Word: stuarts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Only three months ago, Boston businessman Charles Stuart was pitied as the victim of a brutal, senseless crime. On the way home from a childbirth class at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Stuart was shot in the abdomen by a robber, but managed to use his car phone to summon aid for his mortally wounded, seven-months-pregnant wife. Last week Stuart, 29, jumped to his death from a bridge over Boston's Mystic River as police were moving in to arrest him for committing her murder. His legacy: a rebirth of racial tensions in a city that had seemed...
...conclusion of the tragic Stuart case has produced in us, as well as in so many others, extremely intense feelings. Foremost among these is relief. Relief that it was Charles Stuart, instead of an African American, who murdered Carol Stuart. Obviously, this was a heinous crime, regardless of the identity and race of the murderer. Yet, had the killer been an African American, we fear that white society would have sanctioned an equally odorous crime, the scope of which could not be measured. Boston seemed to be on the verge of rescinding fundamental civil rights of Black males with...
...warped brilliance of Charles Stuart is that he exploited the latent prejudice of middle-class white society. He wisely tapped the deepest well of racial and class bias of middle-class America. He animated the gravest fear of white America: a crazed, degenerate Black man kills an innocent, pregnant lawyer and child, destroys a family which symbolizes white middle-class prosperity. It was all so believable, so real. He created a story which so much of white America wanted to believe in order to justify its own racism...
...white-controlled media and police, of course, bought the story. After all, they had the very same fears and latent prejudices. The press, jumping on the story as if the death of Carol Stuart were so much more significant than that of James Moody, or any other person killed that day, added an element of class elitism to the web of prejudice. Additionally, much of white society already perceived the Black male as a murderous, adulterous beast as a result of this historically biased media portrayal. The press exacerbated this perception by referring to the supposed killer as a Black...
...this case we are incensed by the persistent level of racism and ethnocentric ignorance of so many whites. Most of all, we are relieved. Relieved because white America did not receive a mandate to institutionalize its strong, latent prejudice. We can only hope that the underlying implications of Charles Stuart's skewed yet masterful ploy will be eradicated through serious self-reflection by the white community. H.W. Jerome Maddox '90 Valarie J. Allen...