Selectivity in sympathy is still injustice

May 27, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor

Dr. Terrence Richard Blackman’s response to the Peeping column “Justice Must Not Be Selective” appears, at first glance, to be a thoughtful rebuttal. But beneath the rhetorical polish, it is deeply flawed.

Dr. Blackman starts on a false foundation. Stating two facts does not create equivalence. A child drowned. A hotel was burned. Those are facts. The grief of a parent and the loss of property are not being equated. They are being acknowledged. Simultaneously. Because justice, if it is to be meaningful, must have the bandwidth to hold two truths at once.

To claim that acknowledging the destruction of a man’s home and business—without evidence of wrongdoing—somehow trivializes a child’s death is intellectually dishonest. That is not equivalence. That is fairness. And no, describing the police’s role as a “fumble” does not excuse them. On the contrary, it indicts them. Whether it’s called a blunder, failure, or a calculated dereliction, the point remains: the police lied about the security footage. They misled the public. And they must be held accountable—not instead of, but alongside those who looted and destroyed private property.

Dr. Blackman suggests that property can be rebuilt. But can trust? Can livelihoods? Can a man’s name be restored once tarred by public suspicion, without charge, without evidence? The original column never denied the pain of Adrianna Younge’s family. But the pain of one family does not license a nation to burn and loot. Dr. Blackman claims the hotel owner was well-connected. But what does that mean? Influence? A voice? Perhaps. But what power insulates a man from having his home razed, his business gutted, his staff unemployed, and his family in fear? And all without a shred of evidence of any complicity on his part. What privilege is that? And let us not assume that wealth or alleged connections, however relative, cancels out the right to justice. Then there is this dangerous drift in Dr. Blackman’s logic: that public violence must not be condoned, but must also be understood. That is a seductive but slippery line. Because if lawlessness is dressed up in sociological language—“decades of institutional failure,” “vacuum,” “rage conditioned by history”— then violence is not only being explained, it is being rationalized.

To understand is not to excuse. But what we see here is a selective application of understanding: understand the looters, but not those accused without evidence? Understand the arsonists, but not the victims? Understand the torching of a hotel, but not the silencing of workers who now feed their families from nothing. That is not justice.

The original Peeping Tom column (or at least my reading of it) did not ask us to ignore the institutional failures that led to this moment. It demands that we confront all of them—police ineptitude, mob violence, and public complicity. Selective outrage, even when dressed in poetic cadence, is still selective.

And justice, if it is to mean anything at all, must be consistent, not convenient. It must extend to the grieving family and the innocent businessman. It must seek truth in the drowning of a child and the burning of a hotel and homes. This is not superficial. This is fundamental. So, yes, Dr. Blackman: justice must not be selective. Either we stand for all victims, or we stand for none. And we either reject mob rule—or we prepare to be ruled by mobs.

Regards

Rupnauth Ramdyal

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