Imagine waking up one morning and finding out you’ve lost your job.

Not for something you’ve done or said, but for an act or remark that some other person or persons near you may or may not have done or said several days earlier.

Now imagine that before you yourself can find out what’s going on…

…the mayor, county executive and school superintendent – none of whom was present during the aforementioned event – have weighed in with loud, bold rhetoric via news and social media expressing community outrage and declaring their determination that…

This. Shall. Not. Happen, Ever. Again.

…naming no one, but affirming furthermore that the alleged perpetrators, whoever they may be, (wink-wink) ’should and shall be held accountable for any and all such atrocious acts.’

…commentary that appears to be aimed – with neither evidence nor testimony having been given – directly at you, the now-unemployed person at the center of the storm – either for aiding and abetting the alleged act or acts, or for simply allowing them to happen.

Which of course is the very essence of scapegoating: the cowardly act of walking away from an allegation or event and allowing the blame to be easily placed on someone theoretically innocent but unlikely to and/or incapable of fighting back.

That’s what happened as best we can tell by what followed, to RHS girls basketball coach Bryan Williams, after a reportedly hate-filled game of hoops on Thursday, Jan. 4 in Yonkers between his team and that of an all-Jewish girls’ school…

…and prior to the afternoon of Monday, Jan. 8 when Williams was officially ‘let go’ (fired? ‘asked to resign’?) by a school-district official for certain still, as-yet unspecified “managerial mistakes.”

With that as prologue, we commend your attention to the linked-to article below, based as it is on a fair and impartial interview of Coach Williams himself, written, reported, edited and published by the lohud news, aka Westchester Journal News…

…with one additional thought:
We’re not lawyers, but there are times when the logic of a particular course of action is so clear and the consequences of not following it are so potentially unfair, that they cry out for expert legal counsel and the dispassionate scrutiny of a judge and jury in a calm and orderly formal legal setting.

In our humble estimation this is precisely such a case and that is exactly how we believe it should go. But don’t take our word for it; read the cited article and decide for yourself.