Anti-White Hate, Duke University Edition, Vol. II

Where's the lacrosse team now that we need it?

Duke University is emblematic of top-tier colleges in this country, except that it has an especially storied sports history. For one thing, it’s the alma mater of one of the best and certainly one of the dirtiest players in Division I men’s basketball history, Christian Laettner. More recently, however, it became known for a less august sports story, the the Duke Lacrosse Scandal.

Most readers will remember it, so I’ll go through it only briefly. In the spring of 2006, a mostly white Duke fraternity hired a black stripper to put on a show. Many members of the fraternity were varsity lacrosse players. The stripper subsequently claimed she had been raped by three white team members. Based on that allegation alone, Duke’s President kicked the fraternity off campus and disbanded the lacrosse team. Several of the players were indicted for rape and faced long prison sentences. The campus went into an orgy of “reflection” about the awfulness of white male privilege, violence against blacks and women, rape as a college sport, fraternities as a breeding ground of racist thuggery, and pretty much the whole menu.

But there was a problem: The whole thing — all of it — was a hoax. Not only were the accused fraternity men innocent; there was no rape at all. Never happened. The left-wing Democratic DA who brought the charges, Mike Nifong, was removed from the case by the state Attorney General, Roy Cooper, who, after an extensive investigation, dismissed all charges as fictional. Nifong formally withdrew in January 2007 after the North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against him. In June of that year, he was disbarred for "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation", making him the first prosecutor in North Carolina disbarred for trial conduct. He also served one day in jail for lying about sharing DNA tests.

And what, you might ask, became of the legion of banshees at Duke — in the administration, the faculty and the student body — who immediately, reflexively and viciously turned on their fellow Duke community members and fellow students?

The correct answer, as almost all readers will have guessed, is nothing. For creating a race-huckstering lynch mob on the basis of a point-blank lie, there were zero consequences.

Duke’s fat endowment did take a hit, however, although how much is unclear. Wikipedia says that “Duke reportedly agreed to pay $60 million to the three accused (with each player receiving $20 million) subject to confidentiality requirements. [One of the players’] attorneys later told the New York Daily News that the settlement was ‘nowhere near that much money’.” But not a single member of the lynch mob, not in the administration, not on the faculty, not among the Highly Righteous Students — no one — got so much as a reprimand. On September 29, 2007, Duke President Richard Brodhead, speaking at a two-day conference at Duke Law School on — ready now? — the practice and ethics of trying cases in the media, brought himself to apologize, sort of, for "causing the families to feel abandoned when they most needed support.”

Yes, well, there was that. He might better have apologized for rushing to embrace a flagrant lie in order to try to ruin the lives of three of his students and suck up to the sick and hateful race-huckstering academic community over which he cheerfully presided, but, hey, look, you can’t have everything.

So this was the lesson Duke left for its students: For practical purposes of everyday campus life, there are no consequences for anti-white lying. That sank in, as you might expect with college-age kids. There are no consequences.

Q: What happens when there are no consequences for racist lying?

A: You get more racist lying.

Enter today’s story. Let me quote the basics from the September 3 issue of Slate magazine:

If you haven’t followed Rachel Richardson’s story, which in the past week has become the most highly debated topic in college sports, here is a brief rundown. Last Friday night, at Brigham Young University’s Smith Fieldhouse, Duke and BYU women’s volleyball teams squared off as part of a multiteam tournament. During the match, Richardson said, at least one BYU fan in the students’ section yelled the N-word at her. And not just once. Every time she rotated to serve. During a break in play, Richardson, the lone Black starter on Duke’s team, told her teammates and coaches what was happening. The Duke team then told the referees. BYU officials apparently addressed the student section. A police officer was assigned to stand near Duke’s bench.

Yet, according to Richardson, the racist taunting did not stop. The situation devolved to outright threats. After the match, which BYU won 3—1, the man whom Richardson identified as the one who yelled the N-word at her was, she said, not done. The “white male told her to watch her back going to the team bus,” Lesa Pamplin, Richardson’s godmother, posted to Twitter. BYU banned the fan Richardson identified from future BYU events.

This is pretty bad stuff, right? In this day and time, a black player at a college sports tournament is repeatedly yelled at with racist slurs, and this continuous disgusting taunting goes on not only for the entire match, but becomes outright threats at the end.

But again there is a problem, which most of you will have guessed by now. Let me quote from that right-wing rag, the Chronicle of Higher Education (emphasis added):

In the more than two weeks since the match, though, doubts about [Ms. Richardson’s] account began to emerge. No video or audio was found capturing slurs or threats. No witnesses came forward to back up her story. It seemed no member of her team, which issued statements supporting her, heard anything during the match.

Now the BYU athletics department has issued a statement saying that an investigation had “not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event.” BYU officials examined security footage and raw video and audio from the match broadcast, and interviewed more than 50 people in attendance. “We renew our invitation for anyone with evidence contrary to our findings to come forward and share it,” the statement said.

No takers so far as I can find.

Ms. Richardson’s own coach hasn’t said she heard anything (despite what must be intense pressure). Her teammates haven’t said they head anything (ditto). Video and audio come up with nothing. More than fifty people in the area are interviewed. Result: zip.

Now it would be theoretically possible that Ms. Richardson thought, even if mistakenly, that she heard a slur once or twice during the game. Athletic venues can be plenty loud (as I know from my days at UNC yelling “Dook sucks!” until I was hoarse). People can make mistakes; it happens all the time. But that’s not her story. She maintains that the slurs were yelled loudly, continuously and “every time she rotated to serve.”

So what do we have here?

We have what Duke brought us before: An outright lie, accepted on the spot without a single question, being pushed with the University’s support in order to smear whites (and perhaps smear Mormons as well, BYU being affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

The Chronicle of Higher Education story continues:

Shortly after BYU released the results of its investigation on Friday, Nina King, vice president and director of athletics at Duke, put out a statement calling the volleyball players “exceptionally strong women” who represent the university with “the utmost integrity.”

So why shouldn’t the Duke Athletic Director say that anti-white racist lying is ”the utmost integrity”? The prior Director got away with it! Has the expectation of, or the chances for getting, honesty on Duke’s campus (or most other campuses) grown stronger since then?

“We unequivocally stand with and champion them, especially when their character is called into question,” King said in the statement, which concluded with the hashtag #HateWontLiveHere. (Through a spokesperson, King declined an interview request on Friday.)

Someone might want to tell Ms. King that when you lie and “unequivocally stand with” liars, yes, someone, at least outside the fancy-schmancy environs of elite “education,” might question your character.

On Friday, BYU didn’t call Richardson’s experience of the match into question but reported only that it had failed to corroborate what she said she heard. (Attempts to reach Richardson and her family for comment on Friday were unsuccessful.) “Our fight is against racism, not against any individual or institution,” BYU’s statement said. “Each person impacted has strong feelings and experiences, which we honor, and we encourage others to show similar civility and respect.” Likewise, the statement from King, Duke’s athletics director, doesn’t take a position on whether the allegations are true but instead says that she supports the players and “believes in respect, equality, and inclusiveness.”

And there you have it. In a dispute in which truthfulness (or more correctly the lack of it) is everything, not one word is said about truthfulness. In a dispute in which BYU fans are falsely and maliciously called racist, BYU feels the need, not to speak up for its wrongfully accused fan base, but to reassure us that, golly, gee, its fight is against racism. In a dispute in which Duke once more throws its arms around rote anti-white bias, it tells us that it believes in respect and equality.

Welcome to academia’s trifecta — racism, lying and cowardice.