Black Victim of Racist Society Expresses His Anger

This post is based on an article in NY Post 3-24-19

Mark Gomez, a seemingly Hispanic African-American was arrested and charged with assaulting an elderly woman on a New York subway at 3 a.m.  The woman was a 78 year-old retired kindergarten teacher who had fallen on hard times.  She may have even been homeless.  Gomez, appearing to be in his 30’s and over 6 feet tall.  He beat her and kicked her for no apparent reason.  He had a history of many arrests, mostly for assault, drug possession, and weapon possession.  His history of incarceration wasn’t stated, but it is possible he never spent time for his lawlessness.  Many of his records were sealed.

Numerous onlookers helplessly watched the assault and two of them took videos and posted them on You Tube, which led to Gomez’s arrest.

The video attracted 10 million viewers.  It showed Gomez kicking the victim six times, twice in the head, while balancing himself on the subway straps. The victim was struggling to protect herself, and the only-lookers were screaming “ooohh” and “ahhhhh,” as if watching a fighting match.

What can we do?

What can we make of this?  How can we use this incident to understand our (falling-apart) society and to develop social policies to minimize this form of barbarism.

First, we can look at the incident in racial analysis.  As usual the victim’s race was not written, for if it turned out the victim was white, it might encourage white anger and encouraged white racialism and racial profiling (whites avoiding black males on the subway).  This possible result would encourage the worst of all social sins: white racialism (usually called white racism).  Kicking an elderly woman in the face in a minor sin in comparison.

Secondly, we can consider a common black con response to such incidents:  “We don’t excuse such behavior, but we understand it.”  That is, Gomez is a victim of a white racist society and has suffered injustices his whole life, and has understandable black rage.

Thirdly, we can look at the response of the onlookers.  All of them were probably afraid of this large, aggressive black male who probably could – and would – beat up any of the onlookers if they got involved.  This brings up the Rodney King problem.  What does society do with a strong, violent black male who is out of control, or, as with King, violently resisting arrest?

On a subway, probably the only choice the onlookers saw fo themselves was to passively watch and take videos.

Next, we can speculate what kind of father did Gomez have?  What is the probability that he had a morally responsible father who gave him an example of how to live and who instilled in him universal moral values?  Who raised Gomez with love and affirmation?  Or – more likely – was his father absent from Gomez’s life and who was a law breaker himself, and who was in and out of jails during his life.

Next, we can look at the universal victim:  the taxpayer (and around 90% of all taxes are paid by whites).

Gomez will probably get ten or more years in jail at a cost of around $30,000 a year.  This will cost the taxpayer $300,000.  Then the taxpayer will support Gomez for the rest of his life.

The black activist will probably call this another example of America’s plantation system.  They will see Gomez as being enslaved by the guilty white master.

Finally, the question can be asked, what could we do with Gomez?  What kind of prison policy should we have?  (See policy on prison reform.)

And what about the woman who was beat up, the guilty participant in our racist white society?  Who cares?

There are many high-brow intellectuals — as well as many political activists — who believe we cannot discern the difference between right and wrong.  They believe in moral and cultural relativity.  Click to see the fallacy.