‘Virtue’ Always Before ‘Victim’ In Proper PC By MICHAEL BARONE
The Bear on Apr 19 2007 at 8:28 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
‘We believe these three individuals are innocent.” The words, soberly spoken by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, bring to an end the unjust prosecution of the three former Duke lacrosse players. “We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred.”
The motives of the “overreaching” prosecutor, as Cooper called him, are obvious: Prosecuting three white men on charges brought by a black accuser helped him win black votes he needed in an election. The motives of those who rushed to believe the charges — and continued to believe them 366 days after DNA testing implicated none of the players — are something else.
The “Group of 88″ Duke professors, journalists for the New York Times and the Durham Herald-Sun, and heads of black and feminist organizations all seemed to have a powerful emotional need to believe. A need to believe that those they classify as victims must be virtuous and those they classify as oppressors must be villains. A need to believe that this is the way the world usually works.
Except it doesn’t. Cases that fit this template don’t come along very often.
In this country, black-on-white crime is far more common than white-on-black crime (black-on-black crime is far more common still).
You won’t see those exercised by the Duke case looking at the recent case of three University of Minnesota players accused (whether justly or not) of rape. They happen to be black.
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North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, Duke lacrosse players, “Group of 88″ Duke professors, New York Times
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