Muggers Knock Professor Unconscious

This is just horrific and intolerable, and it's not an isolated incident in the area. What kills me is the Yale community's focus on "micro aggressions" and "safe zones" from Halloween costumes or speech that they do not like, while ignoring the more important safe zone issue - the inability to walk from campus to your own home without fear of getting brutally assaulted or killed. And is there a REASON the media conspicuously omits the race of the attackers?? "Young males"? Really? Is there anyone on this site who honestly believes that if a black student or professor were attacked by white males the race of the assailants would not only be in the article and mentioned in police announcements but would be the dominant fact?

[Editor: As a matter of fact, we would not identify the race either way unless the police were asking the public for help in appreehending a specific dangerous person at large. That is our longstanding policy, for over 10 years.]

What direction do they flee in?

" Is there anyone on this site who honestly believes that if a black student or professor were attacked by......" SwampfoxII- are you assuming the professor is white? Actually, NHI excluded, most media outlets say race ONLY if it involves Blacks committing crimes, and they are silent on description when whites do. Your bias is showing.....

@Westville man: actually, no, I do not presume the faculty member is white, but based on the established habit of both media & Yale officials to avoid mention of race where the assailants are black or nonwhite, I do presume the assailants in this case are non-white. I disagree with your other observation. Yale has in the past (no doubt for reasons of political sensitivity), issued alerts about assaulting groups of males (on bikes in one instance) without mention of race, which makes no sense if your aim is to make people alert, watchful, and aware of their surroundings. Here, the police had an eyewitness who saw the group, yet even the police alert says nothing about what they look like?? Come on. Yet in other cases, I have seen both media and police note the suspects are white. That is a fact.

@Swampfox, if they had mentioned their races, how accurate of a description would that be? "Young Black males" would give you a positive ID on maybe a third of my neighborhood. What would you do with such vague information, besides just random racial profiling? What you claim to want—an identifiable witness description—would also include height, age, clothing, direction & mode of travel, number of people, etc., yet all you asked for was race.

@CamilleS: Well for one thing, if a gang (say 3 or 4) of white males (or black or Hispanic males) was on a spree in the Whitney Ave. area attacking people, I'd want to know the race so I can be rationally leery if I see a like group coming near me. Approximate age and type of clothes would help too. Simple common sense here. But I do remember the politically correct nonsensical alert that went out some years back, warning students and others in the community of a group of young males on bicycles who were assaulting and robbing people. They were black males, but their race was left out because of PC cowardice. To not include the race of suspects (unless they're white) is a symptom of modern-day politics.

I'd prefer as many details as possible about the criminals, but see no reason to avoid publishing more minimal details if that is all that is available. Social crusades should be left out of news reporting. The article in CTpost had no issue sharing information from the chief: "He told investigators he was hit from behind and attacked by five people, one on a bike, and one he described as obese. Police described them as black youths."

Not sure how the assailants being a group of black youths is helpful. There are literally hundreds of groups of young black men and women who congregate together in various parts of New Haven. I'd venture that most of them are probably not riding around, assaulting Yale professors.

But how do you track down the ones who do? If you don't catch them in the act, now you're on a witch hunt for every group of black bicycle owners? Would we treat white assailants the same way? (Ha.)

I honestly don't really see a solution here. Young people can sometimes do some horrible things because, unlike adults, they lack developed empathy and don't understand the consequences to others, or worry about the consequences to themselves.

We need to continue with community policing and trying to develop a culture of mutual respect, but these problems aren't solved overnight (or even over years).

Josh, does it say the Youths were riding bikes? I didn't see that in the article.

Swampfox,

Do you have a kneejerk belief that terrorist attacks and mass shootings are white guys? Or is your first thought that they must be Middle Eastern?

Basically, as you sit back and mentally racially profile, how frequently are you right?

Swampfoxll, I have to agree with CamilleS and Josh, notwithstanding the fact that I (1) am a 61-year old white male who lives two blocks for the scene of the attack and (2) was held up at knife point many years ago by a young black male. In a city that is 40% black and 30% Hispanic, just telling the assailants' race/ethnicity is worse than useless. It will encourage people to stereotype and provides insufficient information to act. To expand on CamilleS's point, there are approximately 13,000 black males under the age of 30 in the city. Apparently, five took part in this crime; 12995 did not. If the victim was able to provide a more detailed description of the assailants, including their race/ethnicity, that would be different. But, understandably, he was not.

Moreover, the NHI is not a wire service. The attack took place Sunday evening, but the story did not run until Monday afternoon, long after the assailants had fled the scene. Finally, the NHI's policy is consistent. It does not report the assailant's race/ethnicity, regardless of whether the assailant is black, Hispanic, or white.

@NHGreen02 - Define "terrorism". As a matter of fact, most terrorist acts (as I and most others define them) are carried out by Middle Eastern men (either foreign or home grown). "Mass shootings" on the other hand, notably those in the U.S., are almost always the handiwork of white men, most of whom are insane or suffer from some delusional disease, their crimes unrelated to an organized political objective, one rare exception being the Oklahoma City bombing. And yes, without the help of the media, I assumed the assailants on Whitney Ave. were young black males, and previously assumed the same with the Yale alert about "men on bikes" assaulting people on the street. Turned out I was right on each of those occasions. That's not "racial profiling". It's just recognizing the REALTY that most such incidents in New Haven and in that area are carried out by them.

@westville man,

You are correct, I didn't read that anywhere, my brain just assumed based on the rash of previous young men on bikes attacking people. It doesn't really matter either way to my point, I think, but it was my mistake.

Whether or not you think it would be racist for the editors to include or exclude the race of the perpetrators and victim of this crime, you have to juxtapose this discussion with the BLM movement. The BLM movement is demanding "safe spaces" based on racial bias, yet ignores the safety of people who they do not include within the BLM movement.

If you are to be compassionate and intellectually honest, you have to rank the brutal assault on an elderly man as being a much greater injustice than a halloween email or drunken words remembered from a frat party, no matter the race of the individuals involved.

This is absolutely heinous and it offends all humanity to ignore this crime.

"Study Says White Extremists Have Killed More Americans in the U.S. Than Jihadists Since 9/11
"Since 9/11, white right-wing terrorists have killed almost twice as many Americans in homegrown attacks than radical Islamists have, according to research by the New America Foundation. ..." http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terrorism-islamist-jihadi-dangerous/

@SwampfoxII, I guess you missed that news, but why bother with facts?

@CamilleS
@Swampfoxll

Let's drop the rhetoric about race. It is nonsense, confused and divisive. It was wrong when it was used to legitimize slavery, it was wrong when it was used to legitimize segregation and it is wrong now. There is no place for White/Black rhetoric in discourse, except to point out how wrong it is. Period.

This is about life. This is about some people believing that life is cheap. Whether it is an ISIS terrorist blowing himself and others up, an american mass shooter shooting a bunch of people, a cop shooting a kid, or a bunch of kids beating an elderly man.

That's all this is about. It is about us all respecting and reaffirming life, and taking a stand against the rhetoric that divides us and makes us believe that other's and our own lives are cheap.

Proud New Havener- concerning your first post- BLM movement has the right to define its mission and its goals in the way that all groups have done this.
While I agree that all life is precious, some lives seem to matter more than others in the country. If you are going to say that race shouldn't be part of this discussion, then leave BLM out of it.
Will you take offense to women's groups who define their abuse ( eg- battered woman's syndrome) but do not actively include men who have been abused?
Can we have a month dedicated to "breast cancer awareness' while heart attacks and other cancers may kill more than breast cancer?
My point is simple- don't denigrate a group's purpose simply because you don't think it's "inclusive' enough. We seem to only do this when Black folks define their oppression and organize.

@westville man

That's a good point. A group can define its own agenda. The BLM movement has done all Americans a good deed by demanding accountability for extra-judical killings by authorities. The fact remains though, as long as the rhetoric is race-based, it will be divisive and confused. We will have more BLM protests about halloween emails and no comment when it comes to violence that does not fit the agenda. That does everybody a disservice.

What does it say when the comments become far more focused on proposed potential damage to a group of people rather than on the actual crime, victim, and criminals involved? It's a perfect example of artificial models of reality vs. real life and how some people have lost touch with the latter for the former.

Nathan, If your post is directed at me (not sure but I think so) it says that not all of us share your view of "real life" and what's important. Like scores of young people of color dying here in New Haven year after year but when a Yale professor gets mugged and survives (indeed tragic), that's what gets some people's blood boiling and calling for change. That's the reality I see and live with each day. So no, I wont let someone take a gratuitous swipe at BLM when it's not part of this discussion. And now, therefore, it is..........

"Scores", plural means at least 40. The highest total murder count in NHV since 1985 (according to FBI stats) is 34 (1989 and 1991).

@CamilleS: No, I didn't miss that "study", I just dismiss it as totally meaningless. For one thing, it excludes the near 3,000 people killed on 9/11, and thus had a rigged context and statistical period. For another, many liberal "think tank" groups, for partisan reasons, use a very broad brush to label people as "right wing extremists." (Southern Poverty Law Center is notorious for that, declaring some legitimate and widely held conservative viewpoints to be "hate speech" and even groups like the Family Institute to be "hate groups.") The study was left with a very small number of killings to "characterize" - precisely because they rigged the data and the time frame. The guy who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed others was not a "right wing extremist" - he was a schizophrenic. So too was the psychotic who shot up Va Tech. And Sandy Hook was the work of an extremely disturbed kid with a host of medical/psych problems, including Asperger's. The only "white" mass shooter I considered to have been sane, a terrorist, and a right wing extremist, was Timothy McVeigh.

@Bradley: Sorry, but I think your kind of Pollyanna attitude is what makes for a victim. If that is your mindset, I'm not surprised to hear that you were in fact victimized, and at knifepoint. That must have been a terrifying experience. I deal with reality, with facts and figures, and the environment as it is, not with idealized notions - one of the reasons I have never been mugged or held up at knifepoint in New Haven, and don't intend to be.

Robn, as usual, misses the point in an effort to be snarky....

And WVM, perhaps, fails to understand that hyperbolic language diminishes the credibility of those speaking up for the good cause of an equitable society.

@Swampfoxll

Having a "Pollyanna attitude" does not make you a victim. I've been assaulted and I did not have a Pollyanna attitude then, but I have a Pollyanna attitude now. Not having a Pollyanna attitude is what keeps us locked in suspicion and alienation from each other. In order to overcome our history, we have to be willfully naive and keep trying to bridge the gaps between each other.

@westville man

I agree with you. Too many kids get killed in New Haven every year. I've known some and it's deeply upsetting and infuriating. That's a big part of why I am criticizing BLM. All of the kids I've known have been killed by other kids. BLM should be out in front condemning that. It gets me angry to see people protesting about things like emails about halloween costumes, when there are real people getting murdered.

Proud NHer. I thought we agreed that groups are allowed their own mission? But besides that, you and I are on the same page.
Do you think about why young black men are shooting each other year after year ? Why aren't we acknowledging that the racism imbedded in our society contributes to that? Self image, self value, self worth are things that often come from the outside.
I'll bet you have an idea why young white women become bulemic and anorexic- do we blame them for it? Don't we ask why and examine it from a mental health perspective? Same with all the mass shootings by white gunmen. Mental health and their personal history are relevant.
So why are young black men killing each other without remorse? Would we stand by if it were white kids killing each other in Madison or Woodbridge? I submit racism is a big part of this web and therefor I applaud BLM in their efforts to combat that and the negative images that black youths deal with everyday. And some of them act it out. In anticipation of the comments to follow, the above is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole puzzle.
But sincere white people of good will need to ask ourselves why we get more worked up over a white mans mugging, or a dogs mouth getting tapes than we do about young black men getting killed. Indeed, Robn is more concerned with my use of "scores" than the numbers that are killed each year.

WVM,

If you exxagerrate, I'll call you out on it. Just use the correct number and you won't have a problem.

Um.... I think we know who has the problem...

WVM,

I guess through your lens anyone who corrects math is a spouting racist?