LaShawn Barber invokes my name and coverage of the Cory Maye case in her rebuttal to accusations that bloggers on “the right” are showing selective outrage in their scrutiny of prosecutorial abuses in the Duke rape case.

Given that I have leveled the very same accusation at the right on two occasions, that I don’t consider myself part of “the right,” and that I agree with Barber’s detractors more than I agree with Barber, invoking me probably doesn’t do much to help her cause.

It’s generally a bad idea to ascribe motives to a blogger based on what they haven’t written . So while I find Barber’s explanation as to why she hasn’t seen fit to express her outrage on numerous other racially-tinged injustices that recently made the news wholly unconvincing, I won’t hold what she hasn’t written against her (I do think it’s fair game to point out that her of invocation rightist bloggers covering the Cory Maye case as proof that the right’s outrage over the Duke case isn’t selective rings a bit hollow when you consider the fact that that particular post happens to be the first time Barber herself has ever typed the name “Cory Maye.”).

What Barber has written is more than enough. Barber’s a black woman who has carved out a nice little niche for herself as the blogosphere’s resident black critic of black civil rights leaders. I don’t begrudge her that. I happen to agree with Barber on many of those issues. I also think it’s healthy that outspoken black people like Barber dissent from the unfortunately monolithic ideology too many black civil rights leaders seem to think are the only positions one can hold and still be sufficiently black.

I also happen to agree with Barber on the Duke case. It’s clear at this point that race and class trumped justice. Mike Nifong seems to have let his contempt for the Duke lacrosse players’ apparent racism (along with pressure from civil rights leaders and black community leaders in Durham) blinker him from the fact that there simply wasn’t enough evidence to pursue rape charges. His misconduct in this case is pretty appalling.

But Jesus. Does Barber really think this is the only time a prosecutor has abused his authority?

And here’s the rub: Barber’s law-and-order conservatism (and the law-and-order conservatism of the people she’s defending in her post) is readily dismissive of racism in the criminal justice system in just about every other context except the Duke case. As Barber writes in her post, she’s seen the studies. Proportionately, black people commit more crimes than white people. Therefore, when a black person claims injustice, she’s less likely to believe it than when a white person does. Or at least less likely to notice.

That’s a completely preposterous (and offensive) defense. Yes, it’s true that black people proportionately commit more crimes than white people. There are a multitude of reasons for that, many of which, contrary to Barber’s assertions, are attributable to racism: the paternalistic, dependency-creating white liberal guilt kind; the good ol’ fashioned, cracker-KKK kind; and the latent, unintentional kind we see, for example, in the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. There are also of course numerous class and poverty factors behind those numbers, factors completely severable from race. The fact that your average black man is more likely to commit a crime than your average white man doesn’t mean black people don’t ever, or sometimes, or even frequently get falsely accused, charged, or convicted of crimes.

The point isn’t just that Barber and other conservative, law-and-order types haven’t taken up the causes of black people victimized by racism in the criminal justice system, it’s that they’re so flip and dismissive of the possibility that racism and bigotry have, do, and continue to cause innocent people to get railroaded, or to have their homes raided, or to be unnecessarily harassed by the police.

It’s only natural that people would grow suspicious, then, when Barber and company furiously peck away at their keyboards on the rare occasion that the shoe’s on the other foot — when a prosecutor’s racial blinkers cause him to wrongly pursue a group of white guys accused of raping a black woman. Why is it only now that the law-and-order crowd is fully ready to buy into the idea that a prosecutor could — gasp! — be blinded by race and class prejudice?

Don’t get me wrong. If a bunch of upper middle class white kids falsely accused of raping a black stripper is what it takes to get the LaShawn Barbers, Red State diarists, John Hawkinses, and John Hinderakers of the world hip to the idea that there are some serious flaws in the criminal justice system, and that race and class issues tend to exacerbate those flaws, that’s a good thing.

You’ll just have to pardon my skepticism, though, until I see a bit more evidence that a deep concern for justice is really what’s motivating their outrage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 11:52 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.