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Revised book review: "Race to Injustice"
Topic Started: Nov 9 2010, 01:51 PM (281 Views)
Quasimodo

Race to Injustice: Lessons Learned from the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, by Michael L. Seigel

(a compendium of articles by various authors about different aspects of the case)

My first impressions of this book--sight unseen--were unfavorable, considering its chapter headings (which were all that was available) :

"Alcohol Consumption on College Campuses"

(I suppose a study of Scottsboro should concentrate on "riding the rails without buying a ticket"?)

"Invisible Criminality: Male Peer Support Groups, Alcohol, and the Risk of Aggressive Sexual Behavior"

and my favorite:

"Black Venus Hotentot Revisited: Gratuitious Use of Women of Color's Bodies and the Role of Race and Gender in Campus and Academic Relations".

At $32.00 a copy, I decided to pass on this one.

However, recently I noted that a copy was available on Amazon for $2.98. So I took a chance.

And while it is indeed necessary to keep a hurl bag handy, some of the included essays
are actually worthwhile.

Edited by Quasimodo, Nov 9 2010, 01:52 PM.
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Quasimodo

Sample from the chapter on The Town Gown Relationship:
Quote:
 

Although Brodhead cautioned against making the lacrosse team the scapegoat for Duke’s wild-party persona, he ultimately chose to distance Duke from the players. His administration did not stand by them until the investigation was over. Rather, it forced the coach to resign, suspended Mc Fadyen immediately after the email became public, and left the players to fend for themselves. As far as one can tell, Duke’s evaluation of the situation had nothing to do with Mangum or her credibility. . .

The idea that Duke’s lacrosse team had “gang raped” a black stripper could do immeasurable harm to Duke’s reputation both locally and nationally. It probably would cause Duke to lose standing to compete with Stanford, MIT, and the Ivies. Duke’s response--to distance itself from the players because of their undignified behavior--not only accepted the existing hierarchy, but, ironically, reinforced it. Duke might have even believed that it had no choice but to essentially punish the team as if the allegations were true in order for the gown community to preserve its position in the dignity hierarchy

… They [members of the town community] desperately wanted Mangum to be telling the truth because she became their collective voice, crying out for racial justice. This was their chance to challenge the validity of the [town-gown] hierarchy and obtain some long overdue racial justice.
(The Town-Gown relationship, pp. 73-74)


[I disagree with this last point, in that I believe Durham supported Mangum for the same stereotyped reasons Scottsboro suppored Victoria Price--that is, to preserve and reinforce the existing relationship between the races. IMHO bigotry played a major part in both cases. But I digress…]
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Quasimodo

Sample from the chapter on The Moment of Truth:

Quote:
 
The end result of this process is that the grand jury in North Carolina is nothing more than an indictment
mill...

The Duke lacrosse case makes this reality clear. Only two witnesses appeared before the grand jury before it returned one of the most important indictments in Durham history. They were the police officers most involved in investigating the case:Gottlieb and Himan. These officers were far from unbiased; Gottlieb, in particular, had a history of being
extremely tough on Duke students. On April 17, 2006, the day that the Durham grand jury handed down the indictments of Seligmann and Finnerty, it heard evidence for seventy-nine other defendants. That's eighty-one indictments in all. Assuming the grand jury worked an eight hour day with an hour for lunch (probably a charitable assumption given the way courts tend to operate), it devoted an average of just over five minutes to each case. That's five minutes to swear the witnesses in, note their names on the proposed indictment, hear their testimony, excuse them from the room, deliberate, and conduct and record its vote. To anyone who cares about justice, this process--or more accurately, this lack of process--should be shocking.
(pp. 290-291)
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Quasimodo

I have not examined the entire book yet (it only arrived yesterday) but at first glance it does appear to
contain good discussions of the flawed ID session and other legal aspects of the case.

It is a bit disconcerting to see some of the standard myths repeated by some of the authors, along
with some of the expected arguments; but some of the articles have real value; and, for instance,

like the DNA chapter, they preserve in print form a good deal of information about the case
which might otherwise be lost to time and the vagaries of the Internet.

This book is evidently being used as a text (my copy has a used text sticker on it).

And there is still the expected : "The Duke lacrosse case is a story that is crucially centered on our inability
to address and undo our longstanding assumptions about women of color's bodies."


(I don't think it was the women of color who were the objects of prejudice in this case...)

But if you can be prepared to discard the unpalatable and distorted, the remainder of the book
might be worth a keep for the sake of those positive articles which are included.



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Quasimodo

A sample of the dangers of being too far from events and analyzing them in an 'antiseptic'
mode:

Quote:
 
To Nifong's credit, Mangum's position toward the lower end of the dignity hierarchy did not render her
inherently unworthy of being believed. Equally interesting, Nifong did not simply dismiss the allegations
because of who the accused were and because of all the positive stereotypes that inflated their dignity: white
members of the Duke gown community lacrosse team. Their stereotyped position toward the upper end
of the dignity hierarchy did not render them ipso facto worthy of being believed, either. (The Town Gown realationship, p. 74)


And all along I thought that Nifong never believed Mangum and that the players were vulnerable to her scam
exactly because of their "status" as white students at Duke...

(And I guess prosecutor Knight should be credited with believing a woman who was lower class
when she cried rape, because women never lie about rape and women who work in the sex trade have difficulty getting anyone to believe them. Judge Horton even said that such women were not to be believed, absent convincing proof and evidence. . . clearly he was exhibiting, not realism, but a retrograde attitude towards
women and his decision only reinforced a patriarchal view of society... (sarc/off)
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Quasimodo

Hurl moment:

from the chapter Prosecutorial Discretion Meets Disaster Capitalism:

Quote:
 

It is a relief that this "rogue prosecutor" was stopped in his tracks. Unfortunately,
he was not stopped before wreaking substantial, additional damage not only to
the accused--who have received significant sympathetic treatment--but also to
Mangum, who suffered unfathomable humiliation.
Damage was also done to
the real victims of sexual assaults who, in the future, may be cowed into silence
by the treatment of Mangum
and the theatrical, public outcome: not only were
all charges against the accused dropped, but their innocence was declared, as well.

p. 235



[As if maybe their innocence should not have been declared? As if maybe it might take
MORE than just a single declaration of innocence to erase a year's worth of calculated
defamation? As if they were not entitled to that--and MORE--in order to get their
wrongly-damaged names restored?]

[As for Mangum, what humiliation did she suffer? She seems IMHO to have done
nicely--even graduated without missing a day.]

[Are we supposed to have sympathy doled out also for Victoria Price--that poor woman
who suffered humiliation in Alabama courts because she was vilified by the defense
team for the Scottsboro boys?]




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Quasimodo

From the chapter Black Hottentot Venus Revisited:

Quote:
 
Although a number of details are in dispute, one fact has not been controverted: a group
of Duke students, mostly white males, at a regular college student party, were so
accustomed to gaining access to bodies with money
that they placed a routine phone
call to an escort agency, "ordered" two white dancers, and were sent two women
of color instead.

p. 137


No less an expert than Karla Holloway gets quoted extensively in a footnote...
Edited by Quasimodo, Nov 12 2010, 08:44 AM.
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