Notes on a scandal

We have to speak with the vulgar and think with the learned. - Bishop Berkeley


Berkeley's philosophy was that this world is entirely ideal. This world exists in minds alone. Ultimately this leaves God to be the master-Mind in all senses.

Berkeley's philosophy influenced Bertrand Russell and Immanuel Kant.


The point is that there is an intersection between the vulgar, which is reality, and learned, which is ideal.


When I was at North Carolina Central University, there was a nation-wide scandal called the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. The Duke lacrosse team had a drinking party whereupon they hired a stripper. The stripper then accused the entire team of rape. She had help from District Attorney Nifong. There was outrage. When it turned out that she made up the accusation, there was more outrage.

The elephant in the kitchen was the massive class difference between the rich students and rich campus of Duke University and the poor population of the City of Durham, North Carolina.

According to one person I've talked to, not coincidentally (or coincidentally?), Durham is the descendent of Tobacco slave labor. Tobacco farmers worked in Raleigh and kept the Help in Durham.

It's no secret that the Duke fortune was built on tobacco, however.

According to some people I've talked to in Durham, today, half of the population of Durham is impoverished.

How is the division between impoverished-and-the-rich-blurry? Well, Duke University employs a large part of the city. North Durham is almost completely consumed in business and university related jobs. The medical center offers tons of jobs, as does the normal university-related jobs.

Duke University keeps a modest and yet defensible amount of diversity. At least 1/5 of the student population are minority students.

Duke University enriches Durham in more ways, too. The students volunteer around the city and tutor at high schools.

As mentioned before in this blog, Duke University, like NCSU, NCCU and UNC prefers applicants from North Carolina.

So far as I know, employees are treated well.

There is therefore this explicit and obvious have and have not division. This is emblematic and symbolic of a division between two populations. But there is also a way in which the two are so intermixed that the division is not a division.


So there's this big blurry issue of impoverished Durham versus rich Duke University. On one hand is the fact that 1) "duh" some people who go there are rich, and on the other hand 2) it's like not everyone there is rich, and as a matter of fact we work/are/live/research/and so on at Duke University.

They call it, "Town versus Gown," as in the townspeople versus the students who graduate (in Gowns).

In other words facadesaside, there's all this class struggle stuff behind the actual scandal proceedings.


If this is the case, we're going to see scandals again.