NC Lacrosse Owes a Debt to Jim Kirkley

I have a fond friendship with Jim Kirkley. We were occasional conversants when he was finishing his dissertation at Duke and I was just taking courses in the late 1980s. Then when I was entering the job market, thanks to Jim a job at Shaw University found me. Going on sixteen years later, as they say, the rest is history. During the time that we both taught undergraduates, I spoke with him most every day. Over the past few years, as our teaching paths do not cross so often, we try to catch up every now and then. And through the years I have learned to admire him as a teacher, a leader, a scholar, a minister, a father, and a coach.

When Jim started coaching lacrosse in North Carolina, there was not much of an organization. A few private schools were playing, and a few public schools in the Research Triangle were getting things going. I don't know the history that well, but I do know that he became the driving force in making lacrosse become a team sport in many cities and schools across the state.

An article in the Durham Herald-Sun recognized his achievements this week (the photo here was published with the article--Jim is the tall one on the right). He is retiring from coaching after seventeen years at Riverside High School in Durham. He has won state championships, helped students get athletic scholarships, and mentored other coaches, along with serving as commissioner of the NC High School Lacrosse Association. People like Jim help you know what it means to live a good life. I wish him the best in the new pursuits he will undertake.

I read one good quote about the Nifong disbarring in the Durham Herald-Sun. The rhetoric on this case, from commentators, principals, and lawyers, gets really high and self-righteous. I am not a fan of Nifong. I don't think the evidence shows that the young men committed rape. I think the case was handled wrong, and I am glad that attention has been drawn on the way that public comments by law enforcement and court officials affect the chances of justice for the accused. Here is the quote from Duke University Law School professor James Coleman.

Everybody wants to say that Mike Nifong is some kind of rogue prosecutor, but in fact, what he did is not that different from what other prosecutors do on a regular basis in cases out of the spotlight.

The defense attorneys and the NC bar officials have spoken in idealistic terms about how prosecutors, and perhaps defense lawyers, too, should handle themselves in public statements. It is a very high standard they are describing. Lawyers I hear on radio or read about in the newspaper do not always reach this standard. I wonder how widely it will be enforced. Is this case the beginning of a new day for respecting the rights of defendants? Let's ask the prisoners at Guantanamo what they think.

According to the Durham Herald-Sun, in an article printed on June 14, 2007, Marsha Goodenow, an assistant district attorney in Mecklenberg County testified before the Disciplinary Hearing Commission of the North Carolina State Bar:

Marsha Goodenow, a senior assistant district attorney in Mecklenburg County, said she believed Nifong's conduct had created "a lack of confidence in the justice system, a perception that justice might depend on who your lawyer is, how much money you have and whether you're white or black."

Nifong handled it wrong. I'm glad he resigned. I am sorry for the young men that they had to endure public ridicule because of false charges. No one should have to go through that.

On the other hand, Goodenow's remarks stretch credibility. The lack of confidence in the judicial system did not start with this case. She is concerned about the "perception that justice might depend on who your lawyer is, how much money you have and whether you're white or black." Any careful analyst of the legal system in the state of North Carolina, in other states, and in the United States, would already know that these three factors have an enormous impact on justice.

Money can often trump justice. Lack of money leaves the accused poorly defended and unable to challenge the lack of evidence against them. Race has enormous impact on justice. Pay attention to jury selection processes. Notice the difference between court treatment of crimes against whites and crimes against blacks. Don't forget the terms "racial profiling" and "driving while black" which were coined to make note of differential law enforcement. Finally, who your lawyer is must make a difference or else people with money would not pay the exorbitant fees to get the lawyers with a record of winning.

Goodenow is worried about perceptions. I think we need to be more concerned about injustice structured into the legal system. Otherwise, all Goodenow is defending is a perception of justice which is a facade upheld by a system of power which continues to exclude the poor and minorities from justice.

Let the spotlight shift to Jena, LA. Durham, NC, has been the focus of national attention on politics in the justice system, the presence or absence of racism, and the way that people debate about crime and race in public. The continuing residue of this discussion has to do with (1) what kinds of power a district attorney can have in the investigation and pursuit of criminal cases and (2) how public intellectuals such as university faculty ought and ought not to speak out in the context of a public criminal case.

In Durham we have the so-called Group of 88, Duke professors who signed a statement concerning the ongoing problems of racism and sexism at their university. They wrote it in the heat of the early investigation about the Duke Lacrosse team party which employed African American exotic dancers in a setting of heavy drinking. As most everyone knows, one of the dancers charged that she was raped, and three members of the lacrosse team were charged. Eventually, the woman's account of the alleged crime fell apart, and all charges were dropped. These professors continue to be the object of attack for having spoken out in a context that some people say was prejudicial to the students charged, unduly critical of their university, and overall in bad taste for talking about racism and sexism as if they are problems in this day and time.

Well, now the same kind of hubbub has appeared in Jena, Louisiana. It is not really new. It started last September. But only now it is getting picked up by a few news sources. Curtis Freeman alerted me to a news story on the BBC website. I found another article at the Chicago Tribune site. I'll quote a bit from the latter as I highlight the story here. I have not seen any all day coverage on CNN or MSNBC or Fox. We'll see if that comes (NOT).

There is a racial incident that started it all. When black students got permission from the principal to go and sit under a tree in the school yard that traditionally was only for the white kids, they did it for the first time. This is 2007. The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. It was not hard to find out who had done it, and three white male students were recommended for expulsion from school. They eventually only got a three day suspension.

This sequence of events led to a good deal of conflict, and a series of incidents involving fights, beatings, and guns (no shootings) occurred. When white people were harassing blacks, they received lesser charges. But when some black boys ganged up on a white boy, causing only minor injuries, they were charged with attempted murder.

So there is a District Attorney acting in arbitrary manner. Many folks around the country incensed about the situation in Durham seem to think that prosecutors acting in ways that don't seem fully just, and even acting arbitrarily, is a new thing in the Duke Lacrosse case. What is new about it is that it happened in a racial context to the disadvantage of privileged white boys in a major university. It has happened over and over to the poor, to blacks, to Latinos, to other minorities, but seldom does the public hear about it. Let's make sure the public hears about Jena, Louisiana, and District Attorney Reed Walters of LaSalle Parish.

Second, most people in Jena want to say that there is not a problem of racism in their community. Yet only sixteen years ago, most of this town's white votes for Louisiana Governor went for David Duke, KKK leader. But in response to the hanging of the nooses, the white school superintendent "ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt." The mayor tried to play it down, too. "Jena is a place that's moving in the right direction," said Mayor Murphy McMillan. "Race is not a major local issue. It's not a factor in the local people's lives."

Thanks be to God for a Pentecostal preacher who spoke up, and the lone black school board member who added his agreement.

"I've lived here most of my life, and the one thing I can state with absolutely no fear of contradiction is that LaSalle Parish is awash in racism -- true racism," a white Pentecostal preacher, Eddie Thompson, wrote in an essay he posted on the Internet. "Here in the piney woods of central Louisiana ... racism and bigotry are such a part of life that most of the citizens do not even recognize it."

The lone black member of the school board agrees.

"There's no doubt about it -- whites and blacks are treated differently here," said Melvin Worthington, who was the only school board member to vote against expelling the six black students charged in the beating case. "The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided."

On one web site I read someone's comment that they feared for him now that he had made these public comments. They expected that he will be harassed and maybe worse. Rev. Eddie Thompson and Melvin Worthington and Caseptla Bailey (mentioned in both news articles) are Jena's Group of 88. When they see racism, they call it what it is. May there be at least another 85 people to stand with them.

The notorious Duke sexual assault case has been dismissed. I think it is accurate to say that the victim's account, the lack of evidence, and the missteps in the prosecutor's office really did not support a case. I am glad that when the evidence did not add up, young men accused of rape and sexual assault have been exhonorated.

However, I do not agree with one depiction of this case which I heard on the radio this afternoon. It said that the accused had "done nothing wrong." I will stand by the conviction that hiring and leering at a stripper is wrong, that participating in racist and sexist speech and carousing is wrong, that underage drinking is wrong, that promoting drunkenness is wrong, that writing an email which threatens to skin a woman alive is wrong, that disturbing a family neighborhood with despicable behavior is wrong, and that acting like none of these things matter is wrong.

Money buys attention. The evidence has been overwhelming lately.

For instance, I saw a magazine cover in the grocery store with a picture of an actress who is nearly my age of 49. The teaser line on the cover asked why she never ages. Any of us who aren't intentionally suspending reality to think about that question can already give the answer. She probably spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on personal coaches, physicians who mess with her skin and her subcutaneous adipose tissue, tailors and designers who adjust her clothing to cover or enhance her figure, and make-up artists and photographers who can hide the signs of age. With all this investment, her promoters and the publishers of the magazine collaborate to pretend that she has a gift, a discipline, and a cleverness to seem forever young.

A second example has been in the letters to the editor of the Durham Herald-Sun. I have never seen such a well-coordinated campaign of letter placement in our local paper. Well crafted letters which cover the key talking points and stay on message appear over and over, defending the three lacrosse players who were alleged to have committed sexual assault. Apparently the evidence is less convincing now than several months ago, and the charges of rape have been dropped. What amazes me is the way that the letter writers let their attack on the rape charges ooze over into saying that nothing wrong happened the night of that party. I am not fond of conspiracy theories. But never before have so many self-righteous people from all fifty states given so much attention to writing almost the same letter to our small local paper. There has to be something at work behind this, and I'm not blaming the Holy Spirit. Money can organize letter writers, too.

They pretend that it is easy to discern the truth among the "he said, she said" nature of sexual assault cases. They try to live in a pristine moment apart from the history of rapes swept under the rug and differential application of the laws according to gender and race. Even a young woman who grew up in my neighborhood has joined in the attacks on anyone who was critical of the lacrosse team, especially certain Duke professors and administrators.

Some professors seized the opportunity to speak about the ongoing presumption of privilege among many white Duke students who resist and resent their associations with blacks. It is real. I speak with black students at Duke often enough to know that although they have been 0fficially admitted to the school they seldom find the path to mutuality across racial lines, opportunities, understanding, or respect. But many propagandists are hard at work to hide all this for the sake of buying an untarnished future for the accused.