Georgetown Student Defends His “I deserved to be mugged” Post
When Georgetown student Oliver Friedfeld wrote his op-ed, in which indicated that he deserved to be mugged because of “white privilege”, he experienced a significant opinion backlash.
And, like Jonathan Gruber, he is now going back and explaining when he really meant.
…I hope this letter clarifies some of the points that have been wildly misread.
To be perfectly clear, I do not condone violence against anyone, and I certainly did not deserve to be mugged. Understanding why someone might steal from me does not suggest that I deserved it.
Everyone is responsible for his or her own behavior, and my attackers made a bad choice, for which they ought to be punished. But the conversation should not end there.
Innocent individuals never deserve to be attacked. But in an unequal society, we can’t be shocked by crime. I’m not suggesting it’s OK, or that we should accept it. I’m saying wake up: the futures for some are bleak. Until we do something to understand and address the root causes of crime, it will continue. Acknowledging that there is more to crime than pure evil does not equate to condoning it.
As for me, I’ve chosen empathy. I’ve chosen to write an article that deepens the conversation about privilege. And I will continue to address issues of structural injustice as I see them. I invite others to do the same.
Comments
Your assumptions about your attackers are abstract and worthless – you mean well, that is obvious, but you’re coming at this from an academic navel gazing PoV.
People learn that they can take – it’s been that way since caveman Ug saw that caveman Grunt had more than he.
You’re applying a “Social Justice” construct, but long before there was a U.S., there were muggings, purse snatchers, cut purses, alley way muggers, and bushwackers.
People who do evil will ALWAYS engage their self-justification muscle – and you’re aiding them.
“I hit Joe because ….”
“I stole from Jane because …”
“She teased me, and led me on …. ”
“His family has always had more than me so I ….”
If tomorrow, magically, and without realistic inflation, everyone on the planet were to magically have their standard of living raised ten fold – 10 times their bank account, 10 times their pay, 10 times their benefits, etc – you would see that everyone would be happy …. for a VERY short period of time.
Then, quicker than you’d believe, ENVY would take over. “Yea, I got 10 times what I had, but *HE* now has an obscene amount of money and possessions.”
So, even making everyone wealthy or comfortable does not change that some will want to take what another has.
Get your head out of the Social Justice Warrior mode and realize that the indoctrination you’ve been spoon fed is based on class warfare, does not hold up to reality, and while it may make you FEEL morally superior and enlightened, that what you get from it, the ideas, the solutions, and the empathy, are based on false assumptions, don’t solve the problem, and will enable and excuse bad people and their actions.
His is the mind of a child. He has empathy without intelligence. He’s unable to reason beyond his simple emotion. Such it is with much of the world.
You can tell he was educated at Georgetown. Reason is not important. He was taught that everybody should be equal. The trouble is that this clown cannot see that equality of result never has worked and never will. I do not know what he paid for his garbage education at Georgetown, but it was way more than he should have paid.
I can see this fool at some future date kneeling in an orange jumpsuit before some anonymous butcher with a huge knife and an ISIS flag in the background. He’ll have a placid, benevolent, understanding look on his face as the blade bites deep. I confess I do not in any way understand the mindset of people like this and consider them as enabling the musloids who want to destroy the West.