Tim Baffoe: The Duke Lacrosse Case Is Bad Because It Contradicts My Regressive Liberalism
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/03/14/baffoe-the-worst-prevailing-aspect-of-the-duke-lacrosse-case/#.VucSKwMXKQk.twitterQuote:
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) It was a travesty of justice. It was sham prosecuting and dishonesty for self-serving publicity. It was holding up three affluent young white men in a perfect storm of intersectionality in one college environment when hardly any campus in the 21st century isn’t hyperalert to intersectionality. It was journalism gone bad.
The Duke lacrosse case, which is 10 years old this week and in which three team members were falsely accused of rape, was all of those terrible things. But its enduring legacy is the absolute worst part about the ugly piece of American and sports history.
What the case was never — nor is it today — was indicative of a problem in criminal justice, in issues of race, in issues of sexual assault and in any of the combinations thereof. Our criminal justice system is a deeply flawed one, no doubt. It doesn’t often work against the affluent, the white, the college athlete and the men accused of rape.
But because in this outlier of a high-profile case all of those lightning bolts struck the exact same spot — privileged white male athletes were screwed over by the prosecution in a case with a black female accuser — the Duke case is now the go-to for every dude compelled to “well, actually” any discussion on rape culture, on how the system can hurt white people just as much as people of color or how the courts aren’t necessarily inherently biased in favor of people with money.
And thanks to ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, Fantastic Lies, that aired Sunday night, a whole new generation of people pick up ammunition against the noble people out there who work really hard to knock down the walls of rape culture.
The film leans heavily on the parents and lawyers of the accused lacrosse players and comes across more as a piece aimed at shaming the collective us for allowing this to happen than a call for introspection today.
Writes Jen Yamato in The Daily Beast:
But Fantastic Lies’ resounding message is not that America should reflect even more deeply now on the sharp race and class divides that yielded such incendiary circumstances in Durham, N.C., a decade ago. Its message is that the world owes an apology to these resilient young athletes and their families — the real victims.
That, unfortunately, is an irksome underlying stance for the objective lens of any documentary to adopt.
I stopped reading here. Everyone associated with the production of this column can die in a fire, please.
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