TIME.com: Southern Discomfort -- Page 1
TIME.com: Southern Discomfort -- Page 1: "There's a specter looming behind the Duke Lacrosse scandal. The notion of a 27-year-old black woman, who is a student at a historically black college and a single mother of two, being hired as an exotic dancer for — and then allegedly raped by —generally privileged, younger white men conjures up memories of that classic American sex story: the pretty female slave being summoned up to the big house to sexually satisfy the master.
If there’s any doubt, remember the eyewitness account of Jason Bissey who lives next door to the house where the Duke party occurred: 'One guy yelled at her, ‘... Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt’' — a cleverly subtle racist jab from one of America’s best-educated college students.
This is not to say that the lacrosse players were intentionally acting out some twisted racial power fantasy by hiring black strippers. And these turns of events have happened before. Fordham University professor Lynn Chancer, who has written extensively on race, gender and class issues in sociology and criminology, reminded me of another lacrosse team rape case —the three St. Johns University players tried for sexually assaulting and sodomizing a black female classmate in 1991. Those men were ultimately acquitted, and the jurors, including two blacks and two Hispanics, said race did not seem to have been a factor in the alleged crime, and was not one influencing their decision.
Racial overtones aside, sexual assault is a horrifyingly common crime in this country (about one in six American women is a victim of rape or attempted rape, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). The town-gown relations between Duke and Durham have been historically uneasy. And one would expect better from students at one of the country's top-ranked universities. We definitely expect better than the vile e-mail written by one of the players, Ryan McFayden, in which he invited his friends to watch him kil"
If there’s any doubt, remember the eyewitness account of Jason Bissey who lives next door to the house where the Duke party occurred: 'One guy yelled at her, ‘... Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt’' — a cleverly subtle racist jab from one of America’s best-educated college students.
This is not to say that the lacrosse players were intentionally acting out some twisted racial power fantasy by hiring black strippers. And these turns of events have happened before. Fordham University professor Lynn Chancer, who has written extensively on race, gender and class issues in sociology and criminology, reminded me of another lacrosse team rape case —the three St. Johns University players tried for sexually assaulting and sodomizing a black female classmate in 1991. Those men were ultimately acquitted, and the jurors, including two blacks and two Hispanics, said race did not seem to have been a factor in the alleged crime, and was not one influencing their decision.
Racial overtones aside, sexual assault is a horrifyingly common crime in this country (about one in six American women is a victim of rape or attempted rape, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). The town-gown relations between Duke and Durham have been historically uneasy. And one would expect better from students at one of the country's top-ranked universities. We definitely expect better than the vile e-mail written by one of the players, Ryan McFayden, in which he invited his friends to watch him kil"
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