Mar

31

More Updates on the Duke Lacrosse Racist Rape

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Duke Rape, Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Mar 31 2006
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More Updates on the Duke Lacrosse Racist Rape
I should start by reminding everybody that Justice 4 Two Sisters is following the case closely. So many bloggers (EL, April, Terrance, Stephanie, Sharon, Tiffany, and many others) have been following this story closely. Feel free to put your links to your postings in the comment section or links to particularly good analyses.

1. The victims father speaks out to a local TV station. Including this statement,

The man described what his daughter looked like when she was released from a hospital.

“Her face was all swollen up, her jaw. She couldn’t half walk. One of her legs was hurt,” he said.

The alleged victim, an N.C. Central University student, mother of two and part-time exotic dancer, had been hired to perform at a party. That was when she claimed the sexual assault took place. The attorney for the lacrosse players said the men are innocent.

“There is no doubt in my mind, because I’ve seen the look in her face. I’ve seen the bruises on her face,” the alleged victim’s father said.

The man said his daughter’s physical scars pale in comparison to the emotional ones, and that he hopes his daughter finds new ways to make ends meet.

2. Duke University Student Government. Also includes an interesting link to a pro-feminist men’s group.

3. The lawyers representing the players call the media hype a “lynch mob” and give a hint at what their strategy is going to be–the victim staged it and the DA is out to get re-elected (classic condemn the condemners strategy).

4. Student activists continue protesting. It seems that some students are quietly posting banners supporting the team, while other are openly protesting. They have also noted that this is not the first incident where a LAX player has been accused of racism (one put a black face picture on Facebook and the other is said to have made comments about Black fraternity members eating watermelon and chicken.)

4. National and International media descend on Duke. (So my claim that this would not make national news was wrong. Thank goodness.)

5. This is a very good story from the Raleigh News Observer. They say that the police are confident that the earlier call about the racial slur did not come from the victim. They also say when police showed up at the house to investigate the slur no one answered. I also encourage people to listen to the full 911 tapes posted on this page. I am confident that the first caller is a White woman. (Definitely worth reading if you are following the case. The Raleigh paper has had much better coverage than the national media.)

6. The Duke Chronicletakes a decidedly apologist turn in defense of the lacrosse team, saying things like the racial slurs were alleged. The headline says, “White, Black-or Duke?” a very typical colorblind phrasing. (I have not seen that neighbor who over heard the racial slurs back down one iota–I guess the student paper is insinuating that the victim and the neighbor are lying. Here we go.) Here is a markedly different editorial from a Black woman at the school (make sure to read the anonymous comments left at the bottom and note that at 3PM eastern time there were not comments on the White, Black-orDuke? article.)

7. An article out of Australia that uses the stop snitchin’ analogy like similar to the one I made in the earlier post.

8. And last but not least someone who says, he believes that the “Duke Raping” never occurred.
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Mar

29

Updates on Duke Lacrosse Team Racist Rape

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Duke Rape, Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Mar 29 2006
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Updates on Duke Lacrosse Team Racist Rape
On a positive note this story is blowing up the blogosphere, and seems to be getting some of the national attention it deserves. The New York Times has the story on the front page today. Several people also saw the story on the Today Show, CNN, Rita Cosby, and hopefully others.?

I also wanted to call attention to the two tapes of 911 calls posted on The News Observer’s website. It includes one by a white women, who was calling to report that she and her black girlfriend (her words there) were subjected to racial slurs while driving in front of the house around the time of the rape. (More evidence of the racism surrounding this incident.)

1. The team captains have released a statement denying the allegations. Obviously something written up by their lawyer. The Smoking Gun has the search warrant (A must read.)

2. The primary blog in support of the women attacked can be found here Justice 4 Two Sisters.

3. Some blogs are printing the names and hometowns of the players. Blogger David Wright has posted the pictures, home towns, and parents names of all of the Long Island players involved in this. I just want people to note that almost all of the team members were from the North, and many of them are from you guessed it Long Island. I knew that before I saw the pictures because you won’t find too many lacrosse teams south of the Mason Dixon line. This kind of racism is not a “southern thing” only.

4. Sharon Cullars is starting a campaign to get Dateline NBC to cover the story. Here is the link.

5. Amp over at Alas a Blog has posted a round-up of some of the coverage.

6. I also wanted to note that the following bloggers have added the story
Blackfeminism.org, Bomani Jones (who is also doing coverage for ESPN–good somebody I like. LOL!), Sharon Cullars, Pinko Feminist Hellcat, Ipinions, Feministe, Republic of T, Stephanie’s Journal, Lucky White Girl, Yvette Perry,and Slanttruth . for the others who I missed. Please post in the comment section.

Mar

27

More on Duke Lacrosse Rape Case

Filed Under Duke Rape, Education and Academia, Gender and Sexism, Interracial Relationships, Race and Racism, Sexuality and Heterosexism, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

BOT with updates this afternoon……. This was originally posted on March 27, 2006. I am moving it back to the top. I am making it my personal mission to get the word out this terrible story. 46 members of the Duke Lacrosse team are taking DNA tests after some of the players were accused of gang raping a woman who they invited to be a dancer at a party. I also don’t want people to think abou this story as a gender issue, but as incident that reveals how racism, sexism, and classism intersected to make this young woman particularly vulnerable to a sexual assault. If you read this report from ABC News you will hear very little about race. However, if you this story you get a better idea of what most likely went on. A group of young wealthy White men felt that it was ok to assault this woman, raping her and yelling racial slurs at her. This should be blowing up in the blogosphere folks. This is also one of those “if this had happen to a White woman would we have already heard about it” stories. Here’s what the local paper said happened,

The woman who says she was raped last week by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team thought she would be dancing for five men at a bachelor party, she said Friday. But when she arrived that night, she found herself surrounded by more than 40. Just moments after she and another exotic dancer started to perform, she said, men in the house started barking racial slurs. The two women, both black, stopped dancing. “We started to cry,” she said. “We were so scared.”

The women subsequently left the party, but decided to come back after one of the men apologized. When the women went back into the party, “Two males then pulled the victim into a bathroom as three men sexually assaulted her for an approximate 30-minute time period, according to the warrant,” according to the student newspaper The woman was able to get away and call the police, and she was subsequently admitted to the hosptial. When the police came to the house to investiagte, the men refused to cooperate, and now the police are testing 46 out of 47 of the men on the team ( I saw one report saying that the victim’s cell phone, purse, and an acrylic fingernail were found at the house when they finally got in.). I understand that these young men are legally innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case seems very strong. On a more positive note, the student paper is reporting that about 250 students and community members have been protesting for 3 days outside of the house where the incident happened. It seems that the house has receive complaints from neighbors in the past. The young woman is a student at North Carolina Central University (a historically Black University), and she is the mother of two. She was working for the escort service as a dancer to support her family and pay for college. The race/class/gender dynamics of this whole case are really scary, and they reveal a great deal about out power structure inthis country. This young woman ended up in the vulnerable position of being a sex worker because she was trying to better her family and her education. The two young women left the party after the racial slurs began and they feared for their safety, but I can’t help wondering if they were thinking about how they were going to pay their bills or feed their kids when they went back in, something most of these young men don’t even have to think about. I wonder if these guys were thinking about how much power they had over this young women when they yelled racist slurs and when they physically and sexually assault this women? I also wonder if those guys who remained silent were more concerned about protecting their buddies than stopping this terrible assault. How much do they think this woman’s life is worth? One of the people quoted in the student paper said that the school spends so much time protecting students from the people in the community, but in this case cleary shows how the people in the community also need to be protected from the students. I encourage people to put up the story on their blogs, and put pressure on the University to investigate the team and level some sort of disciplinary actions, and of course this legal system also needs to do its part to put these men behind bars. I think one way people in the blogosphere may be able to help, in addition to agitating for the full force of the law to come down on these men, is by setting up some sort of fund to help this young woman pay for college (if anybody knows how this can be done). (Thanks to Baft Rage for the heads up on this.)?

Mar

24

What is an Interracial Marriage? What about Whites and Latinos?

Filed Under Family Issues, Interracial Relationships, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized | 65 Comments

The Pew Center has released a new report on interracial relationships and families. (Thanks to Tiffany from Blackfeminism.org for the heads up on this.) The main finding that they are promoting is this: 22% of American people have a close relative who is in an interracial marriage. However, after reading the report, I realized the researchers forgot one very important point. They never defined what an interracial marriage is. I think most people may think that defining an interracial relationship is simple–you have two people from different races, right? Well if it were only that simple.

This thing that caught my eye was at the very end of the report. The Pew researchers say that the most common type of IR marriages, according to the Census, are between White men and Asian women. But……the important tidbit that is missing here is that the Census does not consider “Hispanics” a race. So when Whites and Latinos (my preferred term) marry it is not considered an interracial marriage by the Census. The Census is not the only area where this issue comes up. I have also come across people I know who did not define their relationship as interracial even though I would or maybe some others would. In fact, I was reminded of this just yesterday when one of my students came up after class and told me the she is the product of a mixed White/Latino marriage, but her white grandmother opposes her marrying a Latino man because she thinks of her granddaughter as white. So what would the statistics be if the Census Bureau counted Latinos/Hispanics as a race? The statistics on interracial marriage would be very different. If Latinos were treated like Whites Asians, Blacks, and American Indians, the stats would be very different. In 1998 just over half of intermarriages were between Latinos and Whites (I would bet that it is over 55% in 2006.). The next most common type of interracial marriages were between Whites and Asians–at just over 20%. Marriages between American Indians and Whites were around 12%, and Blacks and Whites were at about 10%. Unfortunately, the data I have doesn’t breakdown the other possible interracial combinations, especially marriages betwween groups like Blacks and Asians, Latinos and Asians, etc. “All other combinations” constituted just over 7 percent.

However, this has gotten me thinking. I really wonder if White Latino marriages are viewed by the general public in a different way than say Asian/White or Black/White marriages. When Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were together I didn’t hear people call their relationship interracial? Or for that matter Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz? Of course, the two examples I used here include some of the more Whitened Latinas in our popular culture. I would like to know the skin color of the Latinos intermarrying–if they are as pale as myself, then they probably don’t experience their relationships as interracial. I definitely think there are people who oppose such relationships, but I really do wonder if White/Latino marriages are viewed as interracial marriages in the same way that the other combinations are?

Mar

18

Hartford School Turns Students White

Filed Under Education and Academia, Interracial Relationships, Sociology, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I had to post about this. In order to comply with Connecticut’s racial balancing law (for those who are unfamiliar with this law here is a good description), administrators at a magnet school in Hartford, Connecticut decided to change the racial designation of some students. Here is a quote from the Hartford Courant:

“Mr. Genao called our children into his office one at a time and spoke to each of them of how the school will get `millions of dollars’ if the child would just let him change their ethnic background in the computer from minority to white,” said the letter, which was sent to Mayor Eddie A. Perez, the city school board and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. “He did not call the parents to get permission. He thought he could just change these facts with the permission of 14 and 15 year old children.” Genao conceded that he asked teachers to help him identify biracial students and that he called the students to his office. In the course of discussing their racial classifications, he acknowledged, he spoke with them about the school’s funding. “I did indicate to the students and the parents how the formula works,” he said.

So if you just say you’re white then the school can get more money? That’s really sad, and apparently wrong. Here’s another quote:

In fact, state guidelines tie the funding of magnet schools that opened before this year to residency, not race. Bill Magnotta, the state Department of Education’s magnet school manager, said that to qualify for magnet school funding, schools must draw at least 30 percent of their students from the suburbs – a standard Sport & Medical Sciences Academy meets. Race becomes a factor, for schools established before this year, in regard to compliance with the Sheff vs. O’Neill school desegregation settlement. It says 28 percent of a magnet school’s students must be white in order to count toward reducing racial isolation. With just 89 white students in a population of 400, or 22 percent, Sport & Medical Sciences falls far short. Genao, who is in his first year at the magnet school and is new to Hartford, said he did not realize the state law linking funding to racial quotas applies only to new schools and not to established schools such as his. He denied, though, that the change in the students’ racial classifications was linked to money.

This while scenario is really fishy. I find it interesting that they decided to essentially pursue the “biracial” kids since they supposedly can fill out whatever box they want. All of this trouble just to get a few more White kids. This is an unfortunate product of many desegregation plans (the same thing is going on at historically Black colleges in the south). White children end up being the most coveted and in order to meet these plans schools with large Black and Latino populations have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to find White kids when the most immediate focus should be on providing a good quality education.