La Plaza Central

Not to be a downer on a Friday, but I wanted to share an article that my friend sent me that stands in stark contrast to the feel good article about community integration in Crete, Nebraska that Brent posted recently.  You can’t have the yin without the yang, right?  The NY Times had an article yesterday about an immigrant from Ecuador who was fatally stabbed in Patchogue, NY by a 17-year-old man who was drunk and looking “to beat up some Mexicans.”

Jeffrey Conroy and six other teenagers, one of them inexplicably Hispanic, got drunk in a local park and then went in search of a Mexican to beat up when they found 37-year-old Marcelo Lucero and a companion.  In the struggle, Lucero’s companion got away before he was allegedly stabbed by Conroy and died.  Conroy is being charged with manslaughter as a hate crime.

What struck me right away were both the similarities and the contrasts that exist between Patchogue and Crete.  Both towns are relatively small; Crete has about 6,500 residents and Patchogue 11,700.  Hispanic immigrants make up a slightly higher percentage of the population in Patchogue, 24%, versus Crete, 14%, though they are growing rapidly in both towns.  The difference seems to be that Patchogue has much more anti-immigrant hostility running through the community.  This assault is one in a series of attacks aimed at Latino immigrants in the area in the last several years.  Whereas Crete immigrants speak of the improvements in race relations in their community, Patchogue immigrants speak about their lack of feeling accepted and the hostility they perceive from the Anglo community.

To be fair, I don’t mean to imply that everything is perfect in Crete and the exact opposite in Patchogue.  I am sure that there exists a certain percentage of the Hispanic population in Crete that feels ostracized in the community.  I interviewed Crete residents last month along with Brent and noticed that there definitely exists some anti-immigrant sentiment.  And certainly there are Hispanics in Patchogue who feel integrated with their Anglo friends.  The point is that this is something that every community needs to continuously work on.  Raising issues of cultural awareness is as integral to a well-functioning community as anything else.  More participation in cultural events and holidays, more cultural education for both sides, more talk about our backgrounds and experiences…  so that we can, as the mayor of Patchogue, Paul V. Pontiere Jr., puts it, “realize that the things we have in common far outnumber those that divide us.”