At his Substack site, Glenn Loury interviews John McWhorter about "the Jordan Neely Problem." Both Loury and McWhorter are African American academics. They go through the whole "mental illness isn't his fault" thing and the "subway riders deserve to be abused" number in some detail.
Surprisingly, they come out the far side thinking the subway riders don't deserve to be abused, threatened, and sometimes killed by crazy people. It is a decent, thoughtful treatment of a touchy subject. My complaint is that they waltz around, but never mention the need to separate the insane from society, utilizing involuntary commitment.
Law prof Glenn Reynolds is fond of reminding us that the police exist to protect criminals from the summary justice of vigilantism. What Daniel Penny did was made necessary by society's abdication of responsibility for protecting the insane.
