Jesse Jackson's Moral Certainty

One remarkable pattern about this case has been the steadiness of those who rushed to judgment last spring and now not only refuse to admit any error, but continue to cling to the moral judgments they adopted last spring, when their statements or actions presumed that a crime occurred.

Take, for instance, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and head of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition. Shortly after the announcement that the first DNA tests came back negative, the two-time presidential candidate treated the news as blasé, in a column entitled, “Horror and Truth”:

Something happened on the night of March 13^th—something so compelling that Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong was prompted to say, “This case is not going away.” Indeed, he asserts that the lack of DNA evidence "doesn't mean nothing happened. It just means nothing was left behind." The District Attorney is putting the case before a grand jury.

“These facts,” continued Jackson, “are not in dispute.”

• “This was the first time [Crystal Mangum] had been hired to dance for a party.” False.

• “The one African American on the team wasn’t there.” False.

• “We know that the two women were abused.” False.

• “What happened? We don’t know for sure because the Duke players are maintaining a code of silence.” False.

Jackson’s conclusion? “The Duke scandal should lead colleges across the country to hold searching discussions about racial and sexual stereotypes, exposing the myths that entrap so many. But it shouldn’t take the brutalizing of a mother of two to raise these issues. Justice must be pursued at Duke. But Duke should not be treated as an isolated extreme – but as a goad to probing discussion and concerted action to lift students above the hatreds, the fears and the fantasies that still plague our society.”

Then, to show his support for Mangum, Jackson said that the Rainbow/PUSH organization would pay her college tuition, arguing, “There's more evidence that violence occurred to her than she's the lead of a hoax.”

But if it were a hoax? Jackson said he’d still pay Mangum’s tuition.

More than a year later, Jackson has returned to the case, in an interview with John Williams of WGN Radio. He conceded that it was wrong for Mangum to have lied—though, he noted, people needed to start asking the question, “What about the girls’ careers?” In a delicate description of Mike Nifong’s conduct, Jackson asserted, “The prosecutor was playing light with his cards.” And, he concluded, he was glad that the players “were not found guilty.”

Actually, of course, they were declared innocent.

Three times he was asked whether he would apologize to the players for his spring 2006 actions; three times he refused. Instead, he continued the character assault. It was, he chided, a “very hazardous party,” indeed an “orgasmic(!) party.” He continued: “There’s no moral value in that party”—as if anyone had claimed that there were.

The people to blame were the players themselves: “They did put themselves at risk, and therefore they had to pay a real social price for it.” Anyhow, their parents had enough money to get them off, whereas a “lot of people” don’t have the resources and go to jail. Jackson did not say if he had offered to use Rainbow/PUSH funds to pay the college tuition of those who had falsely accused any other people.

When asked point-blank by host John Williams whether he had made a mistake, Jackson channeled John Feinstein:

John Williams: “Are you going to admit to them [the lacrosse players] that you made a mistake; and that your mistake had consequences, unintended, to them?

Jackson: [Pauses.] I didn’t make a mistake.

My appeal was for the truth to come out. We did not indict them. We said, let the truth—do not spare the investigation.

[So that’s what Jackson meant when he said that the Rainbow/PUSH coalition would pay Crystal Mangum’s college tuition, even if it were proven that she lied.]

Because this happens much too frequently, John, where the rich prey upon the poor, where men prey upon women.

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What did Jackson mean by “this”? A false accusation of rape? Rush-to-judgment attitudes among an elite university’s faculty? Prosecutorial misconduct excused by the state NAACP?

Jackson never said.

At another point in the interview, he again retreated to vagueness, contending, “After all, this is a pattern in the South.”

Williams asked Jackson whether the reverend was going to protest every college frat party. He could have asked whether Jackson also opposes groups of women holding stripper parties or attending explicit spring break parties. And it’s worth knowing whether it is now the official policy of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition to pay the college tuition of all women who file false claims of rape. If not, why did Jackson make an exception in this instance?

What’s the chief lesson of the case? Jackson explains:

I would say that the act of men luring women with their moneys for their private gratification—we must admit that is unethical . . . and highly risky. Therefore, that very act is ill-advised. And you put yourself in a very perilous predicament. And they did.

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Astonishing.