Posted: Tue 30 Nov 2004 03:36 Post subject: A Resurgence of Racism?
Incidents of Racism Staining Game Across Europe
November 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEVILLE, Spain, Nov. 27 (AP) - Spaniards used to say they
lived in one of Europe's most racially tolerant countries.
Soccer has shattered that myth.
In Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu stadium - the Yankee Stadium
of soccer - Spanish fans bellowed out monkey noises
recently each time a black English player touched the ball
in a match between England and Spain.
A month earlier, the Spanish national coach, Luis Aragones,
was caught by a TV crew using racist language when talking
about the French star striker Thierry Henry. He kept his
job with little protest at home.
"I was shocked and I am still shocked at what happened,"
said Joseph S. Blatter, president of FIFA, soccer's world
governing body. "I am sad at this new expression of racism
in a stadium that has been a temple of football."
Spain isn't the only European country where racism leaves
its stain on soccer.
Four days after the abuse in Madrid, the black striker
Dwight Yorke said he was subjected to racist gestures and
noises in Birmingham City's game at Blackburn. Police
opened an investigation.
The French club Paris St. Germain has an area where only
white fans are welcome; another section is open to Paris's
many Arab and black immigrants.
Fans of the Czech team Sparta Prague still shout "Slavia
Jude" (Slavia Jew) against local rivals Slavia Prague. The
chant dates from the pre-World War II era, when Slavia fans
included many Jewish businessmen.
Fans of the Greek club Panathinaikos are under
investigation for racial taunts last month against black
players from the English club Arsenal.
Two black players for the French club Bastia were roughed
up and insulted by 30 fans after a match earlier this
month.
Major League Baseball broke its color line in 1947 when
Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was
taunted for years, and it wasn't until the 1960's that
civil rights laws and antiracism campaigns allowed blacks
to move easily into major pro and college sports.
Countries like Spain have traditionally sent citizens
abroad, and began to experience widespread immigration only
in the past two decades. Spaniards often say they entered
the 20th century in 1975 - the year dictator Francisco
Franco died.
"It took immigrants coming to this country for us to
realize that we can be racist like any other country, like
anybody else," said Tomas Calvo Buezas, director of the
Center for Studies of Migration and Racism at Complutense
University in Madrid.
About 7.5 percent of Spain's 40 million citizens are
immigrants. The figure is higher in Madrid, where 13
percent are foreign born, Calvo Buezas said.
"Soccer stirs up raw emotions," said Isabel Torrado,
working at Dehesa Santa Maria, a cafe-bar just 100 yards
from the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan stadium - home of the
Sevilla soccer team. Several black men sat outside on
benches, with overstuffed athletic bags at their feet.
"We have poor people coming around looking for work, and 70
percent of Spaniards barely have a cent saved in the bank,"
she said.
After France won the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European
championship with a team dominated by black and North
African immigrants, 39 percent in a French survey said
there were too many foreign-born players on the team.
Fans at the Italian clubs Lazio and Verona have been warned
about racist goading.
Known as Europe's most tolerant country, the Netherlands
has had repeated racial incidents and violence at The
Hague-based club Ado Den Haag. The Dutch powers Ajax and
Feyenoord also have notorious fans.
The former Yugoslav national coach Ivica Osim said soccer
racism in the almost entirely white Balkans stemmed from a
deep-seated "inferiority complex against larger, richer
clubs or countries."
Stefan Szymanski, economics professor at Tanaka Business
School in London, said: "The racism in football is all
about national identity. It's a way of cementing your
identity and singling out people who are not like you."
Soccer racism is also a problem in Israel, where 20 percent
of the population is Arab.
"Today there is no game where they don't curse Arabs, even
if there aren't any on the field," said Rifat Turk, an Arab
who played for the Israeli national team in the 1980's.
"People yell 'Death to the Arabs' like it's going out of
style."
Despite antiracism campaigns by UEFA, the governing body of
European soccer, and denunciations of racial abuse by FIFA,
the message often goes unheeded.
Spain and much of Europe have laws against racism, but
Calvo Buezas said they were not enforced.
"People are not used to the fact that being racist in
public is reprehensible," he said.
Last week, UEFA increased fines for racial incidents by
Sevilla and Sparta Prague. Sparta must pay $51,200 and
Sevilla $21,300, small amounts in a sport where top players
earn millions.
Two days after the England game in Madrid, the Spanish
Coalition against Racism in Football set up a telephone hot
line to report racist incidents and sent an apology letter
to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The incidents tarnished Madrid's image as it bids to play
host to the 2012 Olympics. The city is competing against
Paris, London, New York and Moscow.
FIFA says it could be several months before Spain is
punished, with a fine the most likely penalty.
That doesn't satisfy Piara Powar, who heads an antiracism
program for England's Football Association. He wants Spain
suspended from all European soccer.
"This is not a cycle of events to be dealt with simply by a
fine and a slap on the wrist," Powar said.
Eduardo Torrico, assistant sports editor at the Spanish
sports daily AS, said: "The only way to stop it is to take
points away in World Cup qualification. Only something
stern will make people wake up."
Letter from Africa: After Apartheid: Heated Words About Rape and Race
November 24, 2004
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa's president, Thabo M. Mbeki,
frequently uses his personal essay, posted every Friday on
the Web site of the governing African National Congress, to
express blunt views on the state of race relations. So it
was no surprise when, in early autumn, he vowed anew to
battle those who stereotype blacks as "lazy, liars,
foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral, sexually
depraved, animalistic, savage - and rapist."
The surprise was his target, Charlene Smith, a white South
African journalist who had been Mr. Mbeki's friend and ally
in the long battle against apartheid. In a newspaper
article this fall, Ms. Smith had written that a slight drop
in reported rapes cited in the government's latest crime
report belied South Africa's failure to fight sexual
violence and the horrifying consequences for rape victims
who become infected with H.I.V. The headline was a grabber:
"Rape has become a sickening way of life in our land."
Mr. Mbeki's explosive response, and the succeeding month of
incendiary fallout, have had almost nothing to do with
rape. But they speak volumes about the continuing
sensitivity of black-white relations in a nation that in
the past decade has made its name as a global symbol of
tolerance.
In his essay, Mr. Mbeki condemned Ms. Smith for
perpetuating a white image of black men as "savage beasts,"
unable to control their sexual urges. That touched off a
shouting match on the floor of Parliament in which white
legislators accused Mr. Mbeki of dodging the issues of
sexual violence and AIDS, and the president accused them of
pretending that racism died with apartheid.
Since then, commentators across the racial spectrum have
sparred over whether Mr. Mbeki was spotlighting racism or
inventing racist motives for those who disagreed with his
views on AIDS and sexual violence.
Rhoda Kadalie, a black human rights activist in Cape Town,
took the latter view. "I think it is unbecoming of the
president to single out a citizen for castigation," she
said in a telephone interview. "If we are going to brag
that we are the rainbow nation, then people have a right to
say what they think."
She said Mr. Mbeki was obsessed with his own notions of
race and was far too touchy about issues of black male
sexuality. As a result, she said, he is failing to fight
sexual violence and AIDS while "this country is being
depopulated of its young women."
But the City Press, which bills itself as the nation's
biggest English-language newspaper aimed at black readers,
said Mr. Mbeki had nailed a white stereotype of blacks. Its
editorial challenged whites to follow the president's lead
and "speak up about the kind of dinner table conversations
that go on when black people aren't around."
In another era, Ms. Smith's history of arrests under
apartheid might have helped settle the argument. But
Shadrack Gutto, a black professor who heads the Center for
African Renaissance Studies here, said whites could not
claim to be free of racism today by virtue of antiapartheid
activism a decade ago. Rooting out racism, he said, is a
matter of "continuous engagement with oneself."
Still, Mr. Gutto suggested, Mr. Mbeki overreacted. "I don't
think she was saying that black people are prone to rape,"
he said.
The war of words has been all the foggier because Ms.
Smith's article in the weekly Sunday Independent relied in
part on questionable statistics to make its case. She wrote
that 41 percent of rape victims in South Africa are under
the age of 12; according to the South African police, the
true figure is 12 percent.
Ms. Smith contended that gangs committed three of four
rapes here, a figure she said she gathered from rape
clinics. Lisa Vetten, an analyst with the Center for
Violence and Reconciliation here, says the correct figure
is about one in three.
Although she disputes Ms. Smith's statistics, Ms. Vetten
does not defend Mr. Mbeki's response. "Mbeki definitely has
a problem, there is no getting away with it," she said.
"Whether we have the highest rate of rape in the world or
the 15th highest rate, is irrelevant. It is too much."
Mr. Mbeki also said in his essay that Ms. Smith embraced
erroneous statistics because she believed that African men
were conditioned to be sexual predators. He cited an
opinion piece she wrote four years ago that said in part
that South Africa's AIDS epidemic would continue "until we
understand the role of tradition and religion - and of a
culture in which rape is endemic."
Later, on the floor of Parliament, Mr. Mbeki reworded her
statement to be more inflammatory. When a white legislator
pressed him to disavow his criticism of Ms. Smith, Mr.
Mbeki responded that a white South African woman -
unmistakably Ms. Smith - had written that "our cultures,
religion and social norms as Africans condition us to be
rampant sexual beasts unable to control our urges, unable
to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants."
He took that language not from Ms. Smith's own writings,
but from an article on how whites view blacks, published by
Edward Rhymes, a visiting African-American professor from
the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Mr. Mbeki
attributed the same statement to both Ms. Smith and Mr.
Rhymes.
In an interview, Ms. Smith said she had hoped to provoke a
discussion about rape, not race. After she herself was
raped in 1999 - an event that led her to champion better
treatment of rape victims - she wrote that rape "is about
what a few sick individuals do" and "has nothing to do with
race."
"What Mbeki has done is make it a race issue," she said.
"He really must not do this, because it will fracture our
society again."
Ms. Smith says fracture, Mr. Mbeki says mend. In a later
essay to party members, he said he would continue to insist
that racism be talked about in the open, no matter how many
times he is accused of "playing the race card."
He and Ms. Smith, meanwhile, don't discuss it at all. Once
friends and drinking buddies, they have not spoken since
1996, she said, after she wrote an article critical of his
political tactics as deputy president.
AIDS Unawareness: In South Africa, Denial Is a Form of Protection
November 28, 2004
By ROGER COHEN
GUGULETU, South Africa - This is a poor and dust-blown
place where love and trust kill.
The young woman asks her suitor to use a condom. He says
she doesn't trust him. She insists that he respect her
request. He argues that if she loved him, she would not
suspect him of sleeping around. She explains that it's not
a question of love but survival. He cajoles her: trust me,
love me, all will be well.
All is not well in this township of wood and
corrugated-iron shacks near Cape Town, where the incidence
of H.I.V. infection and AIDS continues to rise,
particularly among women, as it does all across sub-Saharan
Africa. Awareness of the disease and the availability of
treatment are growing, but, as Dr. Liesl Page-Shipp, an
AIDS expert, put it: "I don't think we yet have a handle on
changing people's sexual behavior. So as a nation, we are
in serious trouble."
The troubles are easy to enumerate: perhaps one million
South Africans already dead from AIDS, from four to five
million people infected with H.I.V., a tiny fraction of
those receiving antiretroviral medication, and women now
about three times more likely than men to become infected.
A report issued last week by the United Nations said women
now account for 60 percent of all infections in sub-Saharan
Africa.
The sexual behavior - unprotected sex with multiple
partners in sordid settings - is less easy to elucidate.
This is post-apartheid sex, as dictated by lingering
poverty, violence, the vulnerability of young black women
with scant prospects, and the prevalence of migrant black
male laborers uprooted from wives and homes.
In places like Guguletu, where unemployment is about 60
percent, it is clear enough that the fight against AIDS in
Africa is also a fight against the continent's painful
legacy of exploitation, racism, corruption and waste.
Medicines help, but they resemble armored divisions in the
fight against terrorism: they will win some important
victories, but they will not take you to the root of the
problem.
Mzihkona Nofemela, 32, grew up poor in Guguletu. He did
time in prison for killing a young white American named Amy
Biehl in the midst of the uprising against apartheid. A
small, lithe man with eyes that harden as fast as an
African storm, he now does social work for a foundation set
up by the Biehl family.
"Girls are unemployed here and looking for a few cents," he
says. "They end up victimized by the sugar daddies' talk of
trust and love. People are aware of AIDS, but when they
have a few drinks, all they see is a bed."
It is the middle of the day. The sun beats down in a white
glare. Five of Mr. Nofemela's friends are seated under a
tree. Aged from 26 to 34, they are idle in a patch of
African shade. No work, they say, nothing to do but talk.
When a young woman in a short skirt passes, their heads
turn in unison.
"Our job," Tokelo Pienaar says, "is to sit here waiting for
a miracle."
Absent miracles, what of H.I.V.? Mr. Pienaar had a test a
few years back, it was negative, and he is now too scared
to go back for another. Richard Mokhapela, seated next to
him, says he prefers to be ignorant. If you know you're
H.I.V. positive, you think you're going to die. Your family
distances itself, and so do friends. Better not to know.
"Of course," he adds, "if your girlfriend gets pregnant,
that's when you're likely to find out."
The Western Cape Health Department, the country's most
advanced in fighting AIDS, routinely tests pregnant women
for H.I.V. The prevalence of the virus among pregnant women
in 2003 was 13.1 percent, up from 12.4 percent the previous
year and 8.6 percent in 2001. The national rate among
pregnant women in 2003 was 27.9 percent.
The men drift into a nearby "shabeen," or bar: a billiard
table, a jukebox, big speakers on the rough timber walls,
the stale waft of urine, young men sitting around drinking
beer or gazing out the window at people filling buckets
with water from a tap.
Somebody puts on a song called "Ladies' Night (Treat Her
Like Heaven)." The rhythm is insistent and sensual, much
stronger, more immediate, than those well-intentioned
exhortations from the United States and the developed
world: abstinence, fidelity, use of condoms. In this place,
such calls seem almost risibly far-fetched.
The front line of AIDS is in places like these, the
fly-infested corners of a poor continent. But the
government has been slow to act. Most experts think South
Africa lost three years in the AIDS fight through President
Thabo Mbeki's flirtation, now apparently abandoned, with
the denialist science that questions the link between
H.I.V. and AIDS.
Mr. Mbeki remains sensitive about the subject. Asked last
month by a white member of Parliament if he believed the
prevalence of rape played any role in the spread of AIDS,
Mr. Mbeki exploded. The "disease of racism," he declared,
lay behind portrayals of South African blacks as "lazy,
liars, foul-smelling, diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral,
sexually depraved, animalistic, savage and rapist."
The outburst demonstrated how, a decade after the collapse
of apartheid, the legacy of that racist system and a huge
AIDS epidemic form an explosive brew.
Under apartheid, the portrayal of blacks as sexual animals
was integral to a white policy of dehumanizing them. Such
stereotypes do not vanish overnight from white psyches
formed over decades of apartheid.
Mr. Mbeki's government, aware of this, remains torn between
its promise last year to provide antiretroviral drugs to
all AIDS patients and a lingering anger over the past. The
result often appears to be ambivalence, resulting in a slow
rollout of drugs.
Dr. Jendayi E. Frazer, the American ambassador, said in an
interview that it would be helpful if the country's "top
leadership would speak out more about H.I.V. and AIDS." She
suggested that greater forthrightness would help dispel the
stigma that hinders treatment.
Still, progress is being made. Money from the Global Fund
to Fight AIDS and President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS
Relief are bringing more treatment in more clinics to more
people.
Dr. Fareed Abdullah, the head of the AIDS program for the
Western Cape government, says South Africa now faces "the
camel's hump of mortality." If treatment is not
energetically pressed, five million South Africans may die
of AIDS over the next 10 years. Women are the most
vulnerable, he says, both socially and physiologically.
"With treatment," Dr. Abdullah says, "those deaths will be
spread over 25 to 30 years."
In one of the new clinics in the township of Khayelitsha,
population 350,000, Sipphokazi Salie, 22, waits to see a
doctor. She has known she had H.I.V. since July 2003. "I
had a boyfriend from the Eastern Cape," she says. "I was
too shy to ask him to wear a condom."
She lost her virginity when she was 14. Her mother, Sylvia,
died of AIDS in 1997 at the age of 34. Before her death,
Sylvia talked to her daughter about AIDS and condoms, but
Ms. Salie says, "I was young and did not take things
seriously."
She still looks young: short hair, gentle face, pink
handbag at her side. But her soft eyes are shot through
with anxiety.
Ms. Salie is one of the estimated 13.3 million women in
sub-Saharan Africa who are H.I.V positive. She has a son,
aged 4 and healthy. With the right treatment, Ms. Salie
will be able to raise him. Without it, this young woman
will probably be dead within two or three years; her son
will join Africa's growing legions of orphans.
"Forget love and trust," she says. "Just protect yourself."
If only it were that simple.
Roger Cohen writes the "Globalist" column for The
International Herald Tribune.
washingtonpost.com
Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
School Segregation Remains a State Law as Amendment Is Defeated
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 28, 2004; Page A01
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- On that long-ago day of Alabama's great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state's constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close -- a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million -- that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment's saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church -- a short drive from Wallace's schoolhouse door -- don't have to strain to remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black school.
"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school administrator. "They're holding on to things that are long since past. It's almost like a religion."
There are competing theories about the defeat of Amendment 2, the measure that would have taken "colored children" and segregated schools out of Alabama's constitution. One says latent, persistent racism was to blame; another says voters are suspicious of all constitutional amendments; and a third says it was not about race but about taxes.
The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the separate-schools language and the removal of a passage -- inserted in the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education ruling against segregated public schools -- that said Alabama's constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education. Leading opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children." But, employing an argument that was ridiculed by most of the state's newspapers and by legions of legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for improvements in its public school system.
The argument plays to Alabama's primal fear of federal control, a fear born of years of resentment over U.S. courts' ordering the desegregation of schools and the creation of black-majority legislative districts.
"Activists on the bench know no bounds," Giles said. "It's a trial lawyer's dream."
Giles was aided by a virtually unparalleled Alabama celebrity in his battle against the amendment, distributing testimonials from former chief justice Roy Moore, whose fame was sealed in 2003 when he defied a federal court order to remove a two-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court. They were joined by former Moore aide Tom Parker, who handed out miniature Confederate flags this fall during his successful campaign for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.
Arguing that the amendment could lead to higher taxes is a potent strategy in Alabama, which is one of the nation's most lightly taxed states and which resoundingly rejected a record $1.2 billion tax increase proposed last year by Gov. Bob Riley (R), a conservative, to pay for school improvements and lessen the tax burden on the poor. But many blacks view the Amendment 2 opponents' tax pitch as a smoke screen.
As the vote results sink in, the deacons and the Bible-toting ladies at the Bethel church here have spoken of dark conspiracies, of sinister agendas. They speak from experience.
Vertia Killings, 72, was riding on a bus that had to be rerouted because of the commotion at the University of Alabama on the day Wallace -- who eventually renounced his segregationist past -- made his stand. Her father, Benny Mack, paid a $45 poll tax and "ate a little less" because of it, she said. Others chose to eat instead of vote.
Killings does not see the amendment's defeat as a matter of mere symbolism, even though Alabama's constitutional ban on integrated schools was trumped -- then and now -- by federal law. She has watched school testing results with growing uneasiness.
Black students in Alabama have struggled on some national tests, with 73 percent of black eighth-graders rated below basic competency in math, compared with 32 percent of white eighth-graders. Killings also frets about Alabama schools -- just as schools in many other parts of the country -- steadfastly resegregating. This phenomenon, which is getting increased attention among national education experts, is attributed to a kaleidoscope of factors, including the suburban migration of white families, private school expansion and the rising popularity of home schooling among white conservatives.
"It seems like we're having a reversal," Killings said.
It matters not at all to Killings and her friends that the amendment's opponents say they want to remove the segregated-schools portion of the constitution but cannot abide by guaranteeing a public education and fear mandates for higher education taxes. The people who are most affected by poorly funded schools are the same people who were affected in another era by poll taxes: poor blacks and poor whites.
"I don't know but a few black folks who can afford to send their kids to private school," said Charles Steele Jr., a former Democratic member of the Alabama legislature who lives here and is national vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
This is not the first time that Steele has tangled with Alabama's constitution, a gigantic document that has more than 740 amendments and more than 310,000 words, making it the world's longest, at nearly 40 times the length of the U.S. Constitution. Four years ago, voters repealed a constitutional amendment banning interracial marriage.
The state constitution, which most historians agree was written to protect large landowners and to disenfranchise blacks, is so riddled with antiquated wording that some high school students in Birmingham make an annual trip to the city library for a project known as the search for "the loony laws."
Yet the constitution, with its racist past and its racist present, only grows. On Nov. 2, it was amended three times -- numbers 743, 744 and 745.
Giles has said he would support taking out the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children" as long as the part about not guaranteeing a right to an education is kept.
Ken Guin, the Democratic House majority leader who wrote Amendment 2, is talking about trying again. Next time, he said, he might do it Giles's way.
Recount to Start on Alabama Amendment
November 28, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:52 p.m. ET
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Election officials will begin
recounting votes Monday on a narrowly rejected ballot
measure that would have removed segregation-era language
from the state Constitution.
The amendment was defeated by 1,850, or .13 percent,
according to the final vote tally. Alabama law requires an
automatic recount if the margin is within a half percent.
The amendment would have removed un-enforced language
mandating racial segregation from the state Constitution,
which was written in 1901.
Secretary of State Nancy Worley said she doesn't expect the
recount to change the final election results, ``if all the
correct procedures are followed.'' She said most counties
will finish the recount in one day.
Most of Alabama's 67 counties use ballots that are scanned
into machines and the recount would simply require poll
workers to run the votes through the machines again.
Opponents claim that part of the amendment could lead to
higher property taxes by letting courts declare that
education is a constitutional right and then order spending
increases for underfunded public schools. Proponents said
it would erase segregationist language many consider
embarrassing.
Several legislators have promised to reintroduce the
measure if it fails, removing the language that some
believe would leave the door open for tax increases.
Banned in Boston: American Indians, but Only for 329 Years
November 25, 2004
By KATIE ZEZIMA
BOSTON, Nov. 24 - It is a prejudicial, archaic concept that
prohibited Native Americans from entering a city for fear
members of their "barbarous crew" would cause residents to
be "exposed to mischief."
But it is more than notions and phrases in Boston. A ban on
Indians entering Boston has been the law since 1675.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino took a step toward repealing the ban
on Wednesday, filing a home rule petition. Mr. Menino said
a repeal would remove the last vestiges of discrimination
from a vibrant, diverse city that is looking past old
racial conflicts.
"This law has no place in Boston," Mr. Menino said.
"Fortunately this act is no longer enforced. But as long as
it remains on the books, this law will tarnish our image.
Hatred and discrimination have no place in Boston.
Tolerance, equality and respect - these are the attributes
of our city."
Joanne Dunn, executive director of the Boston Native
American Center, said she laughed a bit as she drove into
Boston on Wednesday, realizing that she was, technically,
breaking the law (being without benefit of the "two
musketeers" required to escort American Indians with
business in the city). "For us indigenous people it brings
some closure," Ms. Dunn said. "You come into the City of
Boston and it crosses your mind that you're not welcome
here."
The Boston City Council, which in April 2003 unanimously
passed a resolution calling for repeal, must now approve
the petition to remove the ban. The repeal must then pass
the legislature and be signed by Gov. Mitt Romney.
A spokeswoman for Robert E. Travaglini, the president of
the State Senate, said Mr. Travaglini had not seen the
petition and would allow the City Council to act before
considering action. A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney, a
Republican, said he had not seen the petition either and
would be "happy to take a look at it" when it crossed his
desk.
Felix Arroyo, a city councilman, said he expected the
measure to pass unanimously at a council meeting on Dec. 1.
"I think all of us will look forward to voting yes on
this," Mr. Arroyo said.
The Massachusetts General Court enacted the law, called the
Indian Imprisonment Act, in 1675. The legislation came at
the height of King Philip's War, a conflict between the
Wampanoag tribe, led by Metacom, known as Philip, and
settlers near Plymouth, Mass. The war began in 1675 with a
raid on the town of Swansea and spread across
Massachusetts, spilling north to New Hampshire and south to
Connecticut. The war, one of the bloodiest on American
soil, ended the next year.
The law rolled over when the state's Constitution was
enacted in 1780 and has lingered for centuries, with no one
taking the steps to repeal it. The Muhheconnew National
Confederacy, a lobbying group based in Falmouth, Mass.,
started pushing for repeal in 1996 after working with the
city to protect Indian burial grounds on the Boston Harbor
islands. The group petitioned the legislature, then the
city, and received the necessary resolution last year. It
renewed the push in July, before the Democratic National
Convention.
"It means a great thing," said Sam Sapiel, 73, a member of
the Penobscot Nation of Maine who lives in Falmouth and
worked with the Muhheconnew Confederacy on the repeal.
"It's what we've been striving for."
It was little coincidence that Mr. Menino signed the
petition the day before Thanksgiving. The podium at the
news conference was decorated with a splash of crimson
chrysanthemums, and the desk Mr. Menino used to sign the
petition was festooned with a pumpkin and other gourds. An
Indian leader also invoked the holiday.
"Being so close to Thanksgiving, this is a good day for
native people," said Beverly Wright, a member of the
Wampanoag tribe of Martha's Vineyard, the state's only
federally recognized tribe. "It's been on the books for a
long time."
Ms. Wright believes there might be other, similarly
discriminatory laws. Mr. Menino said he would look into the
possibility of repealing them.
November 28, 2004
By STEPHEN KINZER and MONICA DAVEY
DOBIE, Wis., Nov. 27 - The two gatherings, less than 200
miles apart, seemed to be separated by whole worlds.
In this isolated village deep in the pine and cedar woods
of the Upper Midwest, mourners trudged through falling snow
on Friday to Our Lady of Lourdes Church to remember one of
six hunters, all locals, killed near here a week ago.
To the southwest, across the state line in Minnesota,
thousands of Hmong immigrants streamed into a downtown St.
Paul auditorium for three days of New Year's festivities
with papaya salad, traditional courtship games and young
women in dresses covered in gently clinking coins that
echoed through the halls.
The only link between the somber Wisconsin gathering, which
followed the most violent rampage in anyone's memory here,
and the mostly festive Minnesota gathering, one of the most
important annual meetings for Hmong people, was a shared
concern: the depth of the scars left behind by the
shootings last Sunday that left six white hunters from the
North Woods dead and a Hmong immigrant from St. Paul in
jail, accused in the deaths.
In three decades, St. Paul has drawn at least 25,000 Hmong
immigrants, transforming it into what they call the Hmong
capital of America. Even there, it has not always been an
easy fit, with so many Hmong refugees arriving so rapidly,
often with no English and little education or urban job
skills. The Hmong are from large farming families in Laos,
where the Central Intelligence Agency recruited many of
them to be part of an anti-Communist secret army in the
Vietnam War.
The northernmost edges of Wisconsin, meanwhile, are made up
mostly of people of European descent. Many come from
Scandinavian, German, Czech and French Canadian
backgrounds.
For all their differences, the native Wisconsin residents
and the Asian immigrants from St. Paul share a love of
hunting.
For generations of Wisconsin families, the deer season has
come to mean a time to bond with friends, to wander the
woods and to pass along life's secrets to the next
generation. And for generations, those families had the
woods mostly to themselves. Then, about 30 years ago, came
the Hmong, for whom hunting is one of the rare realms in
which America's fast-paced culture meshes neatly with their
old ways.
Hmong elders have come to use hunting as a chance to share
at least one rural cultural tradition with the youngest
among them, some of whom never saw the hills of Laos.
In the November deer season, the two groups have often met
in the woods and sometimes clashed, but mostly quietly
until last Sunday. Some said they feared those tensions
would now grow amid raw feelings of intrusion on one side
and exclusion on the other.
In Wisconsin, mourners said they were still dazed by what
occurred after a group of local hunters confronted Chai
Soua Vang, 36, of St. Paul, who, the police say, was using
their tree stand to hunt on their property.
The police say Mr. Vang, a naturalized citizen and former
Army national guardsman who immigrated 24 years ago, opened
fire on the hunting party after he was told to leave.
Waiting for the start of Friday's funeral service for Mark
Roidt, 28, one man turned to another and said, "This is
going to be a horrible week."
His friend replied, "The worst week ever."
Mike
Katterhagen, another mourner, said he and many of his
neighbors felt anger about what happened, but added, "I
don't know if you can place it at who."
Asked if people here had a negative attitude toward Asians
or people of other races, Mr. Katterhagen replied,
"Personally, I don't." Then he added, "Some people, I
think, may have it."
In St. Paul, many at the Hmong New Year events said they
feared retribution for the killings. Some said they would
not hunt for a while. Many said they were embarrassed by
the acts another Hmong-American was accused of, but the
case also made them recall experiences with ethnic
misunderstanding.
Some said they wondered whether there was more to the case
- and thought they might have gained some understanding
when they learned Mr. Vang had told the police that the
local hunters used ethnic slurs against him and fired at
him before he started shooting. A police statement by a
hunter wounded in the incident makes no mention of ethnic
slurs.
"I mostly ignore what people call me, but it does hurt,"
said Va Pao Xiong, a college student in Wisconsin who was
celebrating the New Year in St. Paul on Friday. "They have
called me 'chink' and things like that. And it makes you
wonder whether they even understand who the Hmong people
are, where we come from, or what we've been through."
Like many others here, Mr. Xiong, who is 24, has distinct
and painful memories of his family's flight from Laos.
After Communists won power there, the Hmong people, who had
rescued downed American pilots and fought North Vietnamese
soldiers, said they found themselves under attack and began
fleeing through the jungles, escaping across the Mekong
River and ending up as refugees in Thailand and elsewhere.
In part as a show of gratitude for their sacrifice in the
Vietnam War, the United States has allowed tens of
thousands of Hmong people to come here.
This year, as many as 15,000 Hmong refugees still waiting
at a bleak camp in Thailand called Wat Tham Krabok were
granted permission to come to this country. In the past few
months, some of them have moved to St. Paul, a city of
300,000.
The new arrivals brought new questions to City Hall from
some residents: how could the city, in tough budget times,
afford to help more Hmong refugees, especially those who
lacked adequate medical, educational and psychological help
for years at the camp in Thailand?
A city analysis in January found that 34 percent of Hmong
families in St. Paul had incomes below the poverty level in
the year 2000, compared with 31 percent in the black
community and 20 percent among Hispanics. In September, a
poll conducted by The Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public
Radio found that Minnesotans, by 42 percent to 37 percent,
believed that the cost of helping immigrants start their
new lives outweighed their economic, social and other
contributions.
Then came the events of last Sunday.
"It's difficult to be Hmong-American right now," said Mee
Moua, a Hmong in the Minnesota State Senate. "There's an
expectation that the Hmong-American community ought to be
answerable, or ought to be responsible for this one man's
action."
Ms. Moua said that was absurd: "Don't hold our community to
blame for something one individual has done."
That sentiment was echoed in Wisconsin, where some
mourners, like John Zoellick, said they had not heard any
negative comments or slurs against Asians or Hmong people
in the days since the killings.
"Any negative feeling is directed toward the one
individual, since he did something that is just totally
inexcusable," Mr. Zoellick said. "It's not aimed against
any group."
Nearly everyone interviewed at the New Year celebrations in
St. Paul said they had experienced name-calling at some
point. Elee Vang, a 19-year-old who is Miss Deaf Minnesota,
said she was once spit at by a white boy on a bus. Workers
at Tswvtxos Yang's old manufacturing job used to call him
Bruce Lee, he said.
Many said they had been called by the very names Mr. Vang
told police the white hunters hollered at him.
In Laos, hunting was a crucial part of the culture and
important for survival, said Cha Vang, the son of Gen. Vang
Pao, who worked closely with the C.I.A. in the war and who
remains a revered leader of Hmong people in America.
(Thousands rose and cheered him in St. Paul when he arrived
in the auditorium for New Year festivities.)
"It was different in Laos though," said Mr. Vang, who is no
relation to Chai Soua Vang. "You could hunt all year round
and there was all public lands."
The restrictions in this country have led to conflicts,
with some white people complaining that Hmong people ignore
or are unable to read fishing limits, clothing rules and
permit requirements.
On the other side, Hmong hunters have complained about
mistreatment and harassment by white hunters. Since last
Sunday, Ms. Moua said she had received so many reports of
such incidents that she was considering calling for public
hearings on the issue.
Tou Ger Xiong, a Hmong comedian, rapper and motivational
speaker from St. Paul, said his father, who speaks little
English, was once approached by a white hunter who simply
demanded his gun. He said another white hunter ordered his
brother to leave a tree stand he had built on public land,
and threatened to use a chainsaw to tear it down.
But people in Wisconsin said that complaints by some Asian
hunters of insults or harassment from white hunters were
exaggerated.
"I haven't heard any anger against the Hmong," said Patty
Behrndt, manager of a bookstore in Rice Lake, the main town
in this part of the North Woods. "Not anger, just disbelief
and confusion. People aren't able to make out why or how.
You hear talk now about racism, but I don't see it."
Laurel Steffes, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources, said she was unaware of tensions
between Hmong and white hunters.
"We've had our ear to the ground since this happened," she
said, "and we're not picking up on that at all."
The mourning continued on Saturday, as a funeral for two
more of the victims, Robert Crotteau, 42, and his
20-year-old son, Joey, was held in Rice Lake. The Crotteau
family is large and well established here, with the local
telephone directory showing 30 listings for that name.
Some arriving mourners said they were still too much in
shock to analyze what had happened.
"It's just all so stunning," said one mourner, who gave his
name as Aaron. "There's hardly anything else you can feel,
not at this point."
In addition to the six people killed, two men were wounded
in the shooting. Both attended Mr. Roidt's service on
Friday. One of them, Lauren Hesebeck, who wore a blue sling
to support his wounded left arm, has told the police that
Mr. Vang fired the first shots, according to a police
document.
All of the victims lived in or near Rice Lake, a town of
8,300 where many people have known each other since school
days, and most of the rest came to escape crowds and enjoy
rural life.
In Rice Lake, Greg Swanson and his daughter were hanging
lights on their outdoor Christmas tree. Mr. Swanson said he
and other people here were "waiting for someone to take us
from this unreal situation to some kind of explanation of
why a guy would just open up like that."
Along Main Street this weekend, ribbons of bright orange,
the color of hunters' jackets, hung above Christmas
wreaths.
With more funerals running through the weekend and into
Monday, Larry Jarvela, the mayor of Rice Lake, was still
groping for an explanation.
"It's so senseless," he said. "Why did it have to happen?"
"We don't have any population of Asians," Mr. Jarvela said,
and Census statistics largely bear him out. Here in Barron
County, the 2000 census counted just 145 people of Asian
descent, less than 1 percent of the population.
Mr. Jarvela said he had never heard about clashes between
white and nonwhite hunters, but he added that because
northern Wisconsin was very large, "if you happen to have
an incident, nobody knows about it."
At last count, a week ago, nearly 645,000 hunting licenses
had been issued in this state for the nine-day regular gun
season that ends on Sunday. In just the first two days,
hunters reported bagging 140,000 deer, Ms. Steffes said.
The Rice Lake City Council here may soon consider a
proposal to rename a city park in honor of the six people
killed, Mr. Jarvela said. The likely choice for a new name
is Hunters' Park.
Stephen Kinzer reported from Dobie for this article, and
Monica Davey from St. Paul.
L.I. Clash on Immigrants Is Gaining Political Force
November 29, 2004
By PATRICK HEALY
Everywhere Steve Levy went last year in his successful
campaign for Suffolk County executive, he said, he heard
the same complaints. A new wave of Hispanic immigrants had
swept Long Island, and many residents were furious about
the overcrowded homes and lines of day laborers they saw in
their towns. They told Mr. Levy they wanted action.
This month, Mr. Levy floated a proposal to deputize some
Suffolk County police officers, giving them the power to
detain people found to be in the United States illegally
after being taken into custody on other charges. Right now,
Suffolk police and corrections officers say, they are
prohibited from asking immigrants whether they are in the
country legally. Mr. Levy's proposal, which he later
amended, was met by objections from the police unions.
Mr. Levy said his intent was to fight crime by focusing the
effort on criminals like gang members, not ordinary
immigrants. But advocacy groups and residents of Suffolk
and Nassau Counties say the proposal is a sign of the
times. They say the issue of illegal immigration is rapidly
gathering political force in Long Island's patchwork of
historically white suburban hamlets, and as the complaints
grow, politicians are responding with get-tough rhetoric,
crackdowns and new laws.
"Public opinion has changed," said Sue Grant, one of
several Farmingville residents who rise each morning to
stand on street corners and demonstrate against the day
laborers in their community. "More and more people are
coming forward and saying, 'I'm sick of this.' They don't
want this anymore."
It is the latest knot in Long Island's wrenching struggle
to digest the thousands of Hispanic immigrants - many of
them day laborers - who have arrived in the past decade and
at a record pace in the last three years, drawn by jobs in
construction and landscaping and other blue-collar work.
One result is a commensurate strain on public services like
schools, garbage collection and sewer systems in an area
where residents pay some of the highest taxes in the
country.
Communities across the nation - from Mesa, Ariz., to
Hoover, Ala., to Freehold, N.J. - have faced similar
struggles. Day laborers have been shut out and demonstrated
against, and have become the targets of political
campaigns. There has been tension in many villages and
cities and violence in isolated spots. But observers and
local politicians said that rarely has the fight seemed so
bitter or raged so long as on Long Island, where violence
has erupted in recent years and Mr. Levy's proposal is just
one of many with support from politicians and residents.
Long Island's stratified hamlets and villages, its history
of segregation by race and by economic status, its need for
cheap laborers to do work rejected by others and its lack
of rental housing have set a unique stage for this fight,
experts said.
"People came here in the 50's and 60's and early 70's
thinking they were getting away from the problems of the
city," said Stefan Krieger, who runs Hofstra University's
Housing Rights Clinic. "In the city, with diversity, you
celebrate it. Out here, not at all. You see different-color
people on the street and for some reason, there's some
dissonance."
That dissonance is growing louder, its tone more varied.
While some communities like Glen Cove and Freeport have
arranged for hiring halls for the day laborers who line
street corners, others have roundly rejected the idea.
Farmingdale has stepped up traffic enforcement to
discourage contractors from picking up day laborers, and
several village officials say they are planning to demolish
apartments that they say are chock full of immigrants. They
argue that the buildings are rife with code violations and
not worth preserving.
The Town of Brookhaven has set up an informal task force to
investigate code violations and complaints about homes
crowded with day laborers. A town councilwoman, Geraldine
Esposito, said she was searching for ways to tighten the
town's Neighborhood Preservation Act, further limiting the
number of people in a home. "We're trying to solve a
problem that's almost unsolvable for the town," she said.
"Where are these men going to go? They should go back home
to where their home is. There is no pot of gold here unless
they can do it legally."
Campaigns for village and town offices have ramped up their
rhetoric, promising to do everything possible to get day
laborers off the streets.
Local officials say their actions and ideas are necessary,
fair and colorblind. They said they are not singling out
Hispanic immigrants, but are trying to break up the
networks of overcrowded homes, unlicensed contractors and
absentee landlords that exploit day laborers.
"It's been ignored, totally ignored," said Mr. Levy, a
Democrat who was elected on a platform of fiscal austerity
and better management of the county, on the eastern end of
Long Island, and its roughly 1.5 million residents. "It's
led to workers being exploited, houses being overcrowded
and legitimate businesses going under. There's an
undercurrent of frustration within the majority of Suffolk
residents."
But laborers and advocacy groups say the new policies and
aggressive rhetoric are coded attempts to drive Latino
immigrants underground or off Long Island. They see
parallels between policies denying black families homes in
Levittown after World War II and a proposed law in Suffolk
County asking federal officials to enforce immigration
laws.
"It's like we're going backwards," said Irma Solis, an
organizer at the Workplace Project, a Hispanic advocacy
group in Farmingville. "It's another wave of attacks
against the immigrant community."
Paul Tonna of Huntington, a Republican member of the
Suffolk County Legislature, is a veteran of these wars. He
defended day laborers, tried unsuccessfully to pass
legislation to set up a hiring hall for them and earned
many enemies in the process. Now leaving office because of
term limits, Mr. Tonna says he has been asking himself, why
Long Island?
One reason experts cite is persistent segregation on Long
Island, named the country's most segregated suburb in a
2002 study by David Rusk, a consultant who analyzes
suburban segregation patterns. In the 1950's and 60's,
discriminatory practices by lenders, real estate agents and
builders steered minorities and whites to different
communities.
Today, there are villages - like Garden City and Hempstead,
Copiague and Amityville - that sit next to each other, but
have nearly opposite racial compositions.
Still, Mr. Tonna said, "It's not just bigotry. It's an
economic issue."
Most of the problems bubbled up in heavily white,
blue-collar communities - places where new immigrants, many
of them upwardly mobile, could barely get a foothold. In
wealthy East Hampton, the quarrels over immigration and
code violations are not centered in the wealthy beachfront
enclaves but in Springs, a middle-class neighborhood.
Long Island's Hispanic population grew by about 70 percent
in a decade, according to the 2000 census. Between 2000 and
2003, it grew even faster, with the number of Hispanic
residents of Suffolk jumping by 20 percent. That translates
into an average of 10,387 people per year, compared with
about 6,500 people per year during the 1990's.
Many newcomers are here illegally or on temporary visas,
but there is no definitive data on their numbers.
Immigrants arrived in droves in relatively small
communities, making it impossible for residents to ignore
their new neighbors. Some 80 percent of Long Islanders own
their homes, and there are few rental apartments, so
laborers are often crammed into single-family homes.
And thanks to the island's relatively weak labor unions,
they can find work by standing on street corners, Mr. Tonna
said.
Some towns took the change in stride; others rejected it
outright, with angry residents attending town and county
legislative meetings to complain that the influx of
immigrants has brought noise violations, littering, people
drinking and urinating in public and driveways crammed with
cars. They videotaped crowds of day laborers and staged
demonstrations.
The tension first flared into violence in 2000, when two
men posing as contractors kidnapped two Farmingville day
laborers and beat them with a crowbar. In July 2003, a
group of teenagers set fire to the house of a Mexican
family in Farmingville.
Governments have responded to residents' complaints with
bills intended either to accommodate the immigrants or to
clamp down on them. There does not appear to be any
particular geographical pattern to the measures. One
community's anxiety does not necessarily seem to spread.
Officials from various towns have proposed limiting the
number of people in a house, banning the hiring of day
laborers off the street and requiring identification from
anyone using a village park.
But few ideas over the years have drawn as much fire as the
one Mr. Levy first broached publicly about three weeks ago
to give Suffolk police officers the authority to detain
illegal immigrants taken into custody for a variety of
offenses.
After a meeting last week with representatives of Hispanic
groups, Mr. Levy changed his plan, proposing instead to
give corrections officers broader powers in enforcing
immigration laws and access to federal databases. He said
he would also ask Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officials to assign three federal agents to the county to
help identify and deport illegal immigrants in police
custody.
If his plan is approved by federal officials, Mr. Levy
said, the corrections officers would be trained by the
Department of Homeland Security. They would not pluck
immigrants off the street or sweep neighborhoods, he said,
but would keep those charged with a crime in jail rather
than allowing them to post bail.
Of the 23,150 arrests made by Suffolk police last year,
2,349 were of noncitizens. Mr. Levy said his proposal would
increase the number of inmates who are handed over to
federal immigration authorities, currently fewer than a
dozen each year. His original plan was opposed by the
Suffolk Police Benevolent Association, whose president,
Jeff Frayler, said it would chill the relationship between
immigrants and the police and make illegal immigrants less
likely to report crimes. Mr. Levy said the plan would not
apply to people whose illegal status was discovered while
they were reporting crimes.
Despite criticism from Mr. Levy's own Hispanic Advisory
Board, Mr. Frayler said, the county executive tapped a
wealth of public support just by making the proposal.
"I think it's much larger than anyone could have believed,"
he said, "and Levy's catering to that crew."
This summer, Mr. Levy ordered a police sting operation to
catch unlicensed contractors, many of whom hire day
laborers. He said that during the next phase, police would
ask contractors to produce federal I-9 forms, proving that
their employees are legally authorized to work.
The new mayor of Farmingdale, George Graf, whose campaign
literature attacked the former incumbent, Joseph Trudden -
accusing him of allowing "our streets to be overrun with
day laborers hanging out on our corners" - has stepped up
fines against drivers who stop on Conklin Street, formerly
a popular spot to pick up day laborers. Mr. Graf said the
crowds have thinned as officers have issued tickets with
$100 fines.
The new administration has also rekindled a plan to spend
$6 million to $14 million to acquire six acres of land on
Secatogue Avenue, where many Hispanic residents live in
decrepit apartments near the Long Island Rail Road tracks,
raze the buildings and replace them with condominiums for
the elderly. "It will be before the public in the first
quarter" of 2005, said the village attorney, Greg Carman.
"This is going to move."
Residents of the apartment complex, which is privately
owned, said that their ceilings leak, that their floors are
caving in and that fetid smells drift up from the basement,
but that they have few other places to move. Many were
suspicious of the village's motives.
"It's very hard to rent a house without papers," said Ana
Maria Cabrera, 22, who works in a shoe store in Northport.
"If they are moving us from one place to another, it
obviously means they don't want us around."
From: "Charles Michael Byrd" <chasbyrd@rcn.com>
Subject: [OneDropRule] Abuse suffered by biracial children
Date: Monday, November 29, 2004 2:12 PM
The mother of mass killer George E. Banks says she does not want to see her son executed for murdering 13 people in a shooting rampage, but that she won't hold it against the state if he receives a lethal injection as scheduled on Thursday.
The son of a white mother and black father, Banks said following his arrest that he killed his children to spare them the racist abuse that he had suffered as a biracial child.
'
FAQ
Search
Register
Log in
