If a Black man, who had clearly beaten and raped an 18-year-old White woman, was treated like a White killer cop, then:
- He would not be arrested. Most White people would urge those who protest for his arrest to be “calm” and “wait for all the facts to come in” before “rushing to judgement”, to “let the process work.” The process:
- The press would demonize not him but her. It would print everything known about her sex life, police record and drug history. It would find her old boyfriends – and her worst Facebook pictures. The New York Times would determine that she was “no angel”.
- The press would blame the rape on her. There would be whole articles about how she dressed and whether it was “provocative”. The press would condemn “rape”, but not the rapist. At worst, he made a “mistake”, an “error in judgement”. He acted more or less reasonably, she did not. What in the world was she thinking?
- The Black rapist himself would carry out the investigation, gathering the facts about the rape.
- The public prosecutor would defend him before a secret grand jury. The prosecutor would “present all the facts”, meaning all the facts from the rapist’s investigation. Since the woman’s lawyer would not be present, the “facts” would go unchallenged and the witnesses would never be cross-examined. The rapist would would have a 98% chance of not being charged with a crime.
- Many Whites would consider this process fair and transparent. They would not question “the facts”, meaning the ones that came from the rapist’s investigation that were sprinkled with holy water during the grand jury hearing. They would see “no reason” for “incessant protests”.
- On the odd chance it went to trial, the Black rapist’s account would be believed over anything the White woman said, no matter how cartoonish his account or shameless his lies.
- The charge of rape would turn on his state of mind, not on the facts – not his actions, not any video, not on what he did to her. That means so long as he watches what he says:
- He would almost certainly be found not guilty.
The talking heads on television, if the case became news nationwide, would support this crooked system:
- Rudy Giuliani on “Meet the Press” would belittle the case by talking about White-on-White rape.
- Bill O’Reilly on Fox News would point out that the number of White women raped by Black men is “miniscule” compared to the millions of White women in the country. He would scold White parents for not bringing up their daughters properly.
- Don Lemon on CNN, out of “tough love”, would urge White women to dress modestly – even if the White woman who was raped had dressed modestly.
- George Stephanopoulos on ABC would interview the rapist. Just like in the grand jury hearing, the rapist’s account would not be seriously questioned. The rapist would say he feels bad for what the woman went through, yet would still blame it on her, keeping his “conscience” clean.
See also:
As I was reading through this, I think to some extent the media and people in general do end up blaming the rape victim when she is raped. Particularly in cases of prominent white males.
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The victim is blamed anyway in an injustice system. That is what we have and what we have always had. RIP Tamir, Michael, Trayvon, Jordan and many others.
I have explained to my 10 year old why he can’t have a toy gun or any type of gun …ever. What was harder to explain was why to cop shot a little boy like him who was only playing.
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“Rudy Giuliani on “Meet the Press” would belittle the case by talking about White-on-White rape.
Bill O’Reilly on Fox News would point out that the number of White women raped by Black men is “miniscule” compared to the millions of White women in the country. He would scold White parents for not bringing up their daughters properly.
Don Lemon on CNN, out of “tough love”, would urge White women to dress modestly – even if the White woman who was raped had dressed modestly.
George Stephanopoulos on ABC would interview the rapist. Just like in the grand jury hearing, the rapist’s account would not be seriously questioned. The rapist would say he feels bad for what the woman went through, yet would still blame it on her, keeping his “conscience” clean.”
That was beautiful Abagond!lol I got to give you credit for that one! LOL!!!
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Sad but very true.
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I see what you did there. You did a Matthew McConaughey in “A Time to Kill” closing words argument. But won’t work for the privileged with bias. Sorry no.
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@Jaque
I agree. I have a 3 yr old son and I am dreading having to give him the rules to being black.
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Sharina,
“As I was reading through this, I think to some extent the media and people in general do end up blaming the rape victim when she is raped. Particularly in cases of prominent white males.”
Me too. Not just in the case of prominent white males, but prominent males period. Bill Cosby and Jameis Winston for example.
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@solesearch
I actually kind of forgot about Bill Cosby. Not sure how to look at his case, but you are correct. There is a huge amount of victim blaming in that case.
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Most of Bill Cosby’s accusers are white and I see a split in how whites view it. One side believes he didn’t do it and the women are gold diggers or have a political agenda. The other side brings up the black-on-white rape statistics and believes he’s guilty. They still slander the women though. Calling them mudsharks, coal burners, etc. This is going by the comments I read on different news sites.
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What are the rules to “being black” ? I read Otis Grahams tripe about how he raised his kids. Hmmm. It’s not us its them..plain and simple. The officers who shot those black male victims were no more “racist” and any other white person. But whites identified, sympathized and empathized so easily with the cops…not the victims…hence the overriding problem. I am personally sick and tired of contorting our black selves ( our psyche, our hair, our skin colors, speech patterns, love patterns , behavior patterns) to make peace with their white supremacy which can fluctuate. We need to dump out the kool aid they are drinking and turn off the bad mix tape. Their neurosis is harming this country we people of color have helped build.
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Jacque
That is what I call all the rules black kids have to follow just to survive. No hoodies, don’t put your hands in your pocket, no toy weapons, etc.
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I need a full list of those rules!
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Jacque
Lol. It never clicks to me why black parents must have those rules. I understand white supremacy and racism, but it still annoys me that as a black parent I have to have them. My kids have to obey them.
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And to add insult to injury Don Lemon would then ask the victim “why didn’t you bite the privates to prevent the assault”? That is what he asked the one woman who accused Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting her. He later gave a pretty unconvincing apology. It had a kind of sorry not sorry tone to it.
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@ Mary Burrell
You do know Don Lemon is a homosexual right? The way he suggested that tactic was as if he himself had been in that situation before. I do think Gay Rape is something that does occur.
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@TeddyBearSniffer: Yes, i am well aware of that and i was thinking what an odd line of questioning. And it occurred to me that he was not thinking about the woman and being insensitive. He was inserting himself in this scenario.
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LmaO at the hypothetical Don Lemon scenario! Good analysis of a reversal-situation, Abagond! P.S. I luv it when you put the snow on your background during this time of year!
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@abagond:
I think I get the point of the post, and I agree that treatment of offenders is heavily skewed and imbalanced in favour of whites.
That said, I think some people will consider the comparison of limited validity. To some extent it is apples and oranges: different people have different perceptions of the relative heinousness of the crimes. Some think rape is worse than murder and would chose to die rather than be raped. Others – especially some men – trivialise rape.
To make the point more robust I think that a comparison between the treatment of black/white killers would be more widely accepted as valid, or between black/white rapists. That undeniable justice/injustice imbalance would still be present and very visible.
I guess I’m saying that I’m not sure that I really understand the reason for using such different crimes in the comparison – unless it is to make a point that a black perpetrator of a “lesser” crime could expect to be treated worse than the white perp of a worse crime.
This would suggest that rape is, objectively, a lesser crime than killing. The vast majority of rapes are male-on-female crimes. The perception that it is a “lesser” crime than killing is, IMO, a male privilege position.
What have I missed or misunderstood, please?
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Drat. The comment above posted from my wrong ID. Sorry about that, but it was definitely me!
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There is a saying in my part of India, when translated reads thus:
A snake is never small,
And a white man is never our’s.
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@Kiwi,
Re: your issue for Abagond
I think he must keep it as “Many Whites would consider this process fair and transparent.” in order to show the illogic in the whole thinking process. It has to be the people who have more control over the justice system.
If he used “Blacks” instead of “Whites”, then Whites would be able to divorce themselves from the illogical thinking and think something like “Of course Blacks would think that way. “
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@Buddhu
I think what you missed was the historical legacy in America where black men often were lynched for allegedly raping a white women. In White US mob justice thinking, black males must be publicly and brutally killed for even the thought of a violating the sanctity of a white women.
Raping of a white woman by a black male historically meant certain death. Murders by the police almost certainly mean certain pardon or acquittal.
It (raping of white women by black men) is probably a much better antithesis to killings by white cops than killings by blacks. The comparison of black men committing what is perceived as a lesser crime lays bare the illogic of letting killer cops go free even more pronouncedly.
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@jefe:
Thanks for that. No, I don’t think I missed that historical aspect. I’m well aware of it. And I get how the worse treatment for POC who commit the “lesser” crime might be used to highlight the ludicrous way that white cope get off completely free after committing the “worse” crime.
I guess I’m not comfortable with using rape in the role of a “lesser” crime (race aside – there are plenty of white rapists).
A straight comparison between the difference in consequences faced by black killers and white killer cops paints just as alarming a picture.
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^
Alarming, yes, but not nearly as thought provoking as comparing black rapists to white killer cops. I think that comparison works much much better than comparing black killers to white killer cops.
That may be true, but I think that is beside the point of this post. The purpose was not to compare similar crimes, but the ludicrous justice system.
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Yes, I get the purpose. Just unsure about the dismissing of rape as a “lesser” crime.
It is possible that I have an aberrant sensitivity to that point. I’ll let it drop.
Thanks for the responses.
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Women are treated just as you describe, however, when they report a rape by a man who is white, rich, powerful and/or famous. That’s why so many rapes don’t get reported at all. So though I get your point, it’s an ironic, painful-to-women analogy.
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Since this is about Male on female crime, with a race component (black male on white female), how do you think this new case of police brutality, which is white male on black female, will play out:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-use-taser-on-woman-while-she-recorded-arrest-of-another-man/
Video recording and very damning, and so far the police is actually on the defensive it seems.
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@ krwordgazer
The irony is intended. When I first thought of doing this post, it was killer cops as a crime trend, then it was killer cops as compared to bank robbers, then it was rapists, then it was Black rapists of White women, at each turn the post becoming more messily ironic, the crookedness of the courts and the press hopefully more apparent.
I was mainly thinking of lynching (thus the picture at top), but there is also the Bill Cosby thing. And then, of course, there is how White men had, for hundreds of years, raped Black women with about as much impunity and racist disregard as White cops now kill Black men. I was thinking about working in a picture of Thomas Jefferson, but did not see how to do it without creating confusion.
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@ Kiwi @ buddhuu
Jefe has it right.
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Naishee
I wonder how cop apologists are going to feel once people start regularly suing the cops for these beatings? That lady is suing for 7 million at that.
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@ abagond:
Thanks for clarification.
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Folks, these police departments start to change when they get sued up the wazoo. They don’t do so out of a sense of morality for the most part. They understand green.
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As a woman I found this really difficult to read, as the situation you describe is hardly hypothetical. Most women do not bother reporting their sexual assaults because they know they will not get justice. The women who do are typically vilified and regarded as sluts, or accused of “asking for it”. I realize that rates of conviction for rape are higher for black men, but also that those lynchings you were thinking of had little to do with any actual rape. White men could take out their anger at black men who were no longer their property, by accusing them of defiling what still was, in many ways, their property – their wives and daughters.
I did read your comment about this post being “messily ironic” and it surely was. My head was spinning in circles trying to read this. Given the Rape Culture that we currently live in, I’m admittedly sensitive to anything that seems to trivialize the experiences of women who have been raped.
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Even Black on White Rape gets this kind of treatment nowadays.
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Noam Chomsky: America is a racist society
http://rt.com/usa/214079-chomsky-america-racist-society/
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Isn’t Chomsky the guy B.R. hates?
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@ Sharina
Yes. B.R. calls him Chumpsky.
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He was Legion’s hero.
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Chomsky is a significant Anarchist thinker. He has his flaws, but only a profound fool would dismiss his writings out of hand. Unfortunately, because quite a lot of what he says can be distilled into to soundbites, he is easily reduced to a source of vapid internet memes – an undeserved indignity for a perceptive man who is worth hearing out in some depth.
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Only peripherally on topic, but suddenly I found many news sources reporting on Lennon Lacy, a black male teen found hanging dead by a dog leash from a swing set in a trailer park in SE North Carolina in late August this year. He was wearing shoes 2 sizes too small without laces. The new shoes he was wearing when he went out were not found.
Local police ruled it a suicide.
But the NAACP is now seeking an FBI investigation. The family and the NAACP suspect it is a lynching for dating a 31-yr. old white woman. There is no conceivable way that a 5’9″ teen could have possibly hung himself on a 7’5″ swingset.
These articles also have videos:
(http://www.wwaytv3.com/2014/11/21/outside-review-of-lennon-lacy-death-investigation-released)
(http://us.cnn.com/2014/12/15/justice/north-carolina-lennon-lacy/index.html)
Wonder how many of these stories will hit the national scene now. I couldn’t find any national US news source covering it when it happened.
Also makes you wonder how many unexplained deaths of black men still occur today.
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My previous comment about the Lennon Lacy hanging (or possible lynching) in North Carolina is under moderation, but here are some more articles:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/22/north-carolina-teenager-suicide-ruling-challenged-lennon-lacy
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A true analogy would compare Officer Wilson’s treatment to someone falsely accused of rape and the Ferguson rioters to a lynch mob.
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@ Big Momma
The difference between the a lynch mob and the Ferguson rioters is:
1. A lynch mob viciously kills out of anger.
2. The Ferguson rioters looted out of anger.
Normally, the accused or guilty rapist or murderer was jailed, but the angry lynch mob would snatch the accused or guilty rapist or murderer from jail and take matters in their own bloody hands. History can certainly attest to these truths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Laura_and_L.D._Nelson
The old saying: You can replace damaged property but you can’t replace a murdered individual(s).
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