A Brutal Inheritance | Hacker News Reader

A Brutal Inheritance

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89 pointssmollett21 comments

What an incredible story. These two men are such heroes for the way they have sought to make peace and take ownership for such a sad event in their pasts.

Is this a low-key ad for 23andme?

No. An advertisement is a paid placement created by a marketer. This is an exhaustively reported and fascinating piece of feature journalism.

This kind of stuff is atrociously common in our evolutionary history. Every single one of us has innumerable rapists and rape victims among our ancestors.

when is the movie coming out?

Did I miss something? The whole article goes on like there was a conviction for rape, explicitly calling it rape. I mean I realize it's Buzzfeed, but "safe to assume" seems like a dangerous way to present something of this magnitude.

How likely do you think it is that consensual sex occurred between a 21-year-old black woman in prison for manslaughter and the 57-year-old governor of that prison?

Define "consensual". I can definitely see it being transactional in nature. I'm not going to wade into the debate on whether the power imbalance between the two parties of the transaction precludes consent. So, to answer your question, I think the likelihood of it being consensual is certainly nonzero.

>Define "consensual"...

Well, to be completely fair, any defense that starts with "Define 'consensual'" is starting out on tenuous ground.

But the point isn't that it's starting out on tenuous ground. The point is that no one knows what happened, and here this writer presents explicit claims as a foregone conclusion. Not even as an accusation, but explicitly stating it was rape.

I was bothered by that as well. My guess is that current societal pressures make it difficult for the article to imply that any explanation but rape is possible. In the articles defense, there is an argument that the incarcerated are not legally able to give sexual consent, and thus any sex between the a warden and a prisoner by definition statutory rape. I don't think it's a clearly established theory, but I can see why it would be a desirable legal standard. Here's an article on the topic: https://www.abqjournal.com/1030674/law-says-inmate-consent-t...

There is also an argument that all penetrative sex is violent rape, but I don't buy that, either. As far as "societal pressures" to perform a certain way, this seems a very poor excuse for someone that likes to think of themselves as a journalist. But I suppose it's also why people think of Buzzfeed more appropriately as mass-media entertainment than some kind of journalism. As much as I wish there were a way to reliably communicate to readers that the source they're reading is a tabloid, I also am wary of gatekeeping in journalism. I'm not sure what the best way forward is, but I do worry about this new breed of yellow journalism, sites like Buzzfeed which are purposefully harmful, muckraking for profit as clickbait.

It's a pretty common (though not universal) legal precedent that sexual relations between a law enforcement official and someone they are detaining is rape, by definition.

Of course that could be argued. Much as they often do with the more commonly known form of statutory rape (the one that involves minors) people can attempt to claim that there are exceptions to this rule, and that some version of consent is possible despite the situation.

I would disagree. Presumably the writer of this article does as well.

As if there ever could be a conviction of rape against a white prison warden raping a black inmate.¹

The standard of proof that you are demanding here is disingenuous.

Also, I noticed that on this site people have a profound misunderstanding of what journalism is. Journalism is first and foremost story telling.

The stories are based in truth of course, but the core of any news story in the story, it's right there in the name of it!

If we replaced this with articles based on raw 'data', as many on this site seem to suggest, then no one would read them.

1: In the south, during the 1920s, in a hard labour prison camp with whips displayed on the walls, no less.

Did you mean to reply to my post? I'm saying this writer has presented as fact things which no one knows for certain.

I did read your post, and I disagree, the writer presented the speculation of the two main characters¹ as to the nature of the 'relationship' between the prison warden and Bernice.

Basically, the writer related to us what those two men believe about this event. There are two independent sources for this belief, and to me that's acceptable journalistic practise.²

He is helping the two men tell their story, you are free to disagree with their speculations, but that's what they told the writer.

1: And other relatives.

2: Now the subhead, does contain the word 'rape', and that's maybe the only thing I can fault the article on. However, headlines aren't typically written by the journalist, but rather by a copy editor. I'm not sure what Buzzfeed's practises are on this.

But if you can only fault the headline, then I don't think you read the article very thoroughly, because the writer explicitly states it was rape multiple times throughout the article. I'm not sure how you rationalize stating falsehood as any kind of "acceptable journalistic practice", but nothing else matters if the writer is making false claims. And if the cop-out is that this is "storytelling" and not "journalism" then it's a whole other issue of duplicity in publishing this clickbait with false information under the buzzfeednews.com URL. But I suppose this is the difference between Buzzfeed and legitimate journalism.

> I'm not sure how you rationalize stating falsehood as any kind of "acceptable journalistic practice"

You're just being obtuse¹ now, it's such a reasonable inference given the circumstances that it's petty of you to place such a high burden of proof on the writer.

Also you're denying one other important piece of evidence in favour of rape. Why did the mother never speak about it?

If she had had a joyful affair with such high ranking member of society, wouldn't she be proud of it?

Why do I even bother...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

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