Americans as a people tend to root for the underdog. It’s part of our egalitarian culture and political heritage. People of wealth and privilege are often the villains in our movies, and it’s often the same in the narratives created by our news media.

But we shouldn’t let this knee-jerk preference for the little guy blind us when the facts don’t fit. Sometimes, after all the evidence has been laid bare, it turns out the villain in a story checks all the most-sympathetic boxes, and the victim is from a wealthy “privileged” background. In these cases, though, social activists tend to pack up their protest signs and find another incident to focus on that better fits their preferred narrative.

The Duke Lacrosse rape hoax of 2006 was a perfect example of such a dynamic. I remember the case well, as it was a main topic of conversation when my family moved to Durham around that time. For a quick summary, three white, male, lacrosse players from one of the nation’s most prestigious private colleges were accused of raping a poor, black woman at a wild party. If one wanted to highlight injustice and inequality across every conceivable category, it would be difficult to conjure a better tale.

But it was, in fact, conjured — first by the accuser, Crystal Mangum, and then by willing dupes in the press, social activist groups, and school faculty. Yet with Ms. Mangum now, almost 20 years later, apologizing and admitting to making up the entire story, anyone still clinging to the narrative can no longer even point to her testimony for support.

Mangum, in a North Carolina women’s prison for an unrelated homicide, told the “Let’s Talk with Kat” podcast last week, “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong.”

Her motives, it seems, were a bit less complicated than for those who put a spotlight on her claims. She says she simply “made up a story that wasn’t true” because she “wanted validation from people.” And there was an entire network of people ready and waiting to validate a story like hers. These others played an even larger part in amplifying the lie though, just as they would go on to do with many other racial hoax stories, such as those of Jussie Smollet or Michael Brown, in the years since.

Their motivations were each a bit different. The Durham district attorney, Mike Nifong, may have been motivated by higher office. He ended up apologizing too, but only after it was clear his prosecution had failed and he would likely see harsh consequences (which he did, including being disbarred and sent to jail for withholding key DNA evidence from the defense).

The media’s relentless coverage was ultimately to get audience engagement, by pursuing a salacious story that gripped not only local, but national, attention. But Nifong, the media, and even Mangum were largely playing along with a larger narrative that motivates certain activists —the idea that America is deeply racist and unfair, making episodes like the alleged rape commonplace and emblematic of the nation’s core identity.

Of course, this narrative didn’t sprout out of nowhere. There was a good reason for it to develop historically, with slavery, segregation, lynch mobs, and state-sanctioned discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas of life. If there are new examples of American racism, it would make sense to view them with the rest of this context in mind. However, no narrative should be placed above the truth. Neither should innocent citizens be sacrificed to maintaining it.

Some of the activists determined to fit the Duke Lacrosse players’ alleged actions into this historic narrative were professors at the school, known as “The Group of 88.” These 88 professors decided to throw gasoline on the fire, taking out an ad in the school’s student newspaper, The Chronicle.

The ad, which can be seen below, quotes anonymous students on their experiences of racism on campus, and says, “The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on March 13th and won’t end with what the police say or courts decide… We’re turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait.”

Some of the sentiments are understandable, like from the student who said, “Being a big, black man, it’s hard to walk anywhere at night and not have a campus police car slowly drive by me.” No student should have to endure that kind of assumption of guilt. But that should include the white male lacrosse player.

An accusation against someone, prior to any compelling evidence being presented, should not create a Maoist struggle session on campus and beyond. The mother of a student on the lacrosse team, though not one of the accused, attended a community meeting hosted by Nifong, and was shocked to hear one participant say “he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted ‘whether it happened or not,’ to atone for past sins.”

The Group of 88 seemed equally unwilling to consider the boys as anything more than a stand-in for racism as such, an opportunity to look again at the broader issue. They later refused to apologize for taking such an active stance while the case was being adjudicated, while conceding the students were innocent until proven guilty. The discussion was needed and their stance justified, they said, because Duke University creates an “atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus.”

When a mother of one of the students wrote to a leader of the group, Professor Houston Baker, asking him to reconsider his controversial statements declaring the boys guilty, he responded with an email that failed to convey even an elementary level of professionalism; empathy; or, maybe most upsetting to me as an editor, spelling:

LIES You are just a provacateur [sic] on a happy New
Years [sic] Eve trying to get credit for a scummy bunch of
white males! …

I really hope whoever sent this stupid farce of an email
rots in… . umhappy [sic] new year to you … and forgive
me if your [sic] really are, quite sadly, mother of a “farm
animal.”

Many of these professors are still at Duke or at other elite universities across the country. They’ve been able to have successful careers, presumably, without false accusations of abhorrent crimes attached to their names and faces.

Now, from the positions of power and privilege, they should extend an apology to these three men, who — whether the group wants to admit it or not — were victims of institutional bias coming from multiple societal structures (the press, the local district attorney’s office, the academy). They were prejudged as scummy white males, farm animals, who needed to be destroyed to atone for past sins, whether or not they did what they were accused of (which they didn’t).

A tradition of fighting for the underdog is certainly an important part of our nation’s DNA. But surely this includes fighting against any individual being offered as a sacrifice, along with the truth, to larger systems or narratives.