Hey, the break room in the Women’s Caucus lounge is vacant – you know, I’m just saying, if you’d like to, have some time together, whatever.
I didn’t actually see any questions in her post other than the initial rhetorical one. But hey, you guys have some important, uh, consciousness raising to get on top of (as it were).
Thanks yourself! I can’t believe I’ve kept slogging along this far into the thread. I guess I have nothing better to do this weekend. 
Actually, my first question wasn’t entirely rhetorical - I welcome you giving answer to it. Just what is your problem with women’s studies? And why do you accuse anyone who disagrees with you in this thread of being a marxist-communist-lesbian-womens studies major? Do you honestly think they are? Or is this just a quick way to brush them off without bothering to answer their posts?
And the main question I asked was quoting monstro - since they posted a question, which you then completely ignored. I re-posted it, in hopes that you might directly answer the question instead of hedging around it. Basically, “If I accuse a black guy of raping me and I don’t have DNA evidence, is this accusation still more credible than if I accuse a white guy of the same thing? What if I’m a white woman? Will I have a higher burdern of proof if I’m black than if I’m white?”
Okay, waenara, I will try to answer your question straight.
I do think women’s studies inculcates an unwarranted sense of grievance and victimization in privileged young university women. There are several tropes that loom large in that curriculum that have pretty well been debunked (one in four women are sexually assaulted, domestic violence rises dramatically on Super Bowl Sunday, women earn x cents on the dollar for “equivalent” work). Please don’t let’s go down the road of debating all of women’s studies – I could, but it would be a disservice and hijack to this thread. The part I specifically invoke here is that strand of “women’s studies” which breathlessly amplifies the prevalence of sexual assault, and specifically, the “Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl” (yes, I read it) version that likes to imply that white men (the ultimate bete noir in women’s studies, natch) LOVE raping black women for political-power purposes.
To answer your question even more specifically – I think the people who have UTTERLY FREAKED OUT when I pointed to statistics showing that white-on-black rape was (and I mean this sincerely) a THANKFULLY rare or almost-non-occurrent event seem to have some weird political investment in having white-on-black rape be a real problem. Me, I’m happy to learn it does not happen often. I wish white-on-white rape didn’t, nor black-on-black.
As to the question in your second paragraph: I don’t know what color you are. If you are white, and you accuse a black or white guy, the statisics are such that you will have some plausibility as to either scenario (alleged white or black assailant). If you are black, the scenario in which you claim your assailant is white is largely unprecedented (today – not in 1865, when white men did get it on with their black servants). Unprecedented claims encounter some skepticism. They should.
I’m sorry, this is just real life, and you will encounter (in the absence of other evidence) greater scrutiny for a statistically-unlikely claim (compare the guy who has heroin found in his bag and claims someone else put it there – I have no doubt that happens, but the customs officers aren’t likely to jump onto that as the first-order explanation).
By the way – you needn’t shed too many tears for the black women. Both the Tawana Brawley case and this one (the only two cases I can offhand think of where a black woman reported rape by a white man) have attracted massive media attention and serious prosecutorial interest. Steve Pagones, one of the accused in the Brawley hoax, was hounded by the state to the extent that his marriage broke up (shockingly, neither T. Brawley nor A. Sharpton paid for this). This was all at the behest (as it is in N.C.) of white prosecutors.
“Burden of proof” is the wrong way of putting it. “Smell test” is how I phrase it. Absent other evidence (we would not be having this discussion if there were a video of the lax team punching this girl in the face and then screwing her), what is convincing, and what is fishy?
And. yeah, it’s (on it’s face, lacking other evidence) fishier to report an interracial rape than an intraracial one. And yeah (I am tired of typing these qualifiers, which no one reads, so see above), among interracial rapes, white-on-black seem especially rare.
But this is true in lots of cases. Is it “fair?” Who TF knows? Remeber Bridget Jones II where the sleazy lothario planted drugs in their luggage and they got sent to prison in S.E. Asia? Let’s use that as a fictional proxy for this situation: the authorities there were deciding between two statistical profiles: young English white women don’t smuggle drugs, vs. drugs don’t just show up in your luggage without your own involvement. Well, that’s a tough call. Both notions have some statistical validity. But it would be bizarre to think that police, etc. would exclude such thoughts from their mind (in the absence of other probative evidence, etc.).
Wow…what a way to waste time!! 9 pages of discussion on how statistics apply to an individual instance…to Huerta, stastics have nothing at all to do with this case and should never have been mentioned, not least of which there is a pre-qualifier - in that an accusation has been made.
Also, statistics are nothing more than an aggregation of indivodual, historical occurances, they say nothing at all about this event.
Finally, what about some more interesting discussions that could have been started…
Okay then! We’ll take your word for that. BTW, I’ve mentioned other topics in the nine pages. Did you read them?
They say that if true, it would be highly unusual. Absent other dispositive proof (I can’t believe I am typing that yet again) they are one of the data points we as individuals have.
Yep, I started that one. Didn’t get a lot of takers, but I started that
Started that one too.
I don’t know exactly what this means. Do you say there should be a strong presumption of guilt, or do you mean there shouldn’t? The very notion or mention of a “presumption of guilt” is one of the odder and more troubling things I’ve heard today. It’s certainly not anything I’ve ever heard of in Anglo-American law. And why the Hell would anyone have to “prove” the innocence of himself or anyone?
Indirectly I addressed this point as well. Kanin’s article on false rape statistics was alive to the possibility that recantations were made under duress, stress, etc. His discussion of this subject:
That’s from the actual article text, which you might have to pay a buck or two to buy online. But Cathy Young’s Salon article summarizes it to the same effect (http://www.salon.com/news/1999/03/cov_10news.html).
So, most of the questions you raise (along with others having nothing to do with statistics – I’d still love to hear someone’s dissent on my reading of the North Carolina prosecutorial ethics rules) have indeed been addressed. By me.
Well, monstro, I would have told them that I’m an epidemiologist way back on page 4 but I figure since they’re skeptical of the accuser in question because she’s black, what makes me think they’d believe that I’m telling the truth about my job?
Afterall, look at the numbers!
Look, I’ve read the whole thread, and I’ve found a large number of Huerta’s posts to be tainted with scorn and therefore not credible. However, he does have cites and common sense in his untainted posts.
I did not see a single post from you with the face that wasn’t dripping with scornful attacks of “agree with me or you’re a racist.” She has done a perfectly awful job of mounting a convincing argument. (And the fact that in this thread, 1 year is such a long time that no trends could possibly retain relevance, while in the Dave Chappelle thread 50 years is such a short time that one can reasonably draw parallels from then to now. Plus the whole “being expected to honor a $50 million contract is akin to slavery” ridiculousness.)
In short, while it is possible that I could be reasoned with on this topic elsewhere, in this thread I am officially a tainted juror with regards to the statistics issue.
I firmly believe that if a random person claims “a blue and green car were street racing at such and such place and time”, and traffic cameras revealed one green car and two blue cars, and the drivers of the two blue cars were a 17 year old boy and a 40 year old woman, that yes we should absolutely apply statistical probability in our focusing of investigative resources by going after the teenager.
I’m not interested in debated this facet of the thread any longer. My position has been irretrievably hardened by the strawman tactics and ad hominem attacks. Even latecomers like montsro, of whom I’m familiar and have no issues with, explicitly state that she is arguing with what she believes we really feel, as opposed to what we are actually writing.
Cecil wept.
So what you’re saying, Huerta, is that if a black woman accuses a white guy of raping her, her story automatically smells fishier than if it’s a white woman who accuses either a white or black man. In the absence of evidence and all, of course.
Since all cases start off without evidence (evidence has to be found first), a detective using your line of reasoning would be biased going into an investigation. Do you not find this to be unsettling? How about if you were the victim of a crime? Would you want people to doubt your story right off the bat simply because you fall into one demographic and the perp falls into another?
I am requesting your most honest, thoughtful response here. I’m really having a hard time believing that a person can be as willfully prejudiced as you have come across in this thread.
It’s a good thing that investigative resources are generally not so limited that law enforcement must go after only one suspect.
I’m sorry you don’t wish to engage in a debate with me (and I don’t really blame you, given the length and climate of this thread), but I really do wish you would think a bit more about this rationale. It’s a dangerous one, Ellis because it leads to self-fulfilling prophesies. The crime stats indicate that teenagers drive more recklessly than middle-age folks. When a case has weak evidence, it’s therefore safe to assume that the teenager is the culprit. As a result of our conclusions, another teenage offender is added to the crime stats, bolstering our hypothesis about teenage driving.
It feeds right into what wring said about reported crimes not reflecting anything about the occurence of crime. Crime investigators should be as objective as any scientist. They should not draw inferences from data sets that have no bearing on the case they are working with. And since human beings are individuals with free will, and each case has its own set of factors and confounders, it is not wise to estimate the probability of an individual’s behavior from data collected at the level of populations.
And yet you really haven’t shown how this scenario relates to the claim in question. The accuser in the rape case (who, as wring correctly points out, counts as an eye-witness) says that white guys raped her. So this isn’t a question of “what is more likely a 40 year old or a 17 year old”. This is a question of “what is likely”?
Skepticism of this claim is equivalent to doubting an eye-witness who says they saw a 40 year old speeding. You still haven’t explained why such a claim is so unlikely to be true.
And really, Ellis Dee, I’ve been quite gentle with you given the situation. Imagine how you would feel, if people suggested that your race had anything to do with whether or not you were to be believed. What if you were to say that a black person discriminated against you and I were to declare that you were probably lying because there are few documented cases of blacks discriminating against whites. Would that not raise your hackles a bit? I think it would and rightly so.
Put yourself in my shoes. I’m a black woman who dates white men. None of those men have been the type prone to rape (thank God), but if they were and I had been one of their victims, I hope to holy God that someone would believe me or at least view my claim as credible. There may be a black woman out there reading this thread who was raped by a man who happened to be white, and I can only imagine the pain she must feel, knowing that people are applying statistics in a way that “justifies” outright skepticism of her experience. It’s bad enough to be a rape victim and face the scrutiny that that alone entails. But God forbid you’re black and a a white person is involved. Then, apparently, you are a lying whore.
You think we are reading things into your posts, but the words are all there. Yes, you’ve attempted to dress them up with meaningless disclaimers about evidence, but the meaning comes through just the same. Your “logic” sticks in my craw because it is not harmless. That same “logic” leads to racial profiling, the wrongful conviction of innocent men who happen to “look” guilty (based on stats, you know), and the unearned benefit of the doubt to men who “look” innocent but are guilty as sin.
I also have not been flip with the word racism. In fact, the first time it was raised was by Greathouse, who put the pieces of the puzzle together himself. I have called no one racist in this thread. Go back and read and you’ll see that yourself.
Good day.
I really feel like we are not communicating at all.
It is damning to the police because they waited a month to do it. You asked me to cite that DNA samples were taken before any questioning had been done to narrow the field of suspects. I did so. That was my point all along, that rather than interview witnesses as part of the investigation, the police simply took DNA samples from every white student at the party. Do you not remember that? If you like I can go back and find the posts.
It is also damning to the police because they were attempting to get around the students’ right to have an attorney present while being questioned.
Perhaps you also did not know that the crackerjacks waited two days before even beginning an investigation. These clowns have blown it from the beginning.
This is interesting. The defense attorneys give their version of events.
I think it’s because I don’t find articles told from the defense attorney’s side all that persuasive. I withhold judgement of the cops until an uninterested party weighs in on things. The defense does not count as an uninterested party.
Remember all the crazy things that OJ’s lawyers put out there? I do.
Now you are just being dishonest. You respond to a post other than the one replied to. I merely said that the link was interesting, not that it should be considered as fact. Hell, I stated up front that it was the defense timeline.
What we are no communicating about is the fact that the police waited a month to interview the team members, a statement you questioned. I linked to an AP report, not to anyone with a particular interest. Previously I asked if you would concede the point if it were to be proved to you; I see now that you are only interested in misdirection and dissembling rather than honest debate.
You say “willful prejudice.” I counter with my perception that people here are being “willfully unrealistic” or “willfully disingenuous” as to how evaluations are made (and re-adjusted) on a moment to moment basis, on the facts available, by everyone IRL, including themselves.
In most cases, one’s initial impressions will be supplemented by more and better evidence. Initial pre-conceptions or pattern-based smell-tests will be supplanted by more definitive proof (for or against) Proposition X. Do you think there is a single detective on Earth who, upon finding heroin in my suitcase, is going to “keep a completely open mind as to how it got there?” RoboCop does not exist. Does that mean I can’t get a fair hearing if I have a statistically-improbable (but in fact true) story of how the heroin got there without my involvement? I sure hope not! But to demand that the policeman check his entire professional experience and demographic knowledge at the door – I’m sorry, it’s so unrealistic that I can’t see a point in discussing it.
What I’m also not sure of is if you’re interpreting (as some people have willfully mis-interpreted) my position as “The police should ignore any man-bites-dog story and not investigate an uncommon allegation.” Nope. Even if something smells fishy to him, a conscientious police officer or prosecutor can proceed professionally to see if other proof turns up, even in the face of factors that may detract from the initial “ring of truth” of a particular allegation.
No one is a tabula rasa and it’s hard to imagine that this fact, in itself, dooms criminal investigation to being “prejudiced” in a fundamentally unfair way. As noted, the past-as-prologue factors that influence our initial assessment of a fact pattern will usually NOT be all we have to go on. Here . . . I adverted to it as one of several smell test factors that still seemed among those people might resort to, when there is no eyewitness testimony (or, pace the repeated insistence that the complainant is an “eyewitness,” her testimony is a wash in the face of the players’ diametrically opposed eyewitness testimony), DNA has not turned up, the timeline’s seemingly screwy, etc.
My claim that, say, a 14 year old 105 lb. girl I met on the Internet raped me, or my explanation to the cops who come to my house on a domestic disturbance call from my wife that it was actually my wife who beat me up, are not, in any universe that you or I inhabit, likely to be given as much initial plausibility as alternative possibilities. And, that sucks for me, if I happen to be telling the truth. I feel like I am the only person on here who had a mother to tell them – “I know it’s not fair. Life isn’t fair.”
You wrote, in [post=7302513]direct response to me[/post]:
Is “blinded by race” not an accusation of racism? Sure, you didn’t use the specific word, but then again we know that [post=7299080]you believe[/post]:
So while I agree that you have not been flip about using the word “racism”, I would say you’ve shown no restraint in applying the concept.
What? The article you linked us to on the other page was told from the defense’s POV, too. Go back and read it. I
Being blinded by race means looking at race independently of other factors and making a determination from it.
If you think that makes someone a racist, then that’s on you. Not me.