Your taxes at play

Crystal Mangum, the whore who accused the Duke University Lacrosse team of raping her, is currently charged with murdering her boyfriend Reginald Daye Wilson.

The incident that led to the death of her boyfriend started with her applying for food stamps, Medicare, subsidized child care, cash, and employment assistance, which application was, in whole or  substantial part, granted.   Your taxes at play.

Crystal Mangum was falling down drunk or stoned at the time of the murder, and was “arguing about money” with her boyfriend. She has nine prior convictions, many of them for alcohol related violence.

After she stabbed Wilson, she left the apartment with his rent money. Her story is that he earlier gave her the rent money for safekeeping. No place safer than a drunk whore’s handbag.

Looks like she got money from Uncle Sam the big pimp, promptly got drunk, murdered her boyfriend, and attempted to steal his rent money.

Wickepedia has a long, too long, don’t bother reading, account of the Duke University Lacrosse case. The short version is that there were five men’s DNA inside Mangum, but none of it matched any of the forty nine Lacrosse players, nor her boyfriend. This, however, did not stop the good and the great from sainting Mangum and demonizing the Lacrosse players on the basis of class and race.  For a better account, See Durham in Wonderland.

Here is some material that should have been in Wikipedia, but was not:

We are listening to our students. We’re also listening to the Durham community, to Duke staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday. They know that it isn’t just Duke, it isn’t everybody, and it isn’t just individuals making this disaster.
But it is a disaster nonetheless.
These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young woman and to themselves.

What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like?

. . . We want the absence of terror. But we don’t really know what that means . . . We can’t think. That’s why we’re so silent; we can’t think about what’s on the other side of this. Terror robs you of language and you need language for the healing to begin.
…
This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with racist classmates,
we go to gym with people who are racists….It’s part of the experience.
[Independent,29March2006]
…
If it turns out that these students are guilty, I want them expelled. But their expulsion will only bring resolution to this case and not the bigger problem. This is much bigger than them and throwing them out will not solve the problem. I want the administration to acknowledge what is going on and how bad it is.
…
Being a big, black man, it’s hard to walk anywhere at night, and not have a campus police car slowly drive by me.
…
Everything seems up for grabs–I am only comfortable talking about this event in my room with close friends. I am actually afraid to even bring it up in public. But worse, I wonder now about everything. . . . If something like this happens to me . . . What would be used against me–my clothing? Where I was?
…
I was talking to a white woman student who was asking me “Why do people — and she meant black people — make race such a big issue?”
They don’t see race. They just don’t see it.
…
You go to a party, you get grabbed, you get propositioned, and then you start to question yourself.
[Independent, 29 March 2006]
…
. . . all you heard was “Black students just complain all the time, all you do is complain and self-segregate.” And whenever we try to explain why we’re offended, it’s pushed back on us. Just the phrase “self-segregation”: the blame is always put on us. [Independent, 29 March 2006]
…
. . . no one is really talking about how to keep the young woman herself central to this conversation, how to keep her humanity before us . . . she doesn’t seem to be visible in this. Not for the university, not for us.
…
And this is what I’m thinking right now – Duke isn’t really responding to this. Not really. And this, what has happened, is a disaster. This is a social disaster.
…

The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on March 13th and won’t end with what the police say or the court decides. Like all disasters, this one has a history. And what lies beneath what we’re hearing from our students are questions about the future.

This ad, printed in the most easily seen venue on campus, is just one way for us to say that we’re hearing what our students are saying. Some of these things were said by a mixed (in every way possible) group of students on Wednesday, March 29th at an African & African American Studies Program forum, some were printed in an issue of the Independent that came out that same day, and some were said to us inside and outside of the classroom.
We’re turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait. To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard

We thank the following departments and programs for signing onto this ad with
African & African American Studies:
Romance Studies;
Psychology:
Social and Health Sciences;
Franklin Humanities Institute;
Critical U.S. Studies;
Art, Art History, and Visual Studies;
Classical Studies;
Asian & African Languages & Literature;
Women’s Studies;
Latino/a Studies;
Latin American and Caribbean Studies;
Medieval and Renaissance Studies;
European Studies; Program in Education;
and the Center for Documentary Studies.

Because of space limitations, the names of individual faculty and staff who signed on in support may be read at the AAAS website:

 

…

An Open Letter to the Duke Community

In the spring of 2006, the Duke community was rocked by terrible news. We heard that a woman hired to perform at a party thrown by our lacrosse team had accused members of the team of raping her. Neighbors, we were told, heard racial epithets called out at the woman as she departed the party. The criminal proceedings and the media frenzy which followed are perhaps beginning to wind down. For us at Duke, the issues raised by the incident, and by our community’s responses to it, are not.

In April, a group of Duke faculty members published an advertisement in The Chronicle. The ad, titled “What does a Social Disaster Sound Like?” was mostly a compilation of statements made by Duke students in response to the incident and its immediate aftermath. This ad has figured in many discussions of the event and of the University’s response. It has been broadly, and often intentionally, misread. We urge everyone to read the original ad, available at http://listening.nfshost.com/listening.htm. We have. Some of us were among the ad’s signers.

The ad has been read as a comment on the alleged rape, the team party, or the specific students accused. Worse, it has been read as rendering a judgment in the case. We understand the ad instead as a call to action on important, longstanding issues on and around our campus, an attempt to channel the attention generated by the incident to addressing these. We reject all attempts to try the case outside the courts, and stand firmly by the principle of the presumption of innocence.

As a statement about campus culture, the ad deplores a “Social Disaster,” as described in the student statements, which feature racism, segregation, isolation, and sexism as ongoing problems before the scandal broke, exacerbated by the heightened tensions in its immediate aftermath. The disaster is the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus. The ad’s statement that the problem “won’t end with what the police say or the court decides” is as clearly true now as it was then. Whatever its conclusions, the legal process will not resolve these problems.

The ad thanked “the students speaking individually and…the protesters making collective noise.” We do not endorse every demonstration that took place at the time. We appreciate the efforts of those who used the attention the incident generated to raise issues of discrimination and violence.

There have been public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it, as well as calls for action against them and attacks on their character. We reject all of these. We think the ad’s authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real. We also acknowledge the pain that has been generated by what we believe is a misperception that the authors of the ad prejudged the rape case.

We stand by the claim that issues of race and sexual violence on campus are real, and we join the ad’s call to all of us at Duke to do something about this. We hope that the Duke community will emerge from this tragedy as a better place for all of us to live, study, and work.
Click for list of Concerned Faculty