Now for a case of ersatz activism

I have come to associate Jesse Jackson with geo-political ambulance chasing, which, like its more conventional cognates, is sometimes a good thing and sometimes not so much. But the news reports I have read and heard on the Duke rape case seem to indicate that Jackson has promised to pay the alleged victim's college costs in full, whether or not her accusations turn out to be true. The italicized words here reflect the exact phraseology of the reports. Take a look.

/Push Coalition to Pay Alleged Rape Victim's Tuition Regardless of Whether or Not the Charges She Is Alleging against the Duke Lacrosse Team are True

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said yesterday that his Rainbow/Push Coalition will pay the college tuition of a black woman who told police she was raped by white members of Duke University's men's lacrosse team - no matter the outcome of the case. "I can't wait ... to talk with her and have prayer with her, because our organization is committed, when she's physically and emotionally able ... to provide for her the scholarship money to finish school so she will never ... again have to stoop that low to survive," he said from Chicago in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. When asked, Jackson also said that his group will pay for the woman's tuition even if her story proves false. Attorneys for the lacrosse players have strongly denied that any sexual assault took place at the March 13 party, citing DNA tests performed on all 46 of the team's white members that failed to match any samples taken from the woman./

Source: Winston Salem Journal

Weirdly, no outrage has been expressed in any centrist or left-leaning quarter, at least none that I've encountered, over Jackson's proposed largesse. But think about it. Jackson is not insisting that the charges are true, which of course they may very well be. I see nothing wrong in expressing a belief in the accuser's veracity, even if the evidence is at best incomplete. Nor do I worry about Jackson jumping over the whole presumption of innocence thing. That is his perfect right to do, since he is playing not in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion. But he is doing something quite different, if the AP report is accurate. He willfully makes a point of concedng the possibility that the accusations are untrue, just so he can diminish to the point of negligibility the importance of the distinction between a true and false charge. Huh? If the charges are false, as he allows might be, shouldn't the accuser incur some sort of opprobrium if not actual punishment for trying to inflict extended jail terms on those who didn't commit the crime alleged? I would have no problem with Jackson saying, "we extend this offer even if the charges can never proven in court or elsewhere." That a sexual assault goes unproven, after all, does not mean it never happened. But if charges are actually shown to be mendacious, as he contemplates, should the person levelling them really be rewarded for having done so? And is promising such a reward in the event of perjured charges, given the racial context in which all of this occurs, any less a form of pernicious tribalism than assuming the charges against the Scottsboro boys were true just because a white accuser said so? Let us be clear, the ancillary, post facto evidence demonstrates the vile nature of certain if not all of the lacrosse players and serves to enhance the credibility of the indictments handed down today. But that is not relevant to Jackson's gambit. Neither the despicability of the accused nor the likelihood of their guilt can justify openly discounting the importance of whether or not a charge of sexual assault against them is accurate. Let us remember, false accusations of rape, particularly ones that become as public as this one would be were such untruthfulness revealed, ultimately operate to the benefit of future date-rapists, whose claims of innocence garner a certain cheap, unwarranted credibility in the public mind from the precedents they cite.

False charges of rape, like rape itself, cannot be mitigated in the name of group solidarity, whether racial or gendered. Because what group in the end stands to benefit from rape being excused or false arrest being condoned. None that I can see. Jackson has crossed a line here. It is one thing to chase ambulances. It is quite another to act with calculated indifference as to whether the ambulance is saving victims or creating them.