TEXAS’ Widest Circulated and Read Newspaper with a Black Perspective

Click here to join our mailing list and to receive late-breaking news

Prejudice Negates Justice
America’s courts “rape” Black males

“People invent allegations of sexual assault for reasons that should be regarded as criminal and despicable. One study showed that up to 16% of allegations of sexual assault in one sexual assault examination center over a 9-year period were shown to be false allegations, after police investigation. Authorities, people accused of sexual assault, victims of sexual assault, and the perpetrators of false allegations should be aware that the possibility of a false allegation will be considered during the investigation of an assault. In most cases of real sexual assault, ample evidence of the assault will exist. In cases of false accusations, it is equally likely that there will be clear signs that the accusation is false. Making false accusations is a crime.”

With the surprising turn of events in the controversial Kobe Bryant vs. The State of Colorado case fresh in the psyche of Black, White and/or other denizens of “the most Democratic” nation in the history of the known, civilized universe… the foregoing excerpt from (Education on the Internet & Teaching History Online), that’s found in the National Archives: Learning Curve, must be considered from African American News & Issues’ uncompromising Black perspective. Fact is, it’s needless to waste space to validate the supposition that the slightest hint of a Black male lusting after a Southern Belle once spelled instance death, after reading Ralph Ginsberg’s sobering 1962 book (“100 Years of Lynching”), that certainly should have sent a very chilling message to Black males who haven’t forgotten our sad history in America.

A history that includes a page from the life of civil rights/anti-lynching heroine, Ida B. Wells, that revealed: “What the white man of the South practiced as all right for himself, he assumed to be unthinkable in white women. They could and did fall in love with the pretty mulatto and quadroon girls as well as black ones, but they professed an inability to imagine white women doing the same thing with Negro and mulatto men. Whenever they did so and were found out, the cry of rape was raised, and the lowest element of the white South was turned loose to wreak its fiendish cruelty on those too weak to help themselves. No torture of helpless victims by heathen savages…ever exceeded the cold-blooded savagery of white devils under lynch law. This was done by white men who controlled all the forces of law and order in their communities.
“(White men), who could have legally punished rapists and murderers, especially black men who had neither political power nor financial strength with which to evade any justly deserved fate.” However, if there are made in American Africans who aren’t on the same page (as those who learn their history to avoid repeating the mistakes that our ancestor made in the past), we would be remiss as Black America’s watcher on the wall to not tell them that White men still, indeed, control all of “the forces of law and order” in the land of the free. And Black males still don’t have “neither political nor financial strength with which to evade any justly deserved fate.” Then again, many might believe that Bryant (the rich and famous heart and soul of the Los Angeles Laker’s basketball team), made his money talk, so that he could walk.

You can beat the rap but not the ride notwithstanding. And, for sure, the ride isn’t over for Kobe.
Conversely, Kobe should still be waiting to exhale, the ride he is taking won’t end until a civil suit against him is settle. Insofar as he still faces a civil suit. Although he was young, he should still remember the 1997 O. J. Simpson civil trial that ambushed the NFL Hall of Famer with an $8.5 judgment. For sure, the carefully crafted apology that the 26-year-old Bryant made on Sept. 1, 2004-- in the form of a letter (“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and did not view this incident the same way I did”)—didn’t exactly sound like remorse. In fact, there are many--like KCOH (1430 AM) radio’s sports call-in talk show host, Ralph Cooper--thinks Kobe made a mistake to apoligize for something he said he didn’t do.

“I had doubts, but I see Kobe’s apology to the victim as somewhat a confession of his guilt,” Cooper reasoned on his Sports Rap program. And so did 72% of those clicking in on an AOL poll accompanying the article. In a stricter sense, consent is as difficult to prove as nonconsensual. Just say no aside, according to New Nation’s website, “There are 20,000 black-on-white rapes every year in the US, but fewer than 100 white-on-black rapes. Money, indeed, could be a factor when there is such a wide disparity, because justice is costly in America’s adversarial criminal justice system. Why? The Medicine Consumer Health.com version explains: “Prosecutors attempting to prove rape in court have historically faced significant burdens, such as corroboration requirements premised on the complaining witness's presumptive lack of credibility.
“For many years, legal thinkers like eighteenth Century British Jurist Sir Matthew Hale were convinced that rape ‘is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, though never so innocent.’ Thus, rape law did not provide a reliable or efficacious vehicle for addressing most sexual violence, and it continues to be of limited utility for acquaintance rapes.” Furthermore, prejudice negates justice. Especially Black man-White woman rape. Perhaps, the Eagle Colorado D. A. simply couldn’t handle the truth. But one only has to recall the 1996 murder of the child beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey, in Boulder, Colorado to get a sample of that state’s double-standard criminal justice system, albeit Kobe was not only wealthy, but at the time had a squeaky clean public image.

Woebeit, the child’s parents, John Bennett and Patsy Ramsey, was suspected… they never was arrested, or charged, like Kobe was. Lest we forget, whichever state Black males are accused of rape in, their historical image guarantees a (spiritual, if not a physical) lynching. Example: “Iron” Mick Tyson’s legal lynching in 1992 Indianapolis, Indiana. Most Black males still believe that Tyson was a victim of a prejudiced judge (that just happened to be a White feminist), although the 18-year-old victim was a made in America African beauty pageant contestant. Many also believe that if Desiree Washington had been White, Mike Tyson would have gotten a life sentence, if not a legal (by lethal injection) lynching.