The Curious Case of Duke Volleyball and the Mysterious Racial Heckler
The Curious Case of Duke Volleyball and the Mysterious Racial Heckler
What happens when a story doesn’t add up
This commentary has been added with corrections from André Hutchens. An earlier version mischaracterized him as black. He’s Hispanic. It also adds emphasis that my commentary is that I believe she’s a victim. Not him.
Facts are stubborn things. Narratives are too. There are events that happen or don’t happen that can make someone so mad that critical thinking doesn’t engage.
Someone puts a noose on someone else who’s a person of skin color and yells, “This is MAGA country” is so awful that we automatically side with that person even if that city was deep blue Chicago and it was in the bleak midwinter.
I say all of this to talk about the curious case of Duke Volleyball player Rachel Richardson and BYU Volleyball.
On August 26th, Duke played against BYU in Provo, Utah. Richardson, who is black, repeatedly heard a racial slur directed at her during the game.
Obviously, Utah as a whole is not known for racial diversity. Add in Mormonism and the profile of an average student and person at that match looks like my teeth after a teeth whitening.
Yesterday. after an internal investigation, BYU released findings that they could not corroborate that racial heckling took place. Their investigation included interviewing people sitting in their section and also interviewing people from Duke.
Predictably, battle lines were drawn. Fox News amplified the story. Jussie Smollett started trending.
I’m surprised Dash D. or Jojo from Jers hasn’t tweeted about it yet. He’s probably too busy saying Jake Tapper is now Tucker Carlson.
By the way, Dash is a failed influencer. That he failed there and is now tweeting about politics kinda shows the tribalism of which we’ve become accustomed. He’s not unlike Nick Adams.
However, it’s predictable. Duke is standing by their player which is honorable. BYU is standing by their athletic department.
My personal view: I think this person of color journalist who admittedly graduated from BYU has a great tweet thread that is very thorough.
He believes that Richardson did hear something. I believe that she believes she’s a victim.
The godmother from Fort Worth who’s running for office in Tarrant County was the one who amplified things nationally. Never mind that she accused a judge of using a racial slur which later turned out to be fake.
That already differentiates Richardson from Smollett. However, don’t tell that to those on the right or left or Dawn Staley. They don’t like nuance.
Quickhitters
My original piece on Manu will be published on my San Antonio Ball newsletter.
Watching College Gameday, and it hit me: they’re replacing Lee Corso with Pat McAfee.
Going to a cross country meet. It’s called the ASU Rampede. Dig the pun.
King Charles III still sounds weird.
I watched The Princess last night. Diana should be Queen Consort even if I do make jokes in my family chat to make my sister and mom mad.
