Apartheid. USA 1988

June 18, 1987:

A consensus is emerging among black politicians, civil rights advocates and others that the virtual exoneration of Bernhard H Goetz has dealt a serious blow to race relations in New York City. But at the same time, random interviews with black New Yorkers found that they, like many whites, seemed divided over whether Mr Goetz was justified in shooting four black teenagers who he said looked like they

[p. 89]

were about to attack and rob him on a speeding subway train.

‘The jury verdict was inexcusable,’ said Benjamin L Hooks Jr, the executive director of the NAACP. ‘I think it was a terrible and grave miscarriage of justice,’ he added. ‘It was proven - according to his own statements - that Goetz did the shooting and went far beyond the realm of self-defense. There was no provocation for what he did.’ He concluded, ‘If a white youth had been shot in similar circumstances by a black man while the youth was prone and defenseless, what would have been the outcome then?’ In Washington, Representative Floyd H Flake, Queens Democrat, whose district includes Howard Beach, agreed emphatically with Mr Hooks. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that if a black had shot four whites, the cry for the death penalty would have been almost automatic. You won't get that in this situation.’ In Albany, New York, a black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus called the jury's decision ‘frightening’ saying that ‘it sanctions dangerous vigilante actions on the part of misguided citizens’. The Manhattan Borough president, David N Dinkins said, he was ‘shaken and dismayed by the verdict’ which he called ‘an open and clear invitation to vigilantism. Even if the four teenagers Mr Goetz shot ‘were guilty of robbery’, Mr Dinkins said, ‘they would not have been shot for it under our system of justice. In this country we no longer employ firing-squads.’ Lawyer C Vernon Mason, counsel for Mr Darrell Cabey, left paralyzed and brain damaged by a bullet fired by Mr Goetz, that severed his spine, began a 50 million dollars damage suit against Mr Goetz. He told the Times that the seven-week trial had been permeated by ‘a racist hysteria dealing with the stereotyped image of young black men’. ‘The common thread is color,’ Mr Mason said. ‘If this Goetz standard is taken to its logical conclusion, our children could become an endangered species.’^118.

In a Times news analysis it was pointed out that with the

118. The New York Times, from a report by David E Pitt

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acquittal of Mr Goetz on charges of attempted murder, the balance between self-defense and social order had been disturbed since the circumstances that justify the use of deadly force seemed to have been widened. In any case the verdict suggested that juries had a more expansive concept of what was a reasonable act that a man might do when he felt threatened. ‘There was almost no evidence presented,’ wrote Joseph Berger, ‘that any of the four youths who approached Mr Goetz had actually tried to rob him before he shot them. Thus the jury, by rejecting the charge of attempted murder, seemed to be saying that in the nervousness that courses through much of urban experience, from riding the subway at night to walking a darkened street, such evidence may not matter all that much. Perceptions, the jury suggested, can attain the power of facts.’

Dr Willard Gaylin, the psychiatrist who wrote ‘The Rage Within’, a book about the anger of life in the cities, notes that though few people can identify with a rapist or child beater, people who have been intimidated or humiliated on the subway can empathize with Mr Goetz. ‘That doesn't mean we condone,’ he said, ‘but that capacity to empathize is a profound mitigating force in judging the individual.’ Underlying the issue of crime in this case was the issue of race. Scholars such as Dr Kenneth B Clark, professor emeritus of Psychology at the City University of New York, and black, expressed doubt that Mr Goetz would have shot four white youths asking him for money, Mr Berger reported.^119.

THE GOETZ CASE IN BLACK AND WHITE, read an editorial in the New York Times.

The verdict that Bernhard Goetz was justified in shooting down four black men arouses anxiety among black New Yorkers. New Yorkers who want to avoid further polarizing the city would do well to understand it. To blacks accustomed to continuing charges of police abuse, the Goetz acquittal might look like part of a pattern. In one publicized

119. The New York Times, from a news analysis by Joseph Berger

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trial, a jury exonerated a white police officer who shotgunned an aged black woman in an eviction. In another, transit officers were acquitted of mistreating a young black man who lapsed into a fatal coma shortly after his arrest. It's not surprising when some voices charge systematic racism.

Unsurprising, but also unwarranted. The New York Police, under a black commissioner, are working to cope with discipline problems among rapidly recruited young officers. Judges and juries err, if at all, on the side of the defendant, whatever his race. ‘The Goetz jurors found too much reason for doubt about the prosecutor's evidence against a white man. In another recent case, a Brooklyn jury acquitted a young black man who shot dead a white priest, on a similar ground of self-defense, because it also found reasonable doubt,’ the Times wrote. In its conclusion it said, ‘The clear answer is that adopting stereotypes of fear is too easy, and too costly. Inconvenience routinely imposed adds up to a furious insult. It is magnified by concern that what Bernhard Goetz did, now exonerated by a jury, will be taken as a license by others, in different settings.’^120. In 1972 the Supreme Court ordered 10 states, including five Southern states, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Virginia, to develop plans for increasing the number of black graduate students enrolled and receiving doctorates. The plans submitted by the five Southern states were approved in 1978. But a new study says that the five Southern states awarded doctorates to only 78 blacks in the 1983-1984 school year or 6 fewer than in 1975-76. The study also said first-time graduate enrollments, including masters and doctoral candidates, declined among blacks in the five Southern states over the last decade.^121.

120. The New York Times, from a report by the Associated Press

121. Congressman Flake and his aides were black