When I first heard about this story I felt my heart skip a beat. I have always hated bullies, and these two boys simply sounded like bullies on a much more serious scale.The Oakland Tribune reported the beating of a local man, Tiansheng Yu, 59 years old, in mid April. He was waiting for his son outside a store when his son came out only to tell him that an African American man had punched him in the face without warning for no reason. The father and son looked for the two African American men and found them on a street corner. Yu, the father of the boy who was punched, confronted the men only to be beat down and left unconscious.
I have no idea why anyone would want to beat up a random person. However, if I were to take a guess, I would take on from Marx's conflict perspective. These two African American men were from Oakland which is densely populated with African Americans. They might have been lower class teens with no real futures ahead of them simply looking for trouble. The situation they are in and their class leads them to be violent and bored on the streets. They have no respect for other people, especially ones of other races. This might be why they chose to victimize a young Asian boy who they thought would do nothing and they could get away with what they did. However, when confronted by his father, they might have panicked. Not wanting to be arrested for punching the boy, they overreacted to the older man and ended up injuring him. This seems like an indirect result of inequality in our class system, but one can never know for sure.
To read the whole story, visit:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_14920033?source=most_viewed
The connection you made between the article and inequality in our class system is good. I often hear people talking negatively about "Asians" because they are intelligent and taking jobs. I believe that this kind of talk can and has stirred up a dislike for the particular race. This also could have been one of the reasons why they felt the urge to harm this Asian man.
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