First Published: Frontline, Vol. 5, No. 3, July 20, 1987.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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On December 22, 1984 Bernhard Goetz, a white electrical engineer, shot four Black youths on a New York City subway train. Two-and-a-half years later, a jury decided that – other than carrying an illegal weapon – Goetz was not guilty of any wrongful action in the incident.
Although the verdict was not unexpected, it is still galling and has left an extremely bitter aftertaste. In part this is because the verdict stands as another confirmation of the rampant racism that plagues New York. But the outcome was especially demoralizing for another reason: it brought home the sober recognition that, somewhere along the way, anti-racist forces lost and never regained the ideological initiative in the Goetz case.
From the moment the shooting hit the news, it sparked a heated controversy. Editorials, letters to the editor and citizen-on-the-street interviews expressed a wide range of viewpoints. Basically these fell into two camps. On one side were those who felt that Goetz’ actions were an example of brutal and unmitigated racist vigilantism to be roundly condemned and swiftly punished. On the other were those who maintained that the young men were undoubtedly up to no good, that they got what was coming to them and that Goetz’ actions were just this side of heroic.
After an initial clash of views, debate on these issues was somewhat suspended during most of the time that it took to bring the Goetz case to trial. But once the trial began, an intensive and sensationalist campaign was launched – carried out largely in the pages of the reactionary New York press – to realign public opinion in favor of Goetz. The act of unmitigated vigilantism was painted as an understandable – even rational – response to imminent assault, while New Yorkers’ fears of street crime were played on endlessly. The intent of the campaign was to transform the public’s perception of the four young men from the victims of a subway vigilante to a roving gang of criminals in search of an easy mark. Goetz was simultaneously transformed from a trigger-happy paranoid racist into a victim of Black criminality.
Once the criminal records of the four young men were brought into evidence, their status as victims was virtually negated. Never mind that Goetz’ reaction was totally out of proportion to the level of harassment his fellow subway riders witnessed. Never mind that whatever their previous criminal records, the actions of the four on December 22, 1984 were far from life-threatening and provided no reasonable justification for a shoot-to-kill response. And never mind Goetz’ damning self-indictment “They didn’t die. Well, that’s what God had wanted evidently-if there is a God. But I, in my heart, was a murderer.” On the basis of his video-taped confession it became clear that Goetz was consumed by a pent-up hatred for Blacks, that he had acted in a pre-meditated fashion, and that he had intended not just to discourage harassment but to kill the four men.
The powerful association of Black youth and street crime overwhelmed all rationality and placed the anti-racist movement at a distinct ideological disadvantage. The broad liberal front that had opposed Goetz’ actions as an unacceptable descent into lawlessness was effectively silenced. And, though Black leadership stood firm in its condemnation of Goetz, many of those polled within the Black community expressed support for Goetz’ right to defend himself. True to form, New York Mayor Ed Koch repeatedly assured white New Yorkers that they were perfectly justified in their fears of Black youth.
This shift in public opinion took place in a New York which has witnessed, over the past several years, a high tide of racist violence and police brutality culminating in the notorious, unprovoked assault on three Black men and murder of one of them by white youths in Howard Beach. Left and progressive forces, centered in the Black community, rallied to expose the racism of the Koch administration and the police department in particular.
But the Goetz case has successfully shifted attention away from the crime of racism and police brutality to the criminality of Black youth. The terrain of debate has been changed and the anti-racist movement thrown on the defensive.
Unfortunately, the response has been less than adequate. Some have been driven into an angry and frustrated silence. Others continue their condemnation of racism in the Koch era while avoiding the very issue that has served Koch so well in stoking and manipulating racist sentiment in New York.
All this should come as no surprise. The question of crime is a particularly troublesome one for the left and for the anti-racist movement more broadly. And, in the U.S., the question of crime cannot be addressed without bumping up against the hard facts of the gross racist disproportionality in the crime statistics.
To take a brief look at a few of those statistics:
• Nearly 50% of all prisoners under state and federal jurisdiction are Black, with the figure rising well over 50% in parts of the Northeast and South.
• 46% of those arrested for the major felonies of homicide, rape, robbery and assault are Black.
• 18% of all Black men will serve some time in prison, as against 3% of white men.
• Black and Latin youth make up 53% of the juveniles held in public facilities.
These are grim facts indeed but it will not do either to ignore them or, what amounts to the same thing, leave them in the hands of the right wing which inevitably uses them to bolster a case for the constitutional and incorrigible criminality of Black men in general and Black youth in particular.
The well-worn explanations of the progressive movement are clearly insufficient. One of those explanations is to maintain that “Yes, yes, street crime is a terrible problem but it pales in comparison to white collar crime or the criminality and corruption of government officials who are, after all, overwhelmingly white.” It is true, of course, that the dollar amount taken in muggings and robberies is minuscule when compared to the amount that is daily siphoned off from city treasuries – not to mention the grand rip-off of capitalism itself. But the citizens who are afraid to go out at night will hardly be persuaded that they ought to be more concerned about Ivan Boesky, Donald Manes and the board of General Electric than about their neighborhood mugger.
The other common theme among progressives is to suggest that the entire differential in the rates of arrest and incarceration for Blacks and whites can be accounted for by the racism of police departments and the judicial system. Certainly it has been proven repeatedly that Blacks are discriminated against at every stage of the law enforcement process and that this accounts in part for the differences in rates of arrest, conviction and length of time served. The recent Supreme Court decision on capital punishment provided an unwelcome reminder that full equality under the law remains an unachieved goal. But, while a substantial portion of the differential may be accounted for in this way; the enormity of the gap strongly suggests that there is also a differential in the degree to which Black men are involved in criminal activity.
It is far better to face these facts and interpret them from our vantage point than to have them interpreted for us and to our detriment. As it stands now, reactionaries who feel the need to explain the phenomena advance theories that range from the high testosterone levels of young men to a subculture of violence obscurely linked to the experience of slavery to the genetic predisposition of Blacks to criminality. Those less inclined to theorizing simply shrug their shoulders and think “That’s just the way they are.” Meanwhile, the left joins the liberals in shame-faced silence. It’s an intolerable position to be in.
As is usual, the missing factor in the equation of Black youth and crime is class. We must insist on the inextricable link between street crime and the general social conditions of the poorer sectors of the Black community and in this way call to account those who are responsible for these conditions.
Can it be happenstance that 39% of incarcerated juveniles are Black and 45% of Black youth live in poverty? Is it mere coincidence that 50% of state and federal prisoners are Black men and that, by some estimates, 46% of Black men are out of the labor force-unemployed, incarcerated, permanently discouraged workers or unaccounted for? Are the facts that 18% of Black men will do time and that – as is increasingly recognized – a large proportion will never hold a job simply an accidental correlation? Might the ever-increasing crop of youthful offenders have anything to do with the fact that the Black youth unemployment quadrupled in the last 25 years while white youth unemployment has remained constant?
There are two relevant observations to be made here by noted social scientist Troy Duster: First, that “unemployment does not cause crime directly but the employed commit far less crime than the unemployed”; and second, that “whereas the nation used the cheap labor of young Blacks for centuries, the new generation faces for the first time both the rejection and the massive, irrelevance of their labor.”
A segment of Black youth has responded to their “massive irrelevance” by acting out and some of that acting out takes the form of criminal activity. Viewed from a class standpoint, street crime – including what has been called Black on Black crime – most often involves a victim and perpetrator who are both part of the same class. That part of the class that has become demoralized and anti-social under the weight of its oppression preys fairly ruthlessly on those in their own neighborhoods or in another part of town who are struggling to make ends meet by holding down a nine-to-five. This basic dynamic is common to capitalist society, though the pervasive- ness and scale of crime in the U. S. is unique. But given the racial stratification of the working class in the U.S., street crime too is racialized.
As long as U.S. society has no use for inner-city Black youth, the ghettoes will continue to produce Black youth who are profoundly alienated from U.S. society and who actively express their alienation through drug use and criminality. Their subjective alienation corresponds precisely to their objective social status as pariahs and their economic status as superfluous labor power.
The condition of inner-city Black youth has deteriorated precipitously over the past decade and this trend shows no sign of reversal. Local and federal government are not prepared to make the economic commitment to the kinds of educational and job training programs that might improve the outlook for Black youth. In this light, it is doubtful that we will soon see a major decline in the involvement of Black youth in criminal activity. This underscores the hypocrisy of Koch and company who turn their backs on a section of the population and then malign them for acting out their bitterness and frustration.
Certainly one of the most awesome crimes of capitalist society is the enormous waste of human energy and potential in the poorest segments of the working class. The tens of thousands of lives that have been distorted by poverty and oppression and tracked onto self-destructive or anti-social paths serve witness to the inhumane and ultimately dysfunctional character of U.S. society. The bourgeoisie itself is concerned about its capacity to contain the social ferment that inevitably arises from relentless oppression.
Thus, Koch’s own Commission on the Year 2000 wrote: “Without a response to the problem of poverty, the New York of the 21st century will be not just a city divided, not just a city excluding those at the bottom from the fullness of opportunity, but a city in which peace and social harmony may not be possible. There is no more important test for New York.” But, while the bourgeoisie may be driven to ameliorate the conditions of the poorest New Yorkers for the sake of “social harmony,” ultimately this is a problem that is beyond their capacity to resolve.
And, though the left does not presently have substantial influence in the poorest sections of the working class (overlapping extensively with the minority communities), the challenge we face is in helping to channel the untapped human energy and potential of these communities into the work of revolutionary social transformation. Those who have not been irrevocably damaged and demoralized by bearing the brunt of capitalist oppression have the most to gain from such a course and it is an absolute certainty that many will come to that recognition. Much of the random, undirected and frequently anti-social flailing out against intolerable conditions will eventually be transformed into a focused, directed and sustained assault on the system that generates those conditions.
The extreme social discord most starkly evident in cities like New York is irrefutable evidence of the terminal decline of capitalism. Yet, the forces of social transformation – the conscious left and the organized working class, including the minority communities – have not yet taken shape. In such a period the ideological and political challenges facing the progressive movement are particularly daunting.
Goetz’s rampage was an act of unalloyed racist barbarism. The shooting of Ramseur, Cabey, Canty and Allan was without justification. Goetz’ attorney, the New York media and the Koch administration plumbed the depths of racial prejudice and widened the divide along the color line in an already polarized city. All this must be underscored again and again.
At the same time, progressives must be prepared to meet, engage and ultimately defeat the representatives of the bourgeoisie on the very issues they so skillfully manipulate to reinforce racism. To do otherwise means losing a crucial battle by default.
Linda Burnham is a member of the Line of March National Executive and chairs its Black Liberation Commission. Letisha Wadsworth is a New York City activist and member of the Line of March Black Liberation Commission.