Jarrett-Carter.com

So apparently, the “victim” in the Duke Lacrosse scandal is planning to write a book. What in the hell for, no one will ever know for sure, but you would think that one failed attempt at playing on public empathy would’ve have taught Crystal Mangum a lesson.

This girl single-handedly set black folks back for the entire winter of 2006. Everything that we could have lamented about rich, privileged white southern collegians went out of the window, and we had to begrudgingly face the fact that while they may like black strippers, they aren’t about the business of raping them.

While it may be sick to think and sicker to say, it might have been better for the country were it actually true. It might have lent itself to a more honest discussion about the witches brew of race and class in America. It might have forced white folks to honestly hear the complaints of black folks, not out of necessity, but out of guilty conscience. It might have forced black folks to take a more substantive approach to voicing our concerns, instead of responding with generational rage and emotion.

It might have forced everybody to really sit down and hammer out definitions on what “guilty,” “not guilty,” “rich” and “poor” mean in this country.

Well, it probably wouldn’t have caused all of that, but it would’ve meant a lot more than the “I told you so” and “well, what about the times when ya’ll did do it?” platforms that resulted.

The problem with this book, which her managers fail to realize, is that she has no credibility from either demographic who would imagine reading it. No one views her as a victim, no one views her as a fallen and risen hero. She’s just a liar and stripper. That’s all we know about her, and really, that’s all we care to know about her.

Perhaps in the near future, our bleeding hearts could stand to discuss what led a mother of three and college student to a life of stripping, prostitution and causing national uproar. But that’s a discussion for another racial crisis, not for a book club.