Race and Rape at Duke University

I was just about to e-mail Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal for his take on the recent charges of rape and racism at the university, when he sent me this clip from a local public radio show from UNC Chapel Hill.

Host Frank Stasio interviewed Neal along with Treva Lindsey, a graduate student at Duke; Charlotte Pierce-Baker, a research professor in the women's studies program at Duke; and John McCann, a columnist with Durham Herald-Sun.

It's a great discussion about the way that class, race and gender affects the way in which the public perceives the woman at the center of the story. While no charges have been filed, the lacrosse team has been suspended, and the incident has been the subject of intense discussion at Duke and in the surrounding community. Much of that discussion has centered on the fact that the alleged victim, a student at North Carolina Central University, is also a single mother and exotic dancer.

"There's a very powerful historical discourse in this country that says, black women cannot be raped," Neal said. Noting that the black community has not rallied to the "If there are folks within this box who don't fit into what black respectability is supposed to be, they don't get the protection of the community."

Pierce-Baker talked about her research -- she authored the book, "Surviving the Silence: Black Women's Stories of Rape", but also her perception of this incident as someone who has, herself been a rape victim.Lindsey recounted overhearing a conversation at Duke in which one person said, "Who are you going to believe, a black whore or a Duke student?" Lindsey also talked about her research on black women who choose to be exotic dancers and sex workers.

For McCann, the fact that the alleged victim was an exotic dancer matters. What many NCCU students told him, he said was, "That kind of stuff, it comes with the territory -- not justifying anything, but it comes with the territory."

Both Neal and Pierce-Baker stressed that all kinds of women are raped, not just exotic dancers -- and it's a fate no woman deserved. "When you get rape survivors in a room, we all have one thing very much in common," she said.

Neal invoked law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw's work on the particular experiences of women of color who are subjected to sexual violence. She argued:

"I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism. Because of their intersectional identity as both women and people of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, the interests and experiences of women of color are frequently marginalized within both."

There was much more -- the role of athletic culture and hypermasculinity in perpetuating sexual violence, the challenge of getting men to care about sexual violence, the fact that we're only talking about this case because the identity of the alleged perpetrators. As Lindsey noted, "This is not the only sexual assault that probably happened in Durham on March 13. That's just a reality. There are 500,000 rapes in this country a year."

By the way, Rachel and the Humanity Critic have great posts and discussions on this one. (Thanks to fellow BlogHer editor Liza for the pointers.)

Cross posted at BlogHer

/Duke University/,rape,