June 27, 2007
Duke University and the Scottsboro Boys II Posted by Alexander Burns at 11:30 AM EST Like Joshua Zeitz, I enjoyed Mr. Gordon’s op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. I don’t regularly read the Journal’s editorial page, so it was much to my surprise that I found an item by a fellow AmericanHeritage.com contributor on one of the half-dozen days this year that I’ve done so. I have a question, though, for Messrs. Gordon and Zeitz. I’m instinctively persuaded by the argument that the Duke Lacrosse case, like the Scottsboro case, was driven at least in part by race. I think the comparison between the two cases can be overstated—there shouldn’t be, for example, an implied argument that affluent whites are as discriminated against today as poor blacks were 80 years ago—but Mr. Gordon’s piece doesn’t really fall into that trap. I also find it believable that the Duke faculty, as well as members of the national media, joined in a “rush to judgment that was racist at its heart.” Beyond my gut sense that this is plausible, however, I’m curious where I might look for evidence of such racism. I’ll admit that I try my hardest to block out the hysterical yammering of Nancy Grace and journalists like her, so I’m probably not as tuned in to this case as the average American. This being the case, what would I say if I wanted to convince somebody that the media and faculty would have reacted differently if the exotic dancer in the case had been white?
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