28
es
2WBAILINEWS
DAILY
NEWS
220 E. 42d St. New York, N.V. 10017
F. GILMAN SPENCER, Editer
JAMES P. WILLSE, Munaging Editer
JAMES HOGE, Publisher and Preeident
MICHAEL PAKEKNHAM, Editerial Page Editor
Stay calm,
New York
HE RACIAL TENSION that has been threatening this
eity for the last several years once again has been inten-
1 sified in the aftermath of the Central Park attack on a
female jogger by a gang of male teenagers. Warm weather is
just around the corner. It is absolutely vital that New Yorkers
of all races keep their cool.
Some of those arrested in the attack have made unfeeling,
unremorseful comments - outraging many New Yorkers. But
responsible citizens must resist striking back
deed - against other blacks. Whites must not allow themselves
to view the behavior of a bunch of thugs who just happen to be
black as typical of other black people they meet.
Here's why. The gang of 30 or so, ranging from 13 to 17 years
in age, that entered the northern portion of the park last
Wednesday night was looking for joggers or bicyclists or other
unsuspecting, Taw-abiding people. Almost certainly, they would
have meted out the same calculated cruelty to anyone who hap-
pened by. They were after targets of opportunity. Easy marks.
That's all.
Had the 28-year-old jogger been black, she almost surely
would have received the same treatment from these teenagers.
To this kind of kid - alienated from society - race doesn't
count that much. What counts is a world of haves and another
world of have-nots. Too often, in that contrast, things get ugly,
violent. As they did on Wednesday night in Central Park.
Most of these youths represent the have-nots - denizens of
the mean Harlem streets of tenements and projects and de-
spair. And without knowing anything else about the jogger -
who was in the wrong place at the very worst time - they did
know she represented the world of the haves.
They know that such unsuspeceting people are the ones most
likely to be jogging and cycling in that part of the park at that
time of night. People unfamiliar with the danger that lurks so
close to their world. People who, more often than not, just hap-
pen to be white.
in word or in
LL OF THIS IS NOT to say there isn't a deeper social and
economic issue. There always is. It has to do with a gen-
eration of young men- many, perhaps most, black- be-
ing lost to this country. Young men with no nourishing family
background or support systems. Young men who deal daily
with welfare hotels and a netherworld of drugs, prostitution
and crime. Young men who go "wilding" in the dead of night to
assert their masculinity and justify their miserable existences.
Do any of these factors excuse the attack? Absolutely not. Do
they excuse the uncaring, jocular attitude the kids displayed
toward their innocent vietim? No way. Should these kids be
prosecuted as adults because of the nature of the offense? Yes,
sir. Nobody - rich or poor, black or white
brutalized within an inch of death, scarred for life.
But this city has been close to a racial explosion for some
time
volving attacks in Howard Beach, Staten Island, Avenue X in
Brooklyn, and individuals such as Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael
Stewart and, more recently, the murder of Dr. Kathryn Hinnant
in Bellevue. Every high-profile, white-on-black or black-on-
white incident brings the city nearer to open racial strife.
Today, with the eity awash in publicity over the attack, it is
squarely up to every New Yorker to exercise restraint. For that
to work, it is even more necessary that everyone stop and exam-
ine the simple truth that dreadful acts are done by individual
thugs to individual victims - not by or to a ráce.
deserves to be
closest of all in response to highly publicized cases in-
/20
2019
