The crime of their dreams: reading the Duke-lacrosse story.(EDUCATION)(Duke University)

AT Duke University, three white lacrosse players stand accused of raping a poor black woman. They have been indicted in court and portrayed in the national media as a trio of racist brutes. On their own campus and in publications nationwide, their story has been presented as a "teachable moment": a lesson in social exploitation, highlighting the depravity that lurks just beneath the polished surface of America's privileged elites.

In the meantime, however, the actual case against the three defendants has been unraveling. It now appears overwhelmingly likely that the "Duke lacrosse rapists" are innocent of the charges against them. If there is a lesson to be taken from their case, it will come from understanding why so many pundits, reporters, and academics have been so eager to accept, and even embrace, the accusations, without any sound reason. The spectacle has been Harper Lee in reverse: Driven by an obsession with identity politics and "oppression," wide swaths of society have rushed to condemn three young white men as rapists--largely because of their race and social status.

When news of the Duke rape allegations broke, it quickly morphed into a social narrative. An article in USA Today linked the case to "the national flash points of race, class, gender, violence, money and privilege." The Boston Globe described how students and residents in the area had at last begun worrying about "the silent fault lines of race, class, and gender" that might finally "tear them apart." A story in the New York Times quoted a female Duke student who wondered, "Is this going to be a team of rich white men who get away with assaulting a black woman?"

The same tone was adopted by Duke president Richard Brodhead. He wrote an open letter to the community, in which he instructed: "We must be concerned about issues of campus culture this episode has raised quite apart from the lacrosse team.... The episode has brought to glaring visibility underlying issues that have been of concern on this campus and in this town for some time.... They include concerns about the survival of the legacy of racism, the most hateful feature American history has produced." Brodhead then went on to explain how the rape allegations have called attention to "the deep structures of inequality in our society--inequalities of wealth, privilege, and opportunity (including educational opportunity), and the attitudes of superiority those inequalities breed."

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Brodhead's letter is shaped to drive home the point that the scandal at Duke involves much more than just a few individuals. He is explicit that there are bigger matters at stake here--there are "underlying issues" to deal with. To support his thesis, he goes to great lengths to upgrade the significance of the alleged rape from the level of the individual to the social. He writes:

 
  Rape is ... the crudest assertion of inequality, a way to show that 
  the strong are superior to the weak and can rightfully use them as the 
  objects of their pleasure. When reports of racial abuse are added to 
  the mix, the evil is compounded, reviving memories of the systematic 
  racial oppression we had hoped to have left behind us.... Whether they 
  intend to or not, universities like Duke participate in this 
  inequality and supply a home for a culture of privilege.