Ah, the Dan Rather argument returns. The whole whites-rape-blacks-a-lot-out-of-racism thing proved false — both in the Duke case and in the country at large — but the comments 88 professors made in an ad months ago were true in spirit!

Here’s what the professors originally said. I should note that it doesn’t say the players are guilty, but it’s certainly a response to that incident and an assumption that those evil white people just might do something like that:

“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.”

Right from the get-go, then, it was a cop-out argument. Even if nothing happened, these things happen all the time, so let’s use this opportunity to protest, the logic goes.

And they didn’t hesitate to include comments from students in the ad — students who basically assumed guilt:

“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.”

Yeah, racism to the degree of ultraviolent white-on-black rape happens all the time at elite universities; we just never hear about it.

The professors decided:

“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.”

And here’s what they’re saying now:

“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.”

The bottom line is that, whatever harm white racism does, that harm does not include rape. Blacks rape whites more than the reverse happens, even accounting for demographic trends. If the professors wanted an “even if it’s not true, it shows underlying trends” case, they shouldn’t have picked a rape.

Great summary of the Duke case here.

Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://www.therationale.com.