Putting Ethnic Prejudice On Parade

Letters
West Side Spirit
242 West 30th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10001
June 26, 2000

To the Editor:

Johnson Corrigan's hateful letter (June 12, 2000) regarding the Puerto Rican Day Parade is an excellent example of the racial animosity, prejudice, and intolerance that people of color have to face every day in this city.

It also underscores the fact that bigotry is not a Southern redneck phenomenon, it exists among the so-called Eastern elite as well.

Corrigan ought to take a closer look at those he derisively calls "lower class, out of control, immodestly dressed, raucous Latino people." (It's surprising he didn't call them savages.) Many of these same people he sees as other are probably the ones employed in or near his Upper East Side neighborhood as doormen, maintenance workers, transit workers, hospital workers, restaurant help, delivery truck drivers, nannies, cashiers, movie theatre ushers, letter carriers, etc. And, like Corrigan and his neighbors, pay taxes and raise families.

What Corrigan has done is demonize an entire group of people because of the misdeeds of a few. (Were the senior citizens in the crowd, for example, being raucous and immodestly dressed?)

Corrigan's letter is more than about what offended him at a particular ethnic parade. It's about how he feels the other 364 days in the year about Latinos.

His deep-seated antipathy makes him unable to differentiate the good from the bad. Maybe if he took the time to understand the many Latino cultures, genuinely finding out "who they really are," he would be less inclined to paint all Latinos with the same brush.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

This letter was published in the West Side Spirit (July 6, 2000).