The story of the Central Park Five has always been a story about race. From the moment those NYPD officers first accused five black and Hispanic boys of brutally raping and almost killing a white woman in Central Park, race has been one of the primary characters in a saga that has persisted almost thirty years.
Beginning in 1989, all five boys would be charged and tried in trials that commanded the city's attention. All five would also become fodder for a ravenous and racist media, headline after headline calling them animals and gangsters and savages. Never one to pass up the chance to dog-whistle, Donald Trump himself took out a full page ad in the New York Daily News, calling for the boys' execution—despite the fact that four out of the five were legally children.
“I am strongly in favor of the death penalty,” he told Larry King at the time. “I am also in favor of bringing back police forces that can do something instead of turning their back because every quality lawyer that represents people that are trouble—the first thing they do is start shouting police brutality."
In the same interview, he scoffed at people who implied the boys deserved compassion, perhaps because they had not yet been found guilty. "Of course I hate these people and let’s all hate these people because maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done."
Trump has a long history of this racist imprecision. At best, Trump treats minorities and women with perpetual distrust. At worst, he thinks hate is what we need if we're going to get something done.
In December 1990, they did get it done. Ultimately, all five boys were sent to prison based largely on coerced confessions and circumstantial forensic evidence that experts would later repudiate. And then, twelve years later, a serial rapist unexpectedly admitted to the crime. His DNA matched the only semen sample they found on the victim. All five men were exonerated. Yet, even fourteen years later, Trump still believes that the five are guilty.
Racism lacks intellectual rigor. It is our laziest national pastime, a shortcut taken by those who are willing to sacrifice the questions for the answers. One can imagine the appeal—racism may not be noble, but it is easy. And we all know how enticing the easy answer is for someone like Donald Trump.
Trump has never hesitated to ascribe simple binaries to entire populations of people. Undocumented Mexicans are criminals, drug dealers, rapists—except, perhaps, the "some," that he "assumes are good people." Black people are a monolith— poor, miserable, and living in inner city squalor, shooting or being shot at, perpetual criminal or helpless victim. Women are either sex objects with no agency, or manipulative, ugly, shrews. Muslims are either terrorists or, it seems, hiding terrorists.
That these conclusions collapse at even the slightest hint of interrogation is, at worst, an ignorable inconvenience and, at best, a campaign advantage. People love Trump because he makes complicated things sound simple. After all, if the problem is simple, then the solution just might be, as well. Build the wall. Bring back law and order. Keep Muslims out. Make America Great Again.
This is how Trump has operated for decades, by choosing to believe only what he wants to believe. "They admitted they were guilty," said Trump, CNN reported Friday. "The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous."
It is not, of course, outrageous. Trump fails to mention that the five boys gave wildly different confessions, or that the only DNA found on the victim belonged to the man who later confessed, or that innocent people often falsely confess under pressure. These are inconvenient facts, and to engage with them would require engaging in a deeper level of analysis, something he steadfastly refuses to do. Donald's narrative about the Central Park Five fits neatly into a binary frame he has clung to for decades, and he would rather change the facts to fit his perception than adjust his perception to fit new facts. Corrupt and careless law enforcement are complicated, but guilty black boys are simple.
But in a world where simple explanations reign, the right to complication is its own power. Take the tape of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women, released just a day after he told CNN he thought the five men were guilty. According to his standard, Trump is indeed guilty of sexual assault. After all, he admitted his guilt, and Trump's confession was taped, much like the only "evidence" against the Central Park Five. Somehow, though, Donald Trump was just bantering when he claimed to have sexually assaulted someone. He is not a bad guy, he is complicated. He’s not static, he is different now. He has good days and bad days and he has grown since the immature age of 59.
In Donald Trump’s world, white rich men like himself automatically get a rebuttable presumption of integrity and good faith. Black men—or Hispanic men, or black and Hispanic boys, or working class kids from Harlem with parents struggling to pay the bills—are not just guilty until proven innocent. They are guilty even after they prove their innocence. They are guilty by association. They are guilty at birth. This is the Trump mantra. There may be some really, really good ones, but most of them should be punished, locked up, killed. There is no in between.
This is how racism often manifests. Who is it that gets to be complicated? For Trump, that privilege goes only to important men like himself. He affords himself more grace and compassion than he grants entire demographics. He's better, he's different, he's more worthy than those five black and brown boys that, according to his 1989 Daily News ad, should be "forced to suffer" and "executed."
Binaries are not reflective of reality, but reality is irrelevant to someone like Trump. He is not trying to get closer to any universal truth. He exists in a purely transactional universe, where a person's worth is directly proportional to what they can offer him. Everything in his world is filtered through the prism of Donald Trump. Nothing exists simply on its own merit. Trump subscribes to an egoist's philosophy, and he always believes what he tells himself.
This, admittedly, is not uncommon, especially for a relatively successful businessman. But it's not ideal for a president. After all, believing things to be simple does not magically make them so. Part of Trump's charm is in his frustration that America has not made common sense choices. He makes being president seem easy. Reality, in fact, indicates the opposite—things are rarely simple. They are almost never black and white. There are no obvious answers.
If we choose a Trump presidency we are choosing a future of binary solutions to complex problems, a future where decisions are made, laws enforced, and liberties restricted based on simplistic and self-serving notions of identity. He makes being president seem easy. But the stakes are too high for the easy route.
There is one moment in the 2012 documentary Central Park Five that I still think about almost daily. The five boys are forced to perform the requisite perp walk after hours of interrogation, heads down and hands cuffed. They look arrestingly young, like kids who have not fully grown into their adult bodies, their faces lineless. Two of them have oversized black trench coats draped over their shoulders, making them look even younger. Save for the onslaught of cameras flashing, it is dark outside. Reporters shout frenzied questions, but the boys do not speak. I have seen countless perp walks, but this one always sticks with me. They are what we are now—terrified but not yet hopeless, still relying on the fickle Gods of justice and innocence. They do not yet know that they are doomed.