Apartheid. USA 1988

October 28, 1987:

Fear of blacks, fear of crime
(editorial in the Times)

Many whites would answer yes, observing that blacks, especially young black men, commit more than their share of crime. National surveys estimate that blacks commit robbery at a rate 10 times that of whites. Yet blacks cannot be faulted for denouncing the automatic assumption that the potential victim's viewpoint is the only one. What about the vast, innocent majority of blacks? Why shouldn't they be able to shop where they want, hail cabs, and walk city streets, even in Howard Beach? Why must millions pay for the sins of a few?

The issue engages a classic dilemma of utilitarianism versus individual rights: At what point, if ever, should needs of the

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community as a whole be allowed to harm an innocent minority? John Rawls, the philosopher, suggests one widely respected answer: No one ought to endorse a social order that he could not accept if he were in the shoes of the most disadvantaged.

Who then is more disadvantaged, the innocent white subject to crime and the fear of crime, or the innocent black forced into humiliating inconvenience and heightened risk of violence from mistaken acts of self-defense?

The innocent potential victim of crime has more options for protection against burglary and robbery - guards, locks, dogs, alarms and buzzers, legitimate community organizing. Innocent victims of discrimination based on popular fear can do little but to submit. There is no reason to choose? Discrimination, cumulatively, can be as poisonous as mugging or burglary. Both kinds of pain diminish the civility of modern life.

There is no remedy, only an approach, the one suggested by John Rawls. It's not hard for blacks to put themselves in the shoes of fearful shopkeepers and citizens: they are, too often, fearful citizens themselves. Fearful whites need to put themselves in the shoes of innocent blacks. Doing so will not dissipate the reasons for fear, but it can steadily inspire the understanding and reason that keep fear in its place.’^164.

164. The New York Times, from an editorial