Word: goetz
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What else would explain the multitude of self-contradictory statements he made during last spring's Goetz case? Immediately after the incident--in which a New York citizen shot four Black youths on a subway in "self-defense"--Koch asked New Yorkers not to emulate Goetz's vigilantism. But when the press and public opinion swayed first in favor of Goetz and then against his hypothetical heroism, Koch swayed with them...
...incidents to focus the story. One was the brutal murder in Chicago last year of a black high school basketball star, Ben Wilson, by two youths who seemed to have no motive at all. The other was the incredible burst of support from black New Yorkers for Bernhard Goetz, the white subway vigilante. He was a lightning rod for the fears that many blacks have of their own violent young...
...crimes that evoke the most fear." This fear is felt by all Americans, but the anxiety felt by blacks is more intense, more pervasive, more real, for they are the ones who suffer most from violence. The white fear of black violence, recently personified by Subway Vigilante Bernhard Goetz, does not reflect reality: only 5% of the nation's 11,300 one-on-one slayings in 1983 involved whites killed by blacks...
...black Author Stanley Crouch wrote in the Village Voice in the wake of the Goetz shootings, some black perceptions nourished by the civil rights movement are changing. In automatically defending the black teenage criminal, suggested Crouch, blacks were also hurting themselves. "Race was one thing, crime another. It was no longer second nature for black people to take the side of the impoverished colored teenager who created so many of their own problems." There is a realization, compelled by force of circumstance, that blacks must look at themselves first as victims of crime and only second as victims of racism...
Conditions in our society brought Goetz to the edge. If anyone deserves to sit in jail, it is the politicians and judges who let crime get out of hand. Larry Zawilenski Chicago Seething South Africa...