Word: crimed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Whenever legal principles are culled from the head of a troubled victim of crime, the legal system is worse...
...Goetz case is not remotely like a lynching, but is rather the overreaction of a paranoid crime victim; a victim whose attackers were Black. It is precisely because there is no certain culprit--only a frazzled electrical engineer and a violent society--that this case is argued in terms of the hypothetical...
...verdict in the Goetz case does present an example of how subtle racism--the kind that is captured in statistical surveys--can play itself out in a tangible way. When courts consider the racially-linked paranoia of a crime victim, race becomes an issue. When courts indulge this paranoia, the verdict has aspects of race...
...discomfiting agreement that a broad view of the right to self-defense is necessary. One side says vigilantism is cvommon sense, the other says its only permissible so long as it isn't allowed for whites only. Both sides seem unfortunately willing to give into the paranoia over crime, and to allow private citizens to take on a quasi-police role...
...viewing the Goetz case as a purely racial issue, we demean what it is to be human. The sole good becomes insuring that whatever whites can do, Blacks can do too--even if it means killing young people as a result of irrational fear. Is society so crime-ridden that it is just assumed that vigilantism is all right? And is our challenge now merely to ensure that racism not prevent Blacks from having the equal opportunity to act outside the law in self-defense? The recent flurry of commentary on the Goetz case suggests that we are at such...