The Flip Side

By circumstance of my business travels, I find myself in Durham, NC this morning.  The airwaves and newspaper headlines are ripe today with the dismissal of all charges against the three Duke Lacrosse players accused of sexual assault and rape.  I have seen the consequences and devastating results of misguided prosecution in other cases and the accused are never the same.  These young men have lost a year of their lives; and will find it difficult to travel through life without this being the defining episode of their lives.  How did this happen?

I believe that the incompetence of the District Attorney and the pressures of an overly politically correct culture have conspired against these young men.  The DA surely overstepped his bounds in his early statements about the case and underperformed his duties in seeking evidence to support the allegations.  I suspect his ambition and pressures from the local community overwhelmed reason.  The media was quick to condemn the White Frat Boys rather than to take the accuser to task.  The racial aspect of this case was far too hot of a potato to take on frontally.

With the case unraveling before our eyes, the race card remained strong and the most liberal elements within the Duke community refused to acknowledge reality.  A group of Professors who have come to be known as the “Group of 88” even signed an advertisement in the student newspaper calling for the administration to take a stronger stand against the players. The administration “failed to recognize the racial dimensions of this and failed to address it quickly,” wrote Duke political science Professor Paula McClain in an article published in the summer of 2006.  Without the benefit of evidence, these professors jumped on the students before the investigation was complete.  The message is, if it is about race, then the alleged white perpetrators are guilty - who needs evidence; their existence is evidence enough.  In fact, anyone who questions the credibility or the sincerity of the accuser is themselves racist.

The Victim Culture and political correctness is a powerful and damaging combination.  It stands in the way of forthright and honest discussions of the current elements of racist behavior and presupposes the innocence or guilt of the parties without a shred of evidence. If people are unable to voice their opinions because they will be prematurely and inaccurately labeled racist, then we squander the opportunity to address the roots of these issues and to eradicate racism fully.  As I stated yesterday, there are forces at work that survive only if racism is alive and only if there are victims to protect.  They are political correctness vigilantes and will surely not acknowledge their error in this case.