Do you know that name? You should. If there was any decency in this world, the name Kristal Bayron-Nieves would be more famous than the names Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, Rayshard Brooks, or even George Floyd. Like the others, Kristal Bayron-Nieves was killed. However, unlike the others, the reason you don’t know her name is because she was not killed by a white man or a police officer.
Kristal Bayron-Nieves was killed by a black man. She was a nineteen-year-old Burger King employee in Manhattan when Winston Glynn came in and demanded the money in the register. The crazy thing in this case is that Kristal gave the $100 to Glynn and he shot and killed her anyway. But this story does not simply end with the search for and arrest of Glynn, a homeless murderer, a man who was arrested and released only a month ago right here in Queens for brandishing a weapon. (It should be noted that brandishing a weapon is only considered a misdemeanor in New York City, so the Queens DA office let Glynn go without much of a punishment.)
The even crazier thing about this is that Glynn could have easily gotten away with just taking the $100. The man was dressed in all black at the time with his face covered with a mask. It took incredible NYPD resources to track this man and were only able to do so because of a pair of earbuds dangling from his pocket. Police were able to track his movements using public and private security footage until he removed his mask and were able to ID him. Had Glynn just taken the $100 and left, there is no way that the NYPD would have used the resources needed to capture a killer.
But once again, the story does not end there. The part of this story that could have national implications is something that Glynn shouted during a spat with onlookers during his perp-walk (something that we apparently still do in New York City) two weeks ago. “Where’s our reparations for four hundred years of…slavery!” Glynn barked at onlookers.
And here is where this goes from a local crime story to one with more overreaching implications. Because with one tirade, this alleged murderer tried to claim the defense that he killed a nineteen-year-old Hispanic woman because America had slavery until the 1860s. So now we get to play the game the Left loves to play: “Who do we blame?” Do we blame the violent thief-turned-murderous man for allegedly killing a young lady in cold blood, or do we blame the people who put the idea of reparations at any cost into his head in the first place?
Now if you ask the Left to be consistent, they should blame the politicians and activists who use the rhetoric of black oppression to embolden the so-called victims to take matters into their own hands. After all, this is the party of “silence is violence” and “speech is violence.” They should be the first to look deep into their hearts and know that they are at fault. How many people have to die before they take responsibility for their words? They would tell you that one death is too many. If they were being intellectually honest.
But they are not intellectually honest. So they will blame mental health or guns or black victimization or homelessness or Trump somehow. The problem is that when the Right is intellectually honest and we blame this death on the fact that this person is clearly mentally ill, the Left does not have to defend themselves for their rhetoric the same way they force the Right to defend theirs. The Left can blame the Right for violence caused by their speech, but the Right cannot do the same, because the Right does not believe that speech is violence. All the Right can do is call in the hypocrisy, which obviously does not carry the same weight.
And that is how the Left uses hypocrisy, double standards, and inconsistency to win arguments. And who suffers?
Kristal Bayron-Nieves.
Izzo Zwiren is the host of The Jewish Living Podcast, where he and his guests delve into any and all areas of Orthodox Judaism.
