I'm watching the news.

[conuly]

First, our confirmed death toll on the Island is now 23, and no doubt still rising.

Secondly, there was a very upset woman on the South Shore who called in and said conditions are very bad, there's muggings and looting and all the aid is in the shelters but people won't go there because they won't leave their homes. A family in Tottenville died that way, parents and a 13 year old kid, they stayed home and a wave washed it entirely away. Most of me is concerned and upset about this. A tiny part of me, though....

See, every time there is a crime on the North Shore, the various racists on the Island pile on to say that this only and always happens here, and that crime didn't exist on Staten Island until the invention of a. poor people, b. black people and c. poor black people. There was a huge drug bust on the Sout Sore a while back, and interested I found the Advance comments to see that crime only exists there if people move in from Brooklyn.

We do have more crime on the North Shore, but we also have more people. The rest of the Island is whiter and less poor, but that's not why the difference exists.

So a tiny, unkind and uncharitable part of me says "See? As a group, you aren't any better than the rest of us."

But most of me feels sympathy and concern. The nice part.

Comments

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

The man who, in my mind at least, seems to best epitomize the head-space of the whites of Staten Island, is Justin Volpe. It would be nice to think he's a freak; or that if he represents anyone, it's the cops; but there were a couple of cops who testified against him at his trial; and then, as the previous administration was winding down, his parish priest made a pitch to Bush, on behalf of the congregation, for a commutation of Volpe's sentence to time served. Turning him down was one of Bush's few acts of decency.