Another Collegiate Rape Case, Only This Time Without White Privilege
In recent months, much media attention has been given to sexual assault cases with “atypical” perpetrators. Brock Turner, David Becker and Austin James Wilkerson, were all white, middle-class college students who were convicted of sexual assault and emerged minimally-scathed with incredibly lenient sentences. As the public looked on, fueling its rage with righteousness, many an outraged onlooker fixated on the disparity in justice doled out to blacks as compared with whites. And there’s no question that such a disparity exists in many problematic and disturbing ways. But this week’s case involving a University of North Carolina football player accused of raping a student gives us the [obviously unwelcome, but nonetheless informative] opportunity to analyze a sexual assault prosecution without attributing the leniency to the defendant’s race.
Allen Artis, a linebacker for UNC, turned himself in to a magistrate earlier this week to defend sexual assault charges. Theoretically, Allen Artis, a black man accused of raping a white woman, would fail to qualify for any of the “special treatment” defendants like Turner, Becker and Wilkerson received. In that regard, Artis may be a perfect control subject for a review of how sexual assault cases are handled.
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