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Narratives are more entertaining than facts...
Topic Started: Oct 26 2010, 01:39 PM (291 Views)
Quasimodo

By September 2006 the writer ought to have known that some of the "facts" she cites are wrong.

But the mud once thrown, still clung. How many heard or read this paper (or can still read it on the NET)
and are still influenced by its opinions?


Quote:
 
http://www.alcoff.com/content/dukelacrosse.html

On Prejudging the Duke Lacrosse Team Scandal

Linda Martín Alcoff
Director of Women's Studies

The following was written for the inaugural event for the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics and the Media at Syracuse University, September 2006.

The Duke Lacrosse team scandal continues to raise heated debates, but hidden within much of the political and legal commentary are some important epistemological issues that need to be brought forward. I want to address those here.

(snip)

We should take the public realm of discourse not as a court of law, then, but as a cultural site, and in analyzing it we should look not only at what is said but who is saying it, who is being given credibility, who is not, and what are the narratives on offer for making sense of the facts. Narratives are like theories, generally with some historical content, which are used to make sense of new events and to bring order to complicated facts.

It is neither possible nor desirable for us to completely dispense with the use of narratives in judging new events:

(snip)

However, there are clearly better and worse narratives, even true and false narratives. For example, the narrative of black male sexual aggression against white women was a false narrative. That narrative played a role in the public's willingness to condemn the Scottsboro Boys in 1930's Alabama, a case that columnist Nicholas Kristof likens to the Duke scandal, but in the Scottboro case the narrative was actually historically inaccurate. It was simply a method used to maintain Jim Crow segregation and to terrorize African Americans from asserting their legal rights.

[Is the reverse of that narrative supposed to be correct?]

There are three main narratives being invoked in the Duke case, two false and one true, in my view. . .

One narrative is that sex workers lie. Sex workers are generally not given epistemic credibility, by the courts, the police, or the public. They are seen as morally debased, or as strategic opportunists who have had to lie so much to make a living that they have forgotten how to be honest, or as human refuse too ignorant to have a conscience.

[See Judge Horton's remarks during the Scottsboro case. Horton turned out to be right in believing that narrative.]

(snip)

The second narrative under contestation concerns the history of privileged white men at elite universities who are involved in collective high status activities like sports and fraternities. This narrative—much newer, much less widely accepted—is that such groups sometimes abuse their status and power to break laws, both small ones and more serious ones. Is this narrative relevant here? The Duke Lacrosse team was organized very much like a fraternity, with most of the team living together and apart from the rest of the campus. The facts that are not in dispute here are that the team members hired sex workers for group entertainment, that they asked for racially specific types of sex workers (not black, as it turns out), that some of them referred during the evening to the sex workers as Ni*gers and bitches, that one shouted out to a sex worker (as heard by a neighbor) "Hey bitch, thank your grandpa for your nice cotton shirt," that one said to a sex worker that he was going to shove a broomstick up her, and that another one sent around a sick email professing his intention to rape, kill, and skin the sex workers.

[These lies remain, even in Sept. by which time they were known to be false, because they were still clung to by those who wanted to believe the narrative, IMHO.]

Those are the facts that are not in dispute.


[See above.]

Also not in dispute is the fact that the Duke Lacrosse team has violated laws systematically over at least the past 5 years, becoming notorious among the administration for boorish behavior, such as public urination and hitting golf balls at buildings.

[The lies stuck. The reputations of the players was DELIBERATELY DESTROYED by such persons as John Burness, a university employee, as well as by Nifong and others. ]

An almost uniform set of white columnists in the mainstream media have been arguing vociferously that the narrative about privileged white guys abusing their status is wrong, irrelevant, a "rush to judgment" (David Brooks), an unfair stereotype (Nicholas Kristof), a social prejudice. I would argue otherwise; it is both a true narrative and a relevant narrative to this case, even though it obviously does not establish the Lacrosse players guilt in regard to rape. Clearly, the list of actions given above coheres with the narrative of sports team members given license by their institutions to harass and abuse people, especially racially and sexually. We need more empirical studies of team sexual behavior in elite schools, but there is already a body of work that confirms that the tendency exists.

The third narrative involved here is the narrative about the so-called victim culture, in which people (especially white women and people of color) desire to be victims, to "wallow" in victimhood, and so on. Some have argued in this case that the commentators from the African American community who are condemning the Lacrosse players are driven by a strong self-identification as victims, or the desire to perpetuate their status in the public mind as victims. This narrative, I suggest, is quite false, and obviously self-serving to those who would rather not have their boat rocked by groups demanding social change.

African Americans, in my experience, do not like being called "Ni*ger-bitches." Women do not want to be raped or threatened with rape by broomsticks.

[No one was...]

No one in their right mind really wants either to be a victim, or to be reminded of their victimization.

[Rather, the entire focus of modern black culture has been the insistence that
the black minority has been so victimized that it is unable to help itself rise out of its poverty;
and that any change in its status can only come as the result of outside help. See Shelby Steele's
various works on the subject.


(snip)

The point of this argument, then, is that narratives are not irrelevant to the process of trying to make sense of new events. No matter how this legal case turns out, those who have raised these and other narratives, contesting some and supporting others, have engaged in good epistemic practices.

[IOW, it was right to raise the issue of swaggering players...?]

However, there are two things that all of us who are engaged in the public realm of discourse need to do in order to improve the epistemic practices in regard to narratives: (1) understand more clearly the limits of narrative in determining, for example, the legal guilt of innocence of a particular defendant; and (2) instead of condemning all narratives wholesale we need to distinguish between better and worse, true and false narratives, criticizing those that still hold sway despite their inaccuracy. There's knowledge, and then there's myth, and in the public discussion over the Duke case, there has been plenty of both.


How much have the reputations of the players been damaged 1 ) because of the lies that were told in Durham; and encouraged in Durham; and

2 ) because of the willingness of many to believe those comfortable lies, which so dovetailed with their own
view of the universe?

And who has the legal (and moral) responsibility for removing the harm done to the falsely accused
by those lies?
Edited by Quasimodo, Oct 26 2010, 01:42 PM.
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Payback
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But for Brodhead and the other descendants of the New Critics there are no real tangible facts and no factual narrative--which is why he can declare that the facts about the hoax kept changing. I wish I remembered why after meeting him in 1991 I wrote in my diary "idiotic Brodhead." What had he done or said? But that comment about how the facts kept changing makes you want to make puns on the second part of his last name.

P. S. Totally off topic except that it is about Surviving Brodhead's Slanders: apparently today's Phila Inquirer has me in the crossword puzzle. What a hoot!
Edited by Payback, Oct 27 2010, 11:24 AM.
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MikeZPU

Quote:
 
that one said to a sex worker that he was going to shove a broomstick up her, and that another one sent around a sick email professing his intention to rape, kill, and skin the sex workers.

Those are the facts that are not in dispute.

Also not in dispute is the fact that the Duke Lacrosse team has violated laws systematically over at least the past 5 years, becoming notorious among the administration for boorish behavior, such as public urination and hitting golf balls at buildings.


We heard these things a lot, from Houston Baker to Deputy Chief Hodge to many in the media.

Just trying to justify themselves and their mindless, politically-correct driven lynch mob behavior
in the early days, weeks, and months of the Hoax/Frame.

With regard to Ryan's email, it was widely reported shortly after the email was publicized
that it was a parody on American Psycho, which was on the required reading list for some
of Duke's literature courses. If anyone was following the case whatsoever,
they would have heard that explanation. They could choose not to believe it,
but they would have heard that was the explanation given by McFadyen and his teammates.

As for anyone who really believed that there was any seriousness to that email,
I have two comments:

First, I seriously doubt their mental capacity, i.e., they're not too bright, and
that would certainly include Ruth Sheehan and Ron Hodge.

Second, as Quasi points out, it's a testament to the serious damage that Duke
did to the reputations of the Lacrosse team.

Brodhead says he couldn't hear the exculpatory evidence, but he had no
problem influencing the case by letting his underlings put out all this
highly negative information out about the lacrosse players, much of it
either highly exaggerated or just plain false.

Edited by MikeZPU, Oct 26 2010, 10:41 PM.
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sceptical

As Newsweek’s Evan Thomas lamented, “The narrative was right. The facts were wrong.”

The media at first were so intent on establishing the victimhood narrative that most news outlets largely ignored the facts, and even the logic of the case-- why would popular athletes attack a stripper/whore when they had girl friends and were at the forefront of the social scene? Eventually the contradictions became overwhelming and the media, including the News & Observer, capitulated.

But this did not prevent the pro-Crystal and pro-Nifong forces from sliming the lacrosse players, a practice which continues today with dead-enders like the Justice for Nifong crowd.

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MikeZPU

MikeZPU
Oct 26 2010, 07:24 PM
Quote:
 
that one said to a sex worker that he was going to shove a broomstick up her, and that another one sent around a sick email professing his intention to rape, kill, and skin the sex workers.

Those are the facts that are not in dispute.

Also not in dispute is the fact that the Duke Lacrosse team has violated laws systematically over at least the past 5 years, becoming notorious among the administration for boorish behavior, such as public urination and hitting golf balls at buildings.


The author of this garbage should at least get her so-called "facts" straight.

In Ryan's email, he specifically said (explicitly stated) that there would be no sex.

:)
Edited by MikeZPU, Oct 28 2010, 05:28 PM.
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MikeZPU

MikeZPU
Oct 28 2010, 05:27 PM
MikeZPU
Oct 26 2010, 07:24 PM
Quote:
 
that one said to a sex worker that he was going to shove a broomstick up her, and that another one sent around a sick email professing his intention to rape, kill, and skin the sex workers.

Those are the facts that are not in dispute.

Also not in dispute is the fact that the Duke Lacrosse team has violated laws systematically over at least the past 5 years, becoming notorious among the administration for boorish behavior, such as public urination and hitting golf balls at buildings.


The author of this garbage should at least get her so-called "facts" straight.

In Ryan's email, he specifically said (explicitly stated) that there would be no sex.

:)
And what is the point of her diatribe?

The person who wrote the email was NOT one of the three who were charged
with three major crimes that would land them in prison for 30 years each.

The person who made the broomstick comment (who was misquoted by the
author, and conveniently left out Kim's precursory comment) was NOT one of
the three charged with three major crimes that would land each of them in prison for 30 years.

The person who made a racial slur (after being provoked by Kim's
smart-axx mouth) was NOT one of the three who were charged
with three major crimes that would land them in prison for 30 years each.

Does she advocate indiscriminate retribution? using false allegations of
VERY serious criminal charges to effect such indiscriminate retribution?
Edited by MikeZPU, Oct 28 2010, 10:28 PM.
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