Central Park Five Argumentative Analysis

One of the most infamous political events that happen in Central Park, was the controversial court case regarding the Central Park Five. The Central Park Five, represents the five colored teenagers convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park during 1989. New York City in the 1980s was a period of time that was racially charge with violence. The levels of uneasiness between New Yorkers maximized after this incident. Headlines during that time period called these teenagers “ Wildings and Wolves”(Duru,2004). Instead of simply referring them as young black and hispanic males, they were referred as wilding, implying that they were savage barbarians, unfit for society. With the fuel provided by the media, the public unconsciously categorized

A group of 30 or more black and hispanic teenagers were terrorizing and causing an state of chaos in Central Park.(Duru,2004) That same night,Trisha Meili was jogging in Central Park after work, when she was brutally assaulted, sodomized, and raped. Meili lost around 80 percent of her blood and was in a coma for 2 weeks.(Kerwick,2014) It was automatically assumed that the same group of black and hispanic teenagers causing chaos in the park,were the same ones who raped Trisha Meili.The brutal attack and rape of Meili ,who was a white women, by black and hispanic teenagers, increase tensions and created public outrage among New Yorkers. Antron McCray age 15, Kevin Richardson age 14, Raymond Santana age 14, Kharey Wise age 16, and Yusef Salaam age 15, were arrested, tried, convicted.(Kerwick,2014) Each of the teenagers confessed that they were involved in the attacking and raping of Trisha Meili, but none of them admitted to actually raping her, instead they blame the actual rape on others.

It should also be noted that just two weeks after the raping of a white woman at Central park by black and hispanic teenagers, a black woman was raped and thrown off a building by three black men. (Duru,2004)Although equally gruesome and horrible, the case drew less attention and outrage from the public as the raping at Central Park. Both women were victims of sexual assault, but since the white women was attack by colored males the assailants were branded as “wolves” and “wildings”, while the black women attacked by black men were barely thought of by the public, and received significantly less outrage from the public. The raping at Central Park drew so much publicity that Ed Koch the mayor of New York City at the time ,even commented and called the five teenagers “wolves” from a “wolf pack”, expressing the public’s acceptance that the Central Park five were the beasts that attacked and raped Trisha Meili.(Duru,2004) Trisha Meili’s rape drew attention nationwide, Donald Trump even paid $85,000 for full- page ads on four newspapers to called for the return of the death penalty, days after the news of Trisha rape broke out.(Burns,2016) Trump argued that “muggers and murderers” should suffer and, that when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.(Burns,2016) Although, Trump didn’t mention the Central Park Five directly, the ad was published days later as an indirect address to the