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If Kitty Genovese’s Story Is Not True, My Whole Undergrad Degree Is Built on Sand

If Kitty Genovese’s Story Is Not True, My Whole Undergrad Degree Is Built on Sand

Last updated on: October 7, 2015 at 8:15 am by Kathy Schiffer

If Kitty Genovese’s Story Is Not True, My Whole Undergrad Degree Is Built on Sand 2015-10-07T08:15:45-05:00 Kathy Schiffer

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Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I studied Sociology at the University of Michigan. As a young 20-something woman, I was unsure what career field I should choose and so, like many young people still today, I spun the wheel. I was interested in why people did the things they did–so Sociology and, at U-M, its counterpart Social Psychology seemed the perfect field of study.

Under the tutelage of some great profs and their sometimes-great laboratory assistants, I learned about people and how they behaved, alone and in groups. At Michigan in those years, the Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner was held in high esteem. And more than once, I learned about urban isolation and apathy through the story of a young New York murder victim, Kitty Genovese.

* * * * *

But Behaviorism didn’t sit well with my own lived experience, or with my Catholic understanding of free will. Radical Behaviorism taught that human beings had no distinctive stature among the animals–that if you did “A”, then the other person would reliably do “B”, and that we could understand humanity well by simply studying the behavior of rats and pigeons.

What, I wondered, about conscience? What about free will? Isn’t that what makes humans greater than the animals–that they can choose what is not the most comfortable for them, simply because it is Right? Years later, I remember being asked in a job interview why I had not continued my studies, pursuing a graduate degree so that I could teach in my field? “Because I don’t believe what they taught me,” I explained; and in a way, I was explaining to myself, as well. There certainly were some nuggets of truth in my studies; but in large part, I had rejected the entire premise of my undergrad major. There was no sense continuing down that road.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the case of Kitty Genovese. According to reports at the time, Genovese was brutally murdered outside her Queens, N.Y., apartment building on March 13, 1964, screaming while dozens of neighbors apparently did nothing. Their oft-repeated excuse: ”I didn’t want to get involved.”

People were like that, I was told; put them too close together, as in a crowded urban environment, and they remained firmly implanted in their “personal space” and learned to ignore what was going on around them. Like birds on a wire which always allowed sufficient space between them, people imagined an invisible shield around themselves.

By Birds_on_the_wire.jpg: Tomascastelazo derivative work: Colin (This file was derived from Birds on the wire.jpg:) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Actually, I think the “personal space” of the birds on the wire was crap, too. I think birds need sufficient air space around them to enable them to spread their wings and fly–and that this, not any need to be alone, governed their spacing on the wire.

Kitty Genovese, circa 1964 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

But back to Kitty Genovese: In my Sociology textbook, I read that 38 witnesses saw an assailant stab Genovese, leave the scene, and then come back and kill her. No one called the police or offered assistance. Through that story, impressionable students learned that the city was a cold, uncaring metropolis, where heartless residents ignored their neighbors’ needs. That still resonates today.

But today at the 53rd New York Film Festival, a new documentary “The Witness” tells a different story. Kitty Genovese’s brother Bill, along with filmmaker James Solomon, pursued their own investigation into Kitty’s death, her life in Queens, and the witnesses who lived in her apartment building; and they reveal that the story was mistaken, that events did not unfold as reported.

According to CBS News:

Bill hunts down the surviving witnesses among the 38 cited in police interviews and trial testimony, and finds that, contrary to the original news reports, some had contacted the police, shouted out their windows at the attacker, and even aided a bleeding Kitty.

“To a certain degree, it was a media creation,” said CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace (one of the film’s interview subjects, who died in 2012). He said the reason other reporters did not seriously question the original account was “because it was taken seriously by The New York Times.” And the Times’ Metropolitan Editor at the time, Abe Rosenthal — who later wrote a book titled “Thirty-Eight Witnesses” — pushed that narrative, Wallace said, because it “undoubtedly sold newspapers.”

So there you go. My bachelor’s degree is defunct.

But for all of you who are closer in years to your college education, let me remind you: The purpose of higher education is to teach you to think. Statisticians estimate that you will forget 80% of what you learn, but how to learn? That’s the rub.

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