Word: goetze
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...introducing Goetz's distorted perception of New York City into the courthouse they accepted the racially-clouded judgment of a terrified New Yorker, and dignified it as if it were law. Is riding the subway really a psychological drama, where a person when threatened is able to act on his fears with a gun, and be absolved...
...Blacks now an acceptable code to govern walking the streets, so is fear of scrawny, bespectacled engineer types, who look like they may freak out and shoot you. What is to be gained by having everyone's fear become a legitimate basis for subway shootings? True, race enters the Goetz case only because society is racist, but there should be some point where racism can not be a justification for action; that place is the courtroom...
...Goetz trial has become so popularized because it seems to be tangible evidence of underlying racism in the legal system; a case in which a white man was treated sympathetically and was given the benefit of the doubt. It seems to be an identifiable--though complex--episode that takes statistics off government charts and into the streets and the subway cars...
...many observers of the recent Goetz verdict, these were the only salient facts...
...letting Goetz go free, critics of the verdict say the jury in effect provided whites with a license to shoot Black people. They provide no qualifications. The case purely and simply was about how Blacks and whites relate to each other, they say. Goetz becomes the white version of everyman, and his victims play the corresponding Black roles...