This post is a little belated, but I felt that it was worth sharing:
About two weeks ago I attended the official San Francisco Mayoral debate, and one of the questions was about how the candidates would deal with the violence in the Bayview/Hunters Point area. One cadidate, I believe it was Josh Wolf, stated that Gavin Newsom's lack of action against the violence was genocide. This brings up a few interesting questions- would this be considered genocide? And also, if it were considered genocide, who would be the pertetrator? That relates back to the questions of bystanders and perpetrators. If you did believe the murders to be genocide, would the perpetrators be the individuals who had committed the murders, or the Mayor for not doing enough to stop them, or both?
*Even if you don't believe this is a genocide, I'm still curious about your answers to the other questions*
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5 comments:
Wow, I immediately say this is not a genocide. This is such a small scale crime (compared to the Holocaust, for example) AND no one group is being targeted. Of course the people being targeted all live in the same area (which is by chance) but all these people don't relate in a common way like that of the Armenians or the Jews.
Although I don't think this is a genocide, I would say that the perpatrators are the murderers because they are the ones committing the crime. The mayor would be the bystander because he has the power to stop these crimes, but he is doing nothing about it. I think this situation is similar to David Cash-- he was not the perpatrator, however he could have stopped the murder if he had not remained a bystander.
Well I would be interested how Mr. Wolf would describe the awful events in Hunters Point and how that fits into a definition of genocide, the one agreed upon by the UN. I don't think the Hunters Point events are genocide, not because of a numbers rationale, but because a group (racial, religious, ect.) is not being targeted or eradicated.
The other question, of responsibility is harder to answer because is the perpetrator as responsible as a bystander? That's hard. It differs case by case and I think that if this were a genocide, the perpetrator would be more responsible, but the bystander is not completely clean either.
i personally believe that it is mainly the perpetrators who are responsible. Under our countries current law there is nothing against seeing a crime and not doing anything (the entire Cash scenario.) But this does not mean that being a bystander goes un-punished. Clearly Cash received some punishment considering how his peers view him and interact with him. but this raises the question of - is that enough? should/could the court punish bystanders? can/should peers take it into their own hands to "punish" (not physically but by social means) a bystander in a crime?
If we step back a bit from Hunters Point specifically and consider the huge numbers of deaths each year that occur in low income neighborhoods, does this change anything? I would hardly call it small scale crime, as Aileen said, especially because it has been happening for so long, every day of every week, and so little has been done to address it, or at least not nearly enough to stop it. And I don't agree that a specific group is not targeted. A huge majority of the deaths are African American men. Does this change it? I'm still not sure if I would call it genocide, but that should not lessen the magnitude of this atrocity in our minds.
To add another party into the group: what role do the rappers who glorify gangster life and violence play in the situation? Are they perpetrators or bystanders?
Although it is true that the majority of the deaths are African American men, I still don't think it could be considered a genocide. Each crime, or at least most, are targetted at a certain person. It is because they have some sort of personal relation or problem with them. They aren't going in in an attempt to kill all the African American men in Hunters Point, in fact many of the crimes are committed by African American men. I am in no way trying to justify the killing, just pointing out that I don't see how this could be considered a genocide.
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