It's Become a Race Thing

The Duke Lacrosse team has been accused of gang-raping a stripper they hired for one of their parties about a month ago. The girl claims she performed a dance for them but tried to leave after being called various profane names. When she got outside one of the team members came after her, asking her to come back in. On going back in, she was forced into a bathroom and raped by several members of the team while others watched. After leaving the house she immediately went to the hospital and called the police. Smart girl, right? On the night of the rape she wen tahead and filed her report.

The next week the coach resigned and the lacrosse season was cancelled early. The week after one of the players was suspended from school. Beyond that, the team hired a defense attorney. And then, silence. Driving by the house you can see the bathroom window from which the girl was raped- blinds ripped down, hanging on edge. Much like she must be doing emotionally right now. It has been almost a month and NOT A SINGLE PLAYER HAS BEEN CHARGED IN THE INCIDENT. The community is in an uproar. The exotic dancer was black, and the majority of the team is white, and together it created a racial tension that would not have been there otherwise. Now it's about more than a private dancer's right to call it quits when she wants, it's about white men raping black women and then getting away with it because they are athletes at a prestigious private university. of course that university is located in a town that may as well be in the sixties according to racial problems there.

I grew up only about an hour or a little less than that from there, and remember being told, when I turned 16, not to drive there after dark in certain parts. To make sure that I knew where I was going at all times, to have my doors locked and cell phone on. To not be alone. Not just because it wasn't particularly safe for a young girl to be out by herself, but because I was specifically white. And that would be enough to provoke an attack. One of my co-workers expressed surprise that the event had turned into a "black/white situation" but I told her I would have expressed surprise if it hadn't. Sometimes it feels like intergration never happened in our neck of the woods. People are frowned upon for embarking on inter-racial relationships, crosses are still occasionally burned, and there are sections of town for white people and black people, further divided into those with money and those without.

Yes, it is physically beautiful. But it makes me cry to see how little we have advanced. Duke University Hospital is one of the leading hospitals in the nation and even the world but it still counts to be a certain race. What black groups are currently protesting is how long it's taken for anyone to be arrested. Those boys are still out there. They say had it been several black men raping a white woman, it would have already been done. Oh, how I wish I could say they were wrong, that we have surely moved further than that. But the truth is we haven't. We've barely taken three steps inthe right direction. And so there are rapists on the loose that should be behind bars. And a young black woman who must feel incredibly invalidated.