racial progress?

Remember when white women would falsely accuse black men of rape? I'm sure they still do, but it doesn't lead to lynchings and outrageously unfair trials the way it used to. But I'm also sure most people alive today can't remember the kind of fear the possibility of a false rape allegation kept most black men in. Americans are much more mature in the 21st century.

Or are we? Well, nobody was murdered over the false rape allegations recently filed by a black woman against several white men on the Duke University Lacrosse Team. Despite the lynch mob mentality of several politically correct commentators who assumed the guilt of the young men in question, and the even more outrageous mentality of Ann Coulter, who not only assumed their guilt but who even justified their alleged behavior, it turns out to have been just another false rape allegation. I guess that's racial progress of a sort. Now there is enough racial equality that a black woman can make false rape allegations against white men and be believed. It's not gender progress, though, and it doesn't speak well of the human race. It especially doesn't speak well of the people who believed the allegations without waiting for the evidence and weighing it.

from the Associated Press, via the Winston Salem Journal:

As word spread yesterday that all remaining charges had been dropped against three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting an exotic dancer, there was at least one point beyond dispute: This case was poison for everyone touched by it.