University of Virginia men yet to prove innocence over false rape story: the Scottsboro Boys sequel is go
The story about a gang rape on the University of Virginia campus was horrendous. It was a lie designed to prove a point and further an agenda. And it’s not stopped:
Declared “the worst journalism of 2014” by the Columbia Journalism Review, Rolling Stone magazine’s account of a gang rape at a fraternity house nonetheless continues to cloud collegiate life at the University of Virginia.
U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan did not lift the suspension of fraternal organizations after The Washington Post found discrepancies in the story that forced the magazine to back away from the allegations.
Instead, Sullivan said, the university will use the harsh national spotlight it is under as an opportunity to lead efforts to combat sexual assault on campus.
Brendan O’Neill harks:
“Automatic belief of rape accusations was a central principle of the KKK’s war on rape, too. This was one of the things that most shocked Ida B Wells, the early twentieth-century African-American journalist and civil-rights activist. ‘The word of the accuser is held to be true’, she said, which means that ‘the rule of law [is] reversed, and instead of proving the accused to be guilty, the [accused] must prove himself innocent’. Wells and others were startled by the level of belief in the accusers of black men, and by the damning of anyone who dared to question such accusations, which was taken as an attack on the accuser’s ‘virtue’.”
Fetch the rope and tell the Scottsboro Boys to get back in the dock…
Photo: Pickets, representing the National Association of Colored Women, march at the White House, Washington, July 30, 1946, carrying posters protesting lynching. Placards bear names of Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, Louisiana and Kentucky delegations. (AP Photo)
Posted: 5th, January 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
