“Drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us”
by Carey Roberts
“Outrageous” is the word that comes to mind that describes what happened to the Duke Three, accused of gang-raping Crystal Gail Mangum during the early morning hours of March 14, 2006.
Our country was founded on the principles of rule of law and the presumption of innocence. But what we witnessed in Durham, North Carolina over the last year had little to do with the even-handed pursuit of justice. Except for the absence of ropes and gasoline, it resembled a small-town lynch mob.
Shame on Michael Nifong who, lacking eyewitness accounts, forensic proof, or DNA evidence, violated a long list of due process procedures. Nifong botched the photo line-up, turned his back on a disconfirming report of the examining nurse, ignored the fact that the accuser repeatedly changed her story, downplayed Mangum’s unsavory occupational activities, prejudiced the jury pool by publicly referring to the players as a “bunch of hooligans,” pandered to voters to secure his November re-election, and intentionally withheld exculpatory DNA evidence from a key report – and that’s only a partial listing.When the books are closed on this case, history will recount the role played by Duke University president Richard Brodhead. It was Brodhead who incoherently remarked, “if they didn’t do it, whatever they did is bad enough,” and fueled the hysteria by canceling the rest of the team’s season and suspending two of the players from the university.
People will long wonder why the “Group of 88” professors printed a defamatory letter on April 6 proclaiming that certain unnamed students “know themselves to be the objects of racism and sexism…regardless of the results of the police investigation.”
Regrettable, too, were the actions of Duke professor Houston Baker, who openly indulged in sexism and racism, denouncing the “drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us” and calling the players “scummy white males.”
And hopefully one day we can forget the specter of the Take Back the Night mobs who chanted death threats, eventually forcing one of the defendants to move out of his home.
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