on a side note, The Raleigh News and Observer has been doing a week-long expose of the entire case, which has been pretty good.

One interesting fact from the series: Nifong prosecuted the murderer of the accuser’s uncle years before. There was a connection to the family prior to the case. I hadn’t known this before.

J, great post. What’s really impressive is the way you tie up every single point.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. These are the exact sentiments I have been feeling about this Duke issue all week, and rarely have I heard them expressed, much less in such a well-argued fashion as this post does.

Yes, it was unfair for those boys to be wrongfully accused and Mike Nifong completely bungled his job. But these abject apologies by the media, angry harangues against Sharpton and Jackson, and, to top it off, the bojangling buffoonery by Jason Whitlock are simply insane.

First of all, I think those boys DID do something to the stripper on that night–not rape, but definitely verbal and quite possibly physical abuse. And if you’ll note, the abuse and exploitation of women that certainly occurred on that night, as it has countless times before and since at such college parties, has been largely ignored in the coverage of all this. But moreover, I personally think this Duke case has exposed the fact that white male privilege is still alive and well in American society:

First of all, I’m 99% certain that if 3 black, Latino, or even Asian boys were in this situation, there would *not* have been any where near as much uproar at their vindication. To me, there is a strong sentiment of “how dare they accuse these ‘All-American’ (white, well-off) boys of such crimes?” Secondly, where was this kind of outrage for all the other wrongfully convicted cases? Thousands of minorities and less privileged citizens are wrongfully convicted every year, and in the case of more heinous crimes, their names are dragged through the mud in the media. But if and when they get vindicated, you barely hear a peep. Of course, these vindications are few and far between since they don’t have the high-powered lawyers and media connections that these Duke players did.

This post does a great job of refuting some of the stereotypes and misunderstandings that have been lately dredged up. But unless these facts become more widespread, the coverage of the Duke case and Imus will be about one thing: maintaining the inequalities of status quo.

“come on, if this had been black players at Georgetown versus two white escorts, would anyone have believed that story…”

Yes, they would have. Jason Whitlock is shaping himself up well to be another brain-dead, know-nothing political pundit (as if there were any other kind.)