Of the multiple instances of rape trial by media, one of the most jarring was the 2006 Duke rape case. It took the country by surprise (the feminists, at least) when the alleged rape of a black exotic dancer by three Duke lacrosse players made front-page news. The media coverage and blog war that followed made it clearer than ever that racist and sexist dialogue still dominate the mainstream media, and that the idea that three Ivy League-type men could violate a black woman was still beyond the nation’s imagination.
In March 2006, some members of Duke’s lacrosse team had a party, for which they hired three exotic dancers. There are competing stories of what happened that night, but shortly after the party, one of the dancers filed rape charges against three of the players. According to the
San Francisco Chronicle,
a black woman who had been hired to entertain at the party had been “beaten, strangled, raped, and sodomized” in the bathroom of the party by these three men. At the time, the evidence included four of her fingernails, found on the bathroom floor, which she said she had lost in the struggle. However, most of the evidence was dismissed, and one year later the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. Shortly afterward, district attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation”
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for trying a case on lack of evidence and purportedly false accusations. We may never know exactly what happened that night, but the media dialogue and political opportunism that followed made clear the reality of black women reporting on rape and the subsequent manipulation of their stories for political gain.
When the story first made headlines, several political commentators and feminists, including me, made the case that it is very difficult for black women to report sexual violence, because of the dominant hidden narrative: that black women are never sexually assaulted, but deserve any sexual violence that comes their way. The burden of proof is so high for rape cases—and even higher for black women, since the question lingering in people’s minds is whether forcibly having sex with a black woman is actually rape.
Interestingly, much of the media and public early on portrayed the accused as guilty. This depiction was very similar to the initial coverage of Tawana Brawley, the fifteen-year-old who in 1987 accused six white men—some of whom were cops—of rape. Though Reverend Al Sharpton quickly and publicly came to her defense, this sentiment didn’t last long, nor does it prove that the media coverage was any less racist or sexist. What it does show is that cases like this have the potential to actively engage the public in a dialogue about why something like this could have happened. It almost seemed that there was a collective “aha,” in which the average American was finally fed up with the old boys’ club’s elitism and bratty, privileged college students; that perhaps it was time these young men felt the cold, hard reality of the criminal justice system.
But that isn’t what actually happened, of course. As soon as the first few stories surfaced about whether the young woman had filed rape charges before, or about her mental health or the fact that she was young, black, on welfare, and an exotic dancer, the media coverage took a drastic turn and it played out just as feminists and racial justice activists had feared it would. To make matters worse, the story turned out to be a moment of dreaded racial opportunism, manipulated by a white DA to gain the confidence of the black majority in Durham. The unfortunate consequence of this scenario, in regard to the Duke rape case, is that once the charges were dropped, the traditional discourse of “black strippers are lying whores” became the dominant narrative once again, a clear setback for racial dialogue in the mainstream media. Not only did it silence the voices of women of color who have been raped, it also gave the public and conservative commentators something to hold on to, to prove that black people lie and manipulate the truth to trap poor, innocent college students who were just having “boys will be boys” fun.
The public had questions, but they seemed to be the wrong ones. Once the evidence was dismissed, rumors abounded that the plaintiff was lying. One outlet even reported that she had to be lying because she had falsely reported rape before. The idea that some kind of assault had happened became irrelevant. America was obsessed with the act of forcible penetration—this woman’s body became the symbol and benchmark for sexualized violence—and completely ignored the fact that she, like so many other women of color who work in the “entertain white men” industry, are repeatedly assaulted by a racist and sexist system where their assumed role is to perform for white men, and are constantly fighting the discourse that their bodies are somehow public property. If she wasn’t brutally beaten, strangled, raped, and sodomized, she was obviously lying. And what could be worse than a woman of color lying about a rape that could potentially threaten the lives and future of three privileged white men?
And while her honesty went on trial in the media, the fact that these men had a history of rowdy and disorderly behavior was considered “boys just being boys.” Furthermore, the young woman had reportedly experienced racist epithets thrown at her and other forms of harassment that evening—including the use of the n-word as she was leaving the building. But that all became invisible when the story became about whether she was raped or not. Nothing else was considered a misdeed.
Another key assumption that was written about in a few places, including in a front-page article in
Rolling Stone
about the culture of sexism at Duke University, was the belief expressed by several of the young women at the school: that as a stripper, the woman’s body is not something that she can protect, respect, and keep healthy, but is for the purpose of male consumption and forced penetration and abuse. The narrative this notion draws from informs many popular rape stories in the media: Women who work in the sex industry, or even women who dress “slutty,” are asking to be raped. The burden of protecting yourself from rape also comes with the belief that if you are raped, it is probably because of something you did wrong. You shouldn’t have been walking that late at night, you shouldn’t have had so many drinks, and in this case, well, you
are
a stripper. Coupled with the belief that black women are seducers by nature, and the concept of consent itself is tangled with the belief that she is always willing, if not “asking for it.”
Another sentiment I saw in a handful of conservative political blogs, and suggested in other forums, was that white men don’t rape black women, so obviously the rape didn’t occur. Never mind how history proves otherwise, through slavery and general oppression. But in addition, when exotic dancing services are called, the women who are usually requested are white women. These men specifically asked for black women.
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There was something specific that they wanted that they believed existed in these women’s being black. In the Nelly-style generation of “pimp” and “ho” chic, black women’s bodies have become public property in new ways, constantly on display for all men to ogle. You can’t watch MTV or VH1 or countless other shows and videos without seeing a black woman who is dancing in almost no clothing and for the purpose of the male gaze. They are props in the story being told—not speaking, just shaking. In a culture that basically says black women are public property and their bodies are for your consumption, it is pretty safe to say that racialized sexual violence against women of color and specifically black women is par for the course for American misogyny. Especially in this generation, in which rape is still prevalent—and these guys grew up with hip-hop as popular culture, consistently force-fed corporate-driven, sexualized images of women of color.
Oftentimes women of color don’t have the resources to report rape, or don’t know how to report it safely. Why should women of color buy into the criminal justice system or have any belief that it would protect them, given the criminal justice system’s history in communities of color? Furthermore, shame, fear, and the internalized belief that they somehow deserve it stop them. The U.S. culture of rape makes the voices of women of color inaudible. Stories of white women being raped, although also poorly constructed, draw from a different bank of assumptions, and at least sometimes include the notion of personhood or citizenship and rightful access to law. The reality that no one will believe a woman of color, or the sentiment that no one would rape
you,
continues to silence women of color. The diametrically opposed narrative of black men raping white women is a more common and believable one and was used to justify lynching, as well as racist courts and a racist criminal justice system. There was never a question of white women’s lying about being raped by a black man—even though they often were lying, to explain their sexual relations with black men during slavery—but white women’s assumed innocence and their necessity for protection from black men were foundational to this story. “White man raping black woman” is not a story that has been developed in the same way, because of the power differential and the belief that white men are entitled to all women’s bodies, irrelevant of race or class.
After the charges were dropped in the Duke rape case, there was a public outcry from conservative commentators demanding that feminists and racial justice activists apologize for falsely accusing these poor, innocent boys. Even the blog posts in which I wrote about the case garnered much criticism, along with threatening emails and rape threats. Something about this case scared white male political discourse to its core. Where are these same voices when black men are consistently and systematically charged and locked up for crimes they didn’t commit? Nowhere.
And the shameful fallout included Fox News running the plaintiff’s personal information, name, address, and car registration. Why would they do that? To show the world that they are in charge, that a black woman is not going to get away with stealing the reputation of three of the country’s finest, and that if she tries, she will be destroyed. The case effectively ruined the young woman’s life, so it is ridiculous to claim she brought the charges for no reason. She was probably using the tools she knew to grapple with a history of assaults she had faced throughout her life.
The worst consequence of this is that after the national spectacle was made and the “you better not mess with the best” narrative was reconsolidated, the rate at which rapes are reported probably decreased. Now women are more afraid than ever to come out against sexualized and racialized violence against them by institutions that they know are not accountable to them. This pattern is essentially silencing the possibility of violence against women of color. Two books have been published in defense of the Duke 3.
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Their careers will move forward; they will graduate and have lives full of privilege and success. They will be earmarked in history as three innocent good ol’ boys who were wrongly accused of rape, when they were just roughing around at a party.
The Duke rape case, along with Tawana Brawley, and the Hurricane Katrina rapes and others, was not about what happened to that woman. They are about the competing narratives in our culture that essentially tell us that it’s okay to rape black women because they are public property and don’t deserve the right to protect themselves from sexual violence. The constant media questioning of whether any of the above instances of rape actually happened is exactly the point. Fairness and accuracy in reporting go hand in hand with fair trials and effective laws against rape, so that the burden to prove that they have been raped doesn’t fall on women’s shoulders. We have to fight for fair coverage of rape trials that takes into account the ways in which the culture of rape has been encoded within the criminal justice system and is thereby reflected in the mainstream media. Unless the dominant narratives surrounding their personhood shift, when women of color do tell their stories, they will continue to be distorted and illegible.
If you want to read more about FIGHT THE POWER, try:
• Invasion of Space by a Female BY COCO FUSCO
• When Pregnancy Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Pregnant BY TILOMA JAYASINGHE
If you want to read more about MEDIA MATTERS, try:
• An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Gray Rape and Why It Matters BY LISA JERVIS
• Purely Rape: The Myth of Sexual Purity and How It Reinforces Rape Culture BY JESSICA VALENTI
If you want to read more about RACE RELATING, try:
• Queering Black Female Heterosexuality BY KIMBERLY SPRINGER
• When Sexual Autonomy Isn’t Enough: Sexual Violence Against Immigrant Women in the United States BY MIRIAM ZOILA PÉREZ
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An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Gray Rape and Why It Matters
BY LISA JERVIS
IT’S VERY, VERY TEMPTING to call gray rape a myth. As much as I want to (would that make it go away?), I can’t. Because it’s not a myth. No, no, my friends, gray rape—a term popularized by retro slut-shamer extraordinaire Laura Sessions Stepp, in September 2007’s
Cosmopolitan
article “A New Kind of Date Rape,” as “sex that falls somewhere between consent and denial” due to “casual hookups, missed signals, and alcohol”—is more like what one of the math teachers in my high school used to call an old friend in a new hat. More accurately, in this case it’s an old enemy in a new short skirt. But hey, he was talking about a calculus variable and I’m talking about a disgusting, destructive, victim-blaming cultural construct that encourages women to hate ourselves, doubt ourselves, blame ourselves, take responsibility for other people’s criminal behavior, fear our own desires, and distrust our own instincts.
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