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I Said What I Said: Daniel Penny is a Racist, Classist, Ableist Killer
John McWhorter can deny it all he likes, and criticize me for saying it. But his rebuttal is embarrassing
Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely in a New York City subway. That much is undisputed.
Likewise, it is understood that Neely had been acting erratically prior to being placed in a fatal six-minute chokehold by Penny, waving his arms about in a way that Penny, and perhaps others, viewed as threatening.
And according to a jury empaneled in Penny’s trial for negligent homicide, that perception of threat was sufficient to make his actions, while perhaps tragic, ultimately legal. Penny was acquitted on all charges and free to transition into his new role as a right-wing folk hero.
Within days, JD Vance had invited Penny to attend the Army-Navy game with him and Donald Trump because Neely’s killing is but a trifle to the incoming administration and its fans, whose desire to put Black, homeless, and mentally ill people in their place, knows no bounds.
Even if that place is a graveyard.
They are literally gleeful over a racist, classist, ableist murderer.
I referred to Penny this way immediately after the verdict and was pilloried on X by legions of right-wing trolls. Once the pile-on began, the original tweet went viral and attracted the attention of linguist and New York Times contributor John McWhorter, who suggested such a claim was unfair, if not unhinged.
Because, of course, he did.
Minimizing the role of racism in American life is sort of his gig.
But before responding to his denials of Penny’s racism, it’s worth noting that McWhorter, while seeking to rebut my ostensibly unfair characterization of the subway vigilante, ignored two-thirds of the claim I made.
To wit, he punted entirely on the matter of Penny’s classism and ableism, both of which I mentioned as co-equal to his racial bias and which I was suggesting intersected with that bias in critical ways.
To hear John tell it, I had all but called Penny a Nazi who had boarded the subway ready to kill any…
