Rape and Racism

A judge occupies the center of a controversy in California because he gave a white Stanford athlete an easy six months in jail for raping an unconscious young woman. The judge’s reason for mercy was that the man had been drunk at the time. I have to admit that when I was young, I got drunk more than once. That might have led to many rapes, if I had been a pervert. 

Rape is unforgivable, and an entirely legal movement is underway to recall the judge, making him an example for others.

Worse, we have a long history of using the threat of rape to justify racism. In the last century, the gut justification for Jim Crow was the claim that black men, if not kept down, would rape white women. Just when we thought we had put that rubbish behind us, along comes a traditionalist, Jelly Belly Trump, to tell America that undocumented workers, men, women and children, are brown rapists sent across the border by Mexican officials. 

Women have real things to fear (male Stanford athletes, judges, armed homicidal maniacs, filthy public bathrooms), but many Americans would rather focus on the danger to women found deep in the shades of human skin.