"They've reduced this black queen to a stripper."

One of the many presposterous claims by the Duke stripper defenders is their attacks on the media for describing her in news stories as "a stripper" instead of "a single mother and college student." Most famously, a black male student at a nearby black college at a packed forum on this topic accounced that, "They've reduced this black queen to a stripper."

But this "black queen"'s status as single mother and student had ZERO to do with the story. The media also didn't refer to the accused laccrosse players as "honor students", because that also had nothing to do with the story. The media called them "Duke lacrosse players" because they attended a party for "Duke lacrossee players"; the media called her "a stripper" because she attended the Duke laccrosse party as a stripper, not as a student (she wasn't there tutoring the guys in chemistry) or as a single mother (she hadn't taken her children there for baby-sitting). And some "queen" she's turned out to be. Is it racist to assume that somebody is a "queen" simply because she belongs to a certain "race"?

If you look for racism, you can find it anywhere, even where it isn't, and you will dull your ability to convince anybody when you've actually found it. Here's an unrelated story that involves a woman refered only as "the prostitute." She might be a mother, she might be a student, she might even be a female laccrosse player. But none of that pertains to the story.