Posted on April 24, 2006

Duke, Race and Rape

Jay Sievers, Special to AR News, April 24, 2006

In the past few weeks, American Renaissance has posted two very good articles on the Duke lacrosse scandal. One dealt with the number of hate crime hoaxes on college campuses and the other considered the realities of interracial rape. These subjects are not news to regular readers of this page, but the fact that the articles were published on mainstream conservative websites means that many people were probably exposed for the first time. Even so, both articles would have been strengthened by citing “The Color of Crime,” which New Century Foundation published last fall.

Racism 101 at Duke” by Peter Bradley was published on the American Thinker website on April 12. Mr. Bradley argued that the facts of the Duke case, including negative DNA tests, coupled with the numerous incidents of hate crime hoaxes on college campuses, made it likely that this is yet another Tawana Brawley-style hoax.

Fact and Myth Duke it Out” by Kathleen Parker was published on April 19 on Townhall.com. Miss Parker pointed out that contrary to the claims of Jesse Jackson, white-on-black rape is very rare. She cited figures from the 2003 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and explained:

“There is no current trend of white men raping black women, in other words. In fact, though sample sizes are considered too small to draw any solid conclusions, the most recent figures show that among white rape victims, 15.5 percent of those rapes were perpetrated by blacks, while 0.0 percent of black victims were raped by white males.”

Both authors are to be congratulated for tackling forbidden subjects, but the facts about interracial rape are even starker than they realize.

Using raw NCVS data not easily available to Miss Parker, “The Color of Crime” (page 13) points out that there were an average of 15,400 black-on-white rapes per year between 2001-2003, but only 900 white-on-black rapes. Even this number is inflated, because a substantial number of these “white” rapists were Hispanics (not one member of the Duke lacrosse team is reported to be Hispanic).

On page 17 of “The Color of Crime” we find facts about multiple-offender interracial rape that no one else has cited:

“The NCVS tells us that interracial multiple-offender offenses are even more lopsidedly black than interracial crime as a whole. In fact, whereas blacks committed 10,000 gang-rapes against whites between 2001 and 2003, the NCVS samples did not pick up a single “white” [including Hispanic]-on-black gang rape.”

In other words, the Duke lacrosse players are being accused of a crime that almost never happens. There are undoubtedly more black-on-white hate crime hoaxes than white-on-black gang rapes.

Even if the Duke allegations were true, that would be one actual case of white-on-black gang rape against 10,000 black-on-white rapes. Needless to say, this huge disparity provokes no protests, no front-page headlines, and no “Take Back the Night” marches.

The more media attention the Duke lacrosse scandal gets the better. When it turns out to be a hoax — as it is very likely to be — even liberal whites will be less naïve about black charges of “racism.” Perhaps a few will wonder why the media and the Duke establishment were so eager to believe shaky charges in the first place.