The mythic black wilding criminal legitimated a punitive national response

Evidence

Concerns over wild and lawless youth with their soundtrack of rap music gripped the nation. The horror of the attack on the Central Park jogger on April 19, 1989, only heightened the crisis as four black youths and one Hispanic youth were accused and convicted of brutally raping Trisha Meili after a night of “wilding.” Politicians and scholars alike fretted loudly over the new seemingly ultra-dangerous young black men who threatened to rip through the very fabric of the nation. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 211