Lynne Duke's article in the Washington Post on the Duke rape case is a noxious mix of racial innuendo and political correctness:

In the sordid but contested details of the case, African American women have heard echoes of a history of some white men sexually abusing black women -- and a stereotype of black women as hypersexual beings and thus fair game.

The mainstream media have largely tiptoed around the brutal truth that has been discussed among black women in private conversations, in the blogosphere and on college campuses. It is that the Duke case is in some ways reminiscent of a black woman's vulnerability to a white man during the days of slavery, reconstruction and Jim Crow, when sex was used as a tool of racial domination.

But of course. And if we switched the race of alleged offenders and victims in the case, Lynne Duke would no doubt churn out a 1,453-word front-page article examining the "brutal truth" and the echoes of "slavery, reconstruction, and Jim Crow" of a rush to judgment against black men who were suspected of sexually assaulting a white woman.

This case really shouldn't be about race, and Lynn Duke's effort to shoehorn it into a metaphor for the devaluation and exploitation of black women in modern America borders on the pathetic. The reason the alleged victim is getting "no benefit of any doubt" - as Julianne Malveaux is quoted as saying in the article - isn't because of the color of her skin but because nearly all the evidence publicly available in the case points to the very real possibility she's lying.

Duke pushes her agenda further by quoting Durham community activist Victoria Peterson:

"White men have always been fascinated with black women over the years. That's nothing new," says Peterson, who launched Durham Citizens Against Rape and Sexual Abuse in response to this case. With outlets such as BET and others portraying African American women as highly sexed, "young white boys, they want to touch, they want to see," Peterson says.

Where's the evidence for that claim? Even if Ms. Peterson's general, presumably non-expert opinion about the attitudes of young white males toward African-American women happens to be correct, fascination is still a long way from rape.

Facts can be inconvenient things, and based on the data available the facts are that the vast majority of rapes and/or sexual assaults are not interracial. According to statistics from the Department of Justice, the estimated number of rape and sexual assault cases in 2003 involving a white offender and a black victim was 0.0%. Over the course of the last eight years white-on-black rape/sexual assault cases averaged 6.9%, while black-on-white rape/sexual assault cases over the same period were slightly higher at 10.8%.

Clearly, this doesn't rule out the possibility that three white college students gang raped an African-American woman back in March, as alleged. But it does add some perspective to Lynne Duke's article in the Post. The particulars of this case are bad enough without dredging up and promoting ancient, racially divisive ghosts - especially if it turns out the rape charge is a lie.