jews who are attending these meetings, and often now joining the presenters in dissecting black pathologies and their implications for the society at large.

For many Jews, who as a group still faithfully provided an 80% voter endorsement of Democrats in the last election--who can blame them under the circumstances--it is simply too much--the hijacking of leftish support for Israel by a coalition of blacks and Muslims and those who back their views, and turning that support into the now-dominant leftwing view that Israel is a neo-Nazi-settler state a la white South Africa circa 1949 to the late 80's.

Couple that with the following, and one sees why many Jews are more comfortable now with the progeny of Hugo Black (the Supreme Court Justice who was a KKK member back in the 20's) than with the progeny of Rosa Parks: the increasing use of "Hymie-type" epithets--and more importantly--the attitudes behind them--directed at Jews on the part of black leaders from every corner of the American "rainbow coalition," and then Jesse Jackson's now infamous quote is a rather banal example of a standard way which many blacks talk about, and ultimatley view, Jews.

Anonymous said...

Bravo to the person who delivered the "Wizard of Oz" dialogue. That is a great piece of writing by the great L. Frank Baum.

If anyone cares to know what this case is really about, suggest you read Jim Curry's 9:07 grand slam.

Jim, I never read Ayn Rand so I have to accept your interpretation on its face. Yes, I believe that "racism" (whichever way it's directed) is an ancillary aspect of this case. As you point out in your allusion to "Atlas Shrugged," this case--the absolutely disgusting behavior of the "protected" faculty in particular--can definitely be seen as the beginning of the end for academic welfare recipients at elite institutions like Duke.

They fucked up--big time, and there will be hell to pay--ie, the eventual defunding of their BS sinecures. If you are a savvy administrator (for the sake of argument, let's assume Mr Savvy is Brodhead's replacement), what you do is:

1. State plainly that a great university does not fund political agendas, especially racists. Document the stupidity and racism of such purveyors.

Therefore, black, women's, queer--whatever--studies have to go. If you want to study the work of feminist geniuses, follow them to, eg, the English dept where they can enjoy challenging masterpieces like Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse."

2. Declare plainly that affirmative action and its attendant euphemisms will not be tolerated for students or faculty

Then, use some of the savings from defunding BS studies to, eg, set up an entrepreuneurial program for needy Durham residents.

3. Do a thorough evaluation of what should be taught to elite students in the 21st century.

Recommend, eg, fully funding the study of Japanese and Chinese literature, art, science, and technology.

4. All sports teams will have to fund themselves. Encourage students to join a gym.

5. Develop a state-of-the-art lecture series with funds saved from crap like basketball

6. Check US News and World Report as Duke's national rank reaches #1

Roman Polanski

Anonymous said...

<< Anonymous said...

newyork- brevity is bliss.

1:06 PM >>

newyork - Don't go changing to try to please him.

Anonymous said...

Billy Joel ain't bliss.

Newyorkstateofmind said...

Thanks for the vote of confidence anon 1:26, even it's somewhat sarcastic--hard to divine meanings sometimes when viewing the written word. What I can retort in kind is...

"I love [me] just the way I [am]."

Anonymous said...

Esquire in Maryland:

Do you sail out of Eastport Yacht Club?

Sorry about the OT utterance...

M. Simon said...

anon. 9:28AM,

This study is kind of dated. However, it does show what I reported.

A reference from about the same era gives a numerical break down[pdf]

I think the prevalence of high HIV rates may be due to the lower socio-economic class making needle sharing more prevalent. However, that is just a guess. It could also be due to higher rates of promiscuity or the greater stigma attached to homosexuality in the black community, which would lead to more male/female marriage among gay blacks. More guessing.

I'm going to look around some more and see if I can find anything useful. I'll post on it if I do.

M. Simon said...

According to Miller-Day's own data, only 16 percent of the Black youth queried, admitted using drugs within the past few months, compared to 24 percent of the White youth surveyed. This discovery corroborated earlier and quite extensive findings by the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse that revealed that that the overall White population in the United States exceeded the Black population in the use of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and inhalants.

from Black/White Youth Drug Use

The sample sizes were small 47 and 25. However, the differences look significant (can't tell for sure without running the numbers). No year given for the study.

M. Simon said...

This news report on the Miller-Day study shows a date of 2005.

M. Simon said...

BTW youth drug use figures are a pretty fair representation since drug use tends to peak in the 15 to 24 age category and decline in later years.

Anonymous said...

1:41 - Ah, you're thinking now. Who is this mystery guest?

I am not presently a member of EYC, or AYC. If I were to join, it would be probably be AYC, though.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

M. Simon said...

Anon 10:08AM,

The University of Chicago does better. They are in the middle of one of the most dangerous ghettos in America (63rd and Cottage Grove being the epicenter).

The Campus, however, has a very safe feel in the daytime. At night I would suggest escorts for women. If you go over to the ghetto area to shop or to eat ethnic it is best to be of the right ethnic persuasion or travel in large groups.

Cell phones have undoubtedly improved safety since I was there (early 60s). My son is also a student and I'd have to say that the feel of the campus hasn't changed much in 40 years.

Race relations in general there are pretty good. With the usual agitations. They hire wait staff from the community for large parties and pay them well.

There is also real social activisim. (Not Group of 88 stuff). The University community has a long history of working to improve the lives of people in the area.

The endowment is large so if afforability is an issue scholarships are available. My son is getting a full ride including room and board.

Anonymous said...

If anyone is interested, suggest you visit blacksinhighereducation.com

Click on "recent news"

What you'll find is suggestions by the editors where prospective black professors may find "accommodating" schools favorable to blacks

RP

Newyorkstateofmind said...

Simon 10:08

Sound advice. When I was at Wash. U. St. Louis in the late 70's there was a similar dynamic in many ways--although the university there is adjoining ghettos rather than surrounded by them.

See...I can write a post that only consists of a single paragraph! Or at least until I added this acclimation acclaiming the very success I thus denied.

Anonymous said...

Esq-in-Maryland;
Just gathering contextual clues. One of my college buddies owns the "Dancing Bear" at Eastport. He has been lobbying for me to join him for the Solomon's Island or Screwpile events this summer. Who knows?

M. Simon said...

anon 12:15 PM,

Who said anything about Valhalla?

What we have now is a drug and crime problem, with the attendant corruption that goes with any prohibition regime.

If we legalize we will still have a drug problem.

However, eliminating the crime and corruption problem seems like a significant advance.

Say the elimination of prohibition only drops crime by 50%. Wouldn't that reduce the need for police and prosecutors?

Whites use drugs at higher rates than blacks. The black community is targeted for arrests. They are prosecuted more stringently. They get higher sentences for similar drug crimes. That seems unfair to me. Racist even.

However I don't expect to convince every one. People's beliefs formed in their teens and early 20s are pretty resistant to change. In other words - "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Encapsulates a lot of that. It takes an exceptional mind to change after those early years.

I'm 62. I work to get younger every day. It does take work.

Anonymous said...

I have attached below the text of a message "A Few Words of Civility" recently posted on Blackprof.com regarding the importance of civility in public discourse. A useful reminder for those, particularly current and former members of the Duke faculty, commenting on the Duke lacrosse case.

"We celebrate the diversity of our commentors. You are the lifeblood of our intellectual community — the richness, unpredictability, and range of your contributions enables the lively, informative, and thought-provoking discussions forming the best of what Blackprof has to offer. And we also celebrate the passion that many of you bring to your ideological projects. Our conversations often concern matters of vital personal and community importance; it is expected and embraced that the deep, abiding concern many of you have for your philosophical perspectives will manifest itself in our exchanges."

"But as we passionately share and debate with one another our diverse intellectual views, we must remind ourselves that no meaningful substantive conversation can be had in the absence of civility. The large majority of comments uphold this standard, but a small yet meaningful number have recently crossed the line from substantive conversation to ad hominem attack. This not only demeans the individual commentor — the ad hominem, after all, is the last resort of the defeated partisan — but it also demeans the overall quality of our discourse, which hurts the entire Blackprof community."

"Blackprof is one of the more open-ended intellectual forums on the web — particularly as it relates to blogs hosted by academics — and that liberality reflects our desire to facilitate a broad, robust, and intellectually unpredictable set of conversations that might enlighten us all. But we do reserve the right to edit comments or delete them entirely if they are devoid of substantive significance and amount to nothing more than offensive name-calling. We do not exercise this authority lightly, as our general view is the best way to meet distasteful speech is either with silence or more speech. But, nonetheless, sometimes comments cross the line and require censorship for the broader good of the group. For these few extreme comments, we might not become aware of them as fast as some of you might like — we do have full-time jobs, you know — but we will do our best to ensure our forum is as free as possible from the kind of personal, ad hominem attacks designed to assault identities rather than ideas. And, ultimately, the best means of acheiving this goal is if each one of us accords to our fellow members the civility and respect we would appreciate for ourselves."

Posted on Blackprof.com by Shavar Jeffries on January 5, 2007 10:15 PM

M. Simon said...

Anon 12:15PM said:

Maybe the human slime that is now killing each other over marijuana would suddenly become morally-upright, admirable citizens if we just legalized their product, but I doubt it.

Let me rephrase that slightly and see if it makes more sense:

Maybe the human slime that is now killing each other over alcohol would suddenly become morally-upright, admirable citizens if we just legalized their product, but I doubt it.

Well actually it did happen in the case of alcohol.

We ignore history at our peril.

Anonymous said...

Uh, 2:37,

Apples and oranges. Wash U. (my alma mater) is a suburban campus surrounded by upper-middle-class real estate on three sides and a park on the other. The University of Chicago and its Hyde Park neighborhood is a Fort Apache-style outpost in one of the worst urban shitholes in this country. Wash U. is much closer in feel to Northwestern U. than U. of Chicago.

Anonymous said...

2:41

What's your point?

BTW, it's poorly written.

Anonymous said...

blackprof.com, referenced below, has a lot of brilliant, cutting-edge contributos.

The overall brilliance of the site is relected in an article that heroically documents the overrepresentation of Jews in the House and Senate.

Given the brilliance of this site, I have come to believe that Duke needs fewer Jews and more blacks--especially in physics and advanced mathematics.

Spike Lee

M. Simon said...

New York 12:33PM,

You make some excellent points. Poor people do commit more crimes. They are also preferentially targeted because they are less able to put up a strong defence. IMO.

Now on to my points:

The two studies I presented above show white drug use for all drugs significantly above the rates of black use (I mis spoke when I said they were about equal).

A rough estimate is that white drug use is 50% higher on a per capita basis.

Yet black incarceration rates run about 4 or 5 times higher on a strictly numerical basis. On a per capita basis they are as much as 20 times higher. That would be up to a factor of 30 if you account for the lower rates of drug use.

That is evidence of something. Not just poverty.

I think our police/justice system is broken. That fuels the idea that the man has it in for blacks.

If the government is racist in this one area (as I believe it is - the "round up the usual suspects" methods of operation - the snitches who need to finger some one to get paid etc.) it negates all the liberal (in the classical sense of equal treatment in society) gains we have made in the last 40 years.

It represents a resivoir of grievance. In may ways it is like the __________ studies fiasco. No one in polite society can bring themselves to look at it for long let alone talk about it.

I'm here to break the taboos. Left. Right. In the middle.

I note we are in agreement on most points. So if the above seems harsh soften my tone in your mind. LOL.

The California case you mention was about a man named Donald Scott. They didn't get his ranch. They did get his life. BTW it was proved that they specifically targeted him to steal his ranch. Being white and wealthy his wife was able to fight it.

Newyorkstateofmind said...

2:45 anon

More like apples and pears.

Back in the 80's when I moved to just south of the Evanston/Chicago line, I used to take the El. train from Northwestern U. to work near the old Comiskey Park, and I've been all around the Chicago campus, and know its siege-like location quite well.

I don't know when you were at Wash. U., but when I graduated from there in the early 80's (last time I was in St. Louis; hardly be a surprise if there has been a lot of redevelopment since then in areas adjoining the university), one didn't have to go very far off campus to find oneself in the University City sections of town which bled immediately into adjoining black ghettos--literally and figuratively. While it is true that the northwest adjacent areas at the time made a more or less unbroken line of "good neighborhoods" up through the Clayton area, the city park south of Wash. U. was more like Central Park--with its attendant random crimes and risky traverses once the sun was long gone--than a greenbelt idyll full of calm and tranquility.

Anonymous said...

3:13 B***S***

Anonymous said...

3:13 B***S***

Anonymous said...

rachelstavern said: "In fact, this (receiving racist posts) is large part of the reason I stopped posted on the issue (the other reason being I felt it was time for the justice system to settle this case, not the court of public opinion);"

Are you asking us to believe you backed away from commentary on this case 'in large part' because a bunch of ignorant racists cowed you into submission? And 'the other reason' was because you finally realized the importance of due process?

I have no patience for 'white supremacists', but I also have none for insincerity. You are no different than the Group of 88. You are changing your story to mask your true intentions.

The reason you stopped blogging on the matter is because you realized your initial assumptions, which you spewed forth in rabid self-righteousness, were wrong. Not only that, but you erased evidence to them on your blog.

And, now, you are looking for vindication by raising the evil spectre of white supremacy, which helped fuel your false assumptions to begin with.

Have you learned nothing?

Anonymous said...

2:45 absolutly. My son is a graduate of both Washington University St Louis( a Wash U Bear) and a MBA from Chicago. Although,I love the south side, it does not have the feel of University City. My daughter did her PHD work at Temple. This is clearly a school surrounded by urbanites. She lived in Rittenhouse Square.

Anonymous said...

Rachel: Forgive me for laughing at your statements as so much self serving tripe. I have held back, but not on this.

You "backed away" when every other supporter of this travesty did: The day it became apparent the accuser was a lying. Suddenly opinion was not enough, it became a matter for the Court to deal with. Maybe she's lying, but that's for a jury to decide. Maybe story number 387 has some truth in it, let's let a jury make that call.

Bullocks say I. You leant affirmative support to this case without reviewing facts until even the most ardent supporter of women's rights figured out they were being duped. Now, like those others, you cannot deal with the obvious: Nothing happened, she lied, this case should never have seen the light of a grand jury and Nifong breached his ethical duties.

Deal with it. You are not fooling anyone.

-Esquire-
-Maryland-

Anonymous said...

Martin Luther King, anachronism

Fact: Martin King was a major supprter of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, legislation that enabled all the quota problems seen at Duke today.

Does anyone really think, especially given the outrageous behavior of the G88, that integration is a good thing for whites?

The imperative for integration was King's principal message. Is it still relevant today?

Very Curious

Anonymous said...

King was also a socialist.

So why are we celebrating his birth?

Good article about him at vdare.com

Anonymous said...

Going directly to the GJ and skipping the probable cause hearing, got us to where we are today. We do not need a trial, but a probable cause hearing. I hop NC corrects this loophote in their justice system. The one that did that was Nifong.

Newyorkstateofmind said...

Simon 3:15

Thanks for providing the Donald Scott info., as now anyone blogging or even just checking out this thread can now Google the essential aspects of that case.

And I appreciate your implication about the importance of a civil tone. Argument, reasoned or not, doesn't have to get personal or nasty, though when it does, I'm ready to ride with the best of them. As for my dialog with you, I enjoy and appreciate it quite a bit.

On the issue of whether authorities through their war on drugs and otherwise are racistly targeting black males, there are a number of somewhat fine distinctions that I'll lay out here to try and make my theme that this is not--systemically anyway--the case. The respective uses data re white and black drug usage (I don't challenge your claim that overall white drug use is higher than black use--I presume you mean per capita of course because population disparities between the two groups would virtually make this a given) rates is unhelpful in diagnosing the racial dimension to government interactions with black men around drugs and crime.

To expand on what I wrote earlier above, policing and prosecuting agencies, and the lab and other resources on which they rely, are heavily concentrated in urban and near-urban suburban areas; drug dealers of various kinds are likewise heavily concentrated in these areas; among these drug dealers are a smattering of white dealers who often will deal modest quantities of the latest designer drugs which they frequently take themselves at rave events and other hip parties.

But the visible urban drug dealers, the ones who still even now in our era of public policing cameras, do a fair amount of streetside or park-based dealing, are black or from Mexico or overseas, and they often end up in the net of the drug sweeps periodically conducted by drug enforcement police units.

The vast majority of whites meanwhile, have a very itinerant relationship to this rough and tumble urban environment, where, again, both the cops and the criminals--and not incidentally the black ghettos from which many of these criminals are drawn--are heavily concentrated. Were I an urban cop on a drug sting patrol, waiting around all day maybe deciding whom to arrest, do I target the one white guy who shows up in his BMW--visions of him getting "lawyered up"--and this would be lawyering up very much unlike the Duke Three; with this guy he'd use his good money to make much more likely a chance to get any cop-gathered evidence thrown out on various legal motions--to finish the thought--do I target the one white guy who shows up every odd hour or so--who's here only because his regular exurban dealer, who has a whole room in his cloistered home devoted to drug dealing, his house fenced off by a tall fence--is not available today--or do I simply put cuffs on one or more of the numberless sad-sack black men who I know once arrested will have for representation a harried public defendant who will because of an overwhelming caseload barely be able to make an appearance on his "client's" behalf, half less issue legal motions to exclude evidence.

For me the drug war is many outrageous things, paramount among them a travesty of ongoing injustice used to fund burgeoning budgets at every level of law enforcement, which like welfare office budgets and public school district budgets, always seem to be "short-funded"--in the eyes of those whose salaries are paid thusly--no matter how many billions are rolling in. Our government is literally targeting its own population through the war on drugs for abusive and tyrannical reasons.

It's just not uniquely or even systemically targeting blacks for illegitimate reasons, notwithstanding the frameups here and there of random black men which truly are the result of racist intent on the part of the specific authorities. To my mind, most of the frameups--which again I concur are very real and not infrequent, are a result of the "easy catch" principle which police and prosecutors so often deploy when doing their drug and other busts. On all counts in relation to this principle, blacks are softer targets, and this is so despite the legions of race hucksters who try to reduce their harrassment: they are disproportionately near police and legal authorities (urban environment), disproportionately poor and thus much less likely to be able to mount a credible defense, and disproportionately given to failing to employ strategies which would make police apprehension less likely--like buying and selling drugs in leafy suburbs behind close doors--which of course they would have to travel long distances to get to solely to arrange such transactions.

Finally, they are disproportionately...here I can say almost exclusively...not Russians, who as a group form these days the most ruthless and well-organized drug dealer organizations, who the police avoid like typhus, because their ruthlessness is so sustained that witnesses, in the few cases where they are temporarily available, disappear like New York City streetside peddlers avoiding the foot approach of an illegal fencing enforcement unit officer.

We're not in the Jim Crow South anymore, where every black man, decently inclined or not, had to slightly shudder everytime they had an encounter with law enforcement. In today's society, we as Americans, of whatever hue, are subject to being watchfully careful about what we say and do around "law enforcement." Though this has more to do with the aftermath of 9.11 than the drug war, even more to with the ever-expanding PC norms filling our public space.

One final thought: part of the law enforcement targeting of black men is simply a result of the quandary that roughly 1/4 of their number in their 20's are either in prison or on parole--this datum, not racism per se accounts for even a lot of the illegitimate targeting of blacks.

By way of analogy, if I'm an airport screener, do I feel inclined to subject to extra scrutiny the Catholic nun (well...she's kind of in a burkha), or the Arab-looking guy from Saudi Arabia who's in his twenties. I personally am suspect about a large portion of the screening regime we subject on all our airline passengers. But that's another topic for another day. Our hypothetical screener of course, in the real world, is going to extra-search the nun: he wants to keep his job afterall, here in the land of PC.

Anonymous said...

Rachel is so full of s*** that she should go the way of her blog.
Flush!
She's just a big mouth blog slut who tried and convicted the lacrosse players--raping them with her slimey site and now that all her BS has been shown to the world to be a setup, that sorry hag shows up here with liberal propaganda.
The sort that most are finding to be phony and the cause of so many problems.
Go back to your hell, Raaaaachal !

Newyorkstateofmind said...

rachelstavern 3:16

The website you linked below is indeed a white supremacist site, indeed it is one of the white supremacist sites.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/

But what are we to make of the significance of this? In the Internet age, and in age when communication is relatively cheap and capable of being broadcast in multiple ways through varied media to virtually any place on the planet. People of varying views, even opposite views, comment favorably re the same topic all the time in this era of cheap communication.

And, more to the point, the nature of Internet posting and commentary and often-anonymous emailing are such that disparate groups can comment favorably on public events in ways which don't remotely raise the notion that an alliance is forming or even that one group should be "concerned" that an out-group, however defined, shares some of their views.

The San Diego Chargers lost a playoff football game yesterday. Numberless San Diegans doubtless lament this event, some of them clerks in stores, some of them murderers in jail, some of them supporters of al Qaeda, some of them kids in school. Are we supposed to believe that this radically disparate group has an "agenda" around the rather pathetic implosion of the Chargers in the seond half of their game.

Or, more appositely, it is one of the goals of al Qaeda (now granted, this is such a minor goal that it barely registers in their organizing efforts) that Palestine receive more land to carve out an expanded state on. The framers of the Oslo accords also supported this cause; indeed, they spent years framing a solution, however ineffectually.

Does this joint "pro-Palestinian" position among these various groups mean that they are all buddies now? Should we be anticipating a formal dinner somewhere soon where Israeli leaders will schmooze with al Qaeda leaders who in turn will schmooze with the Europeans behind the Oslo accords.

Anonymous said...

6:58--I read a few of the posts at Stormfront. They were mild. Whatever that means.

Anonymous said...

Laughing my ass off watching the news coverage of the ignorance in Durham. There's always some fat hog BS-ing about how MLK Day has to be honored to show that "alls of us are eeeeee-quals".
And the brothas "are a gonna take that walk to the mountaintop".
They be quotin' the plagiarism of King on King Day.
Testify brotha!
Can you say Amen? !!!

Anonymous said...

Dora McDonald, 81, MLK's secretary died Saturday.
She said that working for King was a "24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job".
Bet it was. We all know how he liked his women.
And he was a fine preacher so I guess god told him it was alright.

Hehehehe

Anonymous said...

Baker, the city manager, is a friend and fellow-lawyer. He's a good egg, well-spoken, decent guy.

Don't tar him like the rest. He's got to allow everyone to have their say, and respectfully listen. He's not an elected official; he's just an administrator.

Of all those you have criticized, he's one I'd say is a straight shooter. He's no race baiter, and I suspect he sympathizes with the sentiments on your blog, as I do.

Anonymous said...

Some of this is nothing new. 25 years ago, while an undergrad at a large eastern school, 2 students (both minorities although not African-American) got into a fight on campus. Shockingly and sadly, one was killed. This was a huge story not only on campus, but locally and regionally. People felt awful about the whole thing.

The editor of the school paper wrote (I'm paraphrasing) "people on campus are now saying racist and stereotypical things about this minority group".

However, no one actually heard this stuff, no one. I was puzzled as to where the editor got his information.

I knew the editor through mutual friends and asked him directly about this--HE ADMITTED there was no evidence anybody made these statements but he was "CERTAIN IT WAS TRUE" so he felt 'IT WAS OKAY TO WRITE IT".

Anonymous said...

RE: Rachels Tavern,

I am ecstatic that this troll of a woman, who as someone stated, is an equal to one of the 88, has the nerve to comment here and try to rewrite her history and was laughed off the comment board.

She is a PhD in sociology at Long Island University and her site is filled with anti-white hate and propaganda. She sees a racist, only white racists mind you, under every rock. She has the nerve to write such BS and then heavily screens comments in order to only hear her accolades by minions of her ilk and predominately black commenters.

She was an enabler to all this and vilified the LAX team from the start. She is on par with that other hag, "Justice 4 two sisters". May they both rot in hell where they rightly deserve to be.

Anonymous said...

8:23

I'm using this board for research, among other reasons.

I'm dying to write to the woman you demonize. Why shoo her away?

RP

Anonymous said...

RP,

I didn't shoo her away. I am happy that no one fell for her self serving tripe.

I would love for her to come here and answer questions, though I seriously doubt that will happen. She is a morally vile thing. Creatures like that know how to slither away.

Go to her website:

www.rachelstavern.com

and see if she will let your comments through. She also writes on this godforsaken blog too:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/

Anonymous said...

thanks, I'll check it out

RP

Soobs said...

Nifong - ""I'm not going to allow Durham's view in the minds of the world to be a bunch of lacrosse players at Duke raping a black girl from Durham."

No, the world view of Durham NOW, is MUCH better than the above. (big fat eyeroll)

Anonymous said...

My unscientific tour around the blogesphere has led me to to believe that the one person most responsible for sliming the Duke lax players is Rachel Sullivan of Rachel's Tavern. Her guilt equals that of wahneema Lubiano or Carla Holloway.

Anonymous said...

Esquire--

A serious sailor as opposed to a socializing sailor would join SSA, the home of Olympic champions and many other dedicated one design racers, and just down the street from EYC.

In any event, never forget the definition of sailing: "The fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense."

ex Annapolitan

Anonymous said...

Rachel Sullivan should be held civilly and criminally responsible for her postings on Rachel's Tavern.

Her innocence means black guilt.

Anonymous said...

As an alumnus of Duke, I have been chagrined that much of the faculty has been "outed" in such a manner. It explains why, even as a philosophy major, I spent more time with the engineering students than the liberal arts folks.

That said, the term "racism" is thrown about way to frequently. Your analysis is on target, but should replace "racism" with "bigotry" Racism implies that one side feels that the other is inferior because of race. I truly believe that the comments quoted in your analysis fall more into the first category because they show bigotry (i. e. the dislike of someone for their race) and show a superiority based on supposedly "enlightened" ideas bred through years of insular life in academia. Always a pleasure to read your posts, please keep it up until everyone sees the light and that this is a matter of more serious weight than even the 3 kids falsely accused.

Anonymous said...

Since Nifong was thrown off the case the content has gone from "must read" to "why read"

Anonymous said...

KC.

Is Rachel Sullivan a tenured sociology professor at LIU?

How can she get away with the filth that she has blogged on this case?


1. “Updates on Duke Lacrosse Team Racist Rape”

2. “However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. ”

3. “I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. ”

By any standard, this is libel.


Is LIU aware of this?