July 16, 2007

The anti-Duke rape -- and murder

[Updated below, 7/17]

I was just browsing through the NYT's Education section, and found this notice that "The president of Eastern Michigan University was dismissed Sunday night, following a scandal involving the university's handling of the rape and murder of a student in her dormitory room..." In short, he gave the public the impression that foul play was not considered likely, when in reality that's what investigators believed from day one.

This notice is barely six paragraphs long and contains no information whatsoever on who investigators believe the perpetrator is, nor even about the young victim. Here is an article from the Seattle Times that shows what the victim looked like, and here is a mugshot of the alleged rapist, thief, and murderer, of whom the physical evidence doesn't paint a very favorable picture (from the ST):

...[S]chool police were interviewing four men as suspects, including Taylor [pictured in the link above], who told campus police he previously had roamed through dorms to steal electronics.

As the investigation progressed, seminal-fluid samples taken from Dickinson's body and her bed matched Taylor's DNA, police said. Surveillance cameras showed Taylor sneaking into Hill Hall early Dec. 13 and leaving 90 minutes later, carrying a gift bag, police said.

Dr. Bader Cassin, the Washtenaw County medical examiner who conducted Dickinson's autopsy, issued his final report: She likely died of asphyxiation.

So, here is a harmless young White college student who has been raped and murdered by a fellow Black student, and how much outrage did this interracial rape and murder manage to stir up at the NYT, which so shamelessly slandered the preppy lacrosse players at Duke? Zero -- despite the fact that, again, the present case involved murder and larceny on top of rape. I hope there's a special place in Hell for these craven liars.

UPDATE 7/17: The NYT has now expanded the original article, so that at least the suspect's name appears. However, there is still no mention of interracial rape and murder, and the focus from the headline onward is on the firing of the university president for covering up the crime -- not on the barbaric crime itself. There is still no picture of either the victim or suspect. Try real hard to remember the Duke charade and the Virginia Tech murder: I'll bet you remember seeing the faces of the accused. That's because they were White and East Asian, not members of protected minorities.

In fact, the article now does include a picture, but it is of the university regents showing consternation at the president's conduct. You can be sure that were the victim Black and the rapist-murderer White, the picture would show the victim's family and friends erupting in tears -- and rightly so. That's what would convey the horror and utter senselessness of the crime. Yet again, we see that PC taboos operate not so as to elevate Blacks and Hispanics and keep Whites where they are, but to knock Whites off of their "pedastal" while giving Blacks and Hispanics greater license to act as they please.

9 comments:

  1. Disgraceful. Everyone wins except the dead young woman. The criminals have little to worry about because Michigan has no death penalty, the university president undoubtedly has a fancy golden parachute, and the Times - well, the Times can and does get away with anything.

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  2. I try very strongly not to be racist, but after seeing so many black criminals, I dug up FBI crime stats, and found out that black Americans commit murders and other violent crimes at between 4 and 10 times the rate of white Americans.

    It is still the case that 99.9% of black Americans are decent law-abiding people...but the disparity in criminality is still dispiriting.

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  3. 99.9% of black Americans are decent law-abiding people

    I'd say that number is slightly off.

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  4. Lovely how they permitted an enrolled student to use a dorm in which he did not live as his own personal free electronics store - which is how he got opportunity to commit this crime.

    Did they not investigate the previous thefts at all? Or were they afraid they might arrest a "disadvantaged" minority if they did?

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  5. The Duke case serves as an anecdote, but the reality appears to be that African-Americans are overrepresented as criminals in media portrayals (compared to their actual crime rates), and underrepresented as victims.

    Here are a few papers:

    "We conducted a content analysis of a random sample of local television news programming in Los Angeles and Orange counties... 'Intergroup' comparisons of perpetrators (Black and Latino vs. White) revealed that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely than Whites to be portrayed as lawbreakers on television news."

    (Dixon & Linz 2000)

    "By a 1.5:1 (241 to 160) ratio, White victims outnumbered Blacks in [Chicago local] news reports - even though Blacks in Chicago and most core cities are more likely to be victimized... Using story time as a measure, the ratio spent on White victims to that on Blacks exceeded 3:1."

    (Entman and Rojecki 2001, pp. 81-84)

    This all appears to be for television news, instead of, e.g., newspapers (much less 'elite' papers) and other forms of media. So there may be more to the picture, but the academic literature doesn't appear to support the FrontPage Magazine type received wisdoms on race and media.

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  6. The mugshot pictures of the guy came from Detroit local media, and the Seattle Times was one easy source of pictures and facts. So yeah, what I'm talking about is "all the news that's fit to print," how opinion managers think the world looks, and what joe shmoe will see at the first internet sites he'd go to -- NYT, CNN, WashPo, etc. See:

    CNN story

    WashPo story (just something they ran from AP, really)

    I even checked FoxNews and they don't have much good information, and no pictures.

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  7. malloy, the key question is not whether blacks and hispanics are "significantly morelikely to be portrayed a lawbreakers" per se. That would have to be true evryaher outside of a law and order show. The key question is whether the rate of black/Hispanic overrepresentation in crime is being fairly represented. E.g. If the ratio is 6x the site ratio, but reporting is at 2x the site ratio, that is still not a faithful rep of reality. In particular, I would be very interested to see the rate atwhich themedia cover interracial crime relative to its actual rate.

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  8. white ratio not site ratio

    Writing from a mobile device , sorry...

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  9. 99.9% of black Americans are decent law-abiding people.

    Approximately 10% of blacks 18 or over have been convicted of a felony. Maybe someone can point to more accurate statistics somewhere.

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