Columns

New form of bigotry hurts just the same

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published November 26, 2006

Like the first kiss, the first job is hard to forget.

Mine was in 1989, as a reporter chronicling the political and cultural life of Mamaroneck pronounced Ma-Ma-Ro-Nek, a village in the suburbs north of New York City.

The place still sticks to me. When I returned to New York to visit in-laws for Thanksgiving holidays over the years, I looked forward to the half-hour drive from the Bronx to the village and Alex and Cosmo's deli. The Italian combo sandwich there is packed with enough ham, cheese, turkey and salami to make lunch for a week.

Although I stayed home for the holidays this year, I thought a lot about my old haunts up North - especially after reading this week that the village had lost the latest round in its long running battle with Hispanic day laborers.

In response to a lawsuit, a federal judge ruled that the village's crackdown on laborers and the contractors who hired them was discriminatory, even racist.

What a tough indictment of a small community.

This sad story resonates with me emotionally. When this issue first erupted in Mamaroneck back in 1991, I saw close up how a suburban community, built by immigrants, struggled to adjust to the latest wave of newcomers. Their problems were a prelude for the rest of the country. We've heard the stories of battles between local authorities and day laborers in Virginia, New Jersey, California and elsewhere. Coming soon to your neighborhood...

Don't expect migrant farm workers to stop coming here even if the citrus groves disappear. And an influx of foreign speaking workers into any community, no matter how seemingly welcoming, is going to cause tension and prompt calls for tougher policing.

When that happens, a community must know the difference between responsive law enforcement and civil rights violations. The Mamaroneck case shows it's easy to confuse the two.

What happened there could happen anywhere. Back in the early '90s, Mamaroneck, a working class community of Irish and Italian immigrant families, had begun to attract Hispanic immigrants. Each morning many of the newcomers would congregate near the commuter train station and wait for contractors to pull up.

Despite the efforts of an elderly Ursuline nun to set up a hiring site for day laborers, it didn't take long before local businesses and longtime residents started complaining about Hispanic men urinating on the road and whistling at women walking by. Fifteen years later, local authorities were still hearing those same complaints. With the current anti-immigration mood, a police crackdown was inevitable - tickets, warnings, checkpoints, stepped up patrols.

Unfortunately, in targeting Hispanics, the village went too far. A community, built by people who felt the sting of discrimination when they first arrived, has been caught dishing out a new form of discrimination. It may be more economic than racial, but it still hurts. That fact shouldn't be lost on them or on us.

Andrew Skerritt can be reached at (813) 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 25, 2006, 21:04:02]