Outrage has conflagrated online at the image of passengers sitting by while Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, stabbed repeatedly in the neck by schizophrenic DeCarlos Brown, bleeds out on the floor of a Charlotte public transit car. While images have surfaced of a good samaritan attempting to staunch the bleeding with his own shirt, that DeCarlos Brown was free to commit this heinous crime, not just with numerous priors on the books, but also after attempts by his mother to institutionalize him, speaks volumes about the epidemic of passive responses to situations that unquestionably require ACTION.
Back in the early aughts, this pathological passivity became all too real to me, raising the question that I have harbored ever since. When certain kinds of people are in power, people imbued with a tribal affinity that clouds their judgment, can they be trusted to objectively and aggressively handle violence? Can they reliably protect white people endangered by black thugs? Do they make any effort to protect their own from the violent among them? Or are they simply too frozen in fear themselves to do anything about it?
“We can’t incarcerate our way out of this problem,” says Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson. Charlotte mayor Viola Lyles repeated the same offensive talking point. Johnson opined that the crime problem requires MORE FEDERAL FUNDING.
He’s dead wrong. It requires acknowledging that there is an urgent problem with criminality and mobilizing aggressive action to stop it. Zero tolerance. Equal treatment under the law. Race does not excuse crime. No more of this “justice-impacted individuals” garbage. Enough is enough.
In the harrowing experience that I describe in this essay, the (POC) administrators at the New York City community college to whom a student and I (white) reported a (black) student threatening other students in my class JUST GLARED AT US AS IF WE WERE THE PROBLEM. One of them even went so far as to tell us: “He has a right to an education.”
This classroom was NOT a so-called “safe space” due to this man’s threatening behavior. Certain people getting by with antisocial behavior is a huge problem in this country that needs to be openly discussed, and dealt with aggressively.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
A BUCK-FIFTY: A Harsh Lesson in Race Relations, Worth Every Penny
PHOTO CREDIT: "SCAR" BY DANIEL PASIKOV
https://dogl.substack.com/p/a-buck-fifty-a-harsh-lesson-in-race