This post revisits one of my initial ones from last year concerning the now-dropped allegation of gang rape against Duke’s lacrosse team:
[W]here have these demonstrators been? The last year for which there are data, 2004, there were 91 rapes reported in Durham — where was the community outrage? Where were demonstrations supporting those victims and expressing outrage over those crimes? Why now?
According to preliminary FBI Crime Report data for January-June 2006, there were 40 forcible rapes in Durham. Assuming one was the lacrosse allegation, that means there were 39 forcible rapes in Durham during the first half of 2006. Have you heard anything about them? Has anyone in the community “spoken out” in support of those victims? Has one campus vigil been held, one pot been banged, one marxist faculty treatise been authored, one D.A.-orchestrated media event been held, anything?
No, of course not. As I noted last winter,
actual rapes don’t merit leftist demonstrations unless they also have some extra political outrage that can be inferred.
A rape that doesn’t involve a “perfect storm — a heated convergence of issues related to race, class, [ad nauseam]” doesn’t matter a whit to them. If a horrific crime cannot be used to further tear the societal fabric and manipulated to give them more power and influence, it goes down the socialist agitators’ memory holes.
Given their silence over 39 rapes in their community, along with their very vocal willingness still to destroy three young men’s lives for the “crime” of having “drunken white, male privilege,” it’s patently obvious that the campus and community leftists don’t care about real victims. They only care about whether they can use them for political gain.
