(There were some twenty to twenty-five people in the car, including a group of four young black men: Troy Canty, Barry Allen, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey.)
(As much as many want it to be, the race of these four miscreants is irrelevant to this story.)
Hardly. New York race relations may not be a walk in the park today, but they are a picnic compared with the 1980s. Remember "Central Park," "Howard Beach," etc. Whites felt victimized by black criminals. Blacks thought whites, and the police, would just as soon see them exterminated, criminal or not. And this whole incident brought it to the surface.
Goetz was a young, slightly built engineer from Poughkeepsie. He had been robbed before, and injured in the robbery -- that's why he got the gun. He had been asked for money. The teens were carrying screwdrivers, but not weapons. He said, "I've got five dollars for each of you," pulled out the gun and started shooting. Could he have said "buzz off" and been left alone? Did he assume he was going to be assaulted because they were black? Was that a fair assumption? Etc. Etc. Etc. And of course the subways were much worse, and seemed menacing too.
I'm not sure that those coming of age or arriving in the city in the past ten years can relate to all this.