Wednesday, May 18, 2005

ONLY WHITES CAN COMMIT HATE CRIMES

Invoking the name "Martin Luther King" and screaming "Black Power!" a gang of up to 30 black teens attacked four white girls in Marine Park in what police are saying is not a bias crime. The March 30 attack was a hot topic at state Senator Marty Golden's recent public safety forum. According to witnesses and parents of the victims, four young girls from St. Edmund's had the day off from school due to Easter recess. They were playing basketball during dismissal from nearby Marine Park Junior High School, when several Marine Park students demanded to use the court.

After adults intervened and asked them to wait their turn, the teens left - but returned in a pack of up to 30, both boys and girls, and stormed into the park. Witnesses say the attackers were all black and called their victims "white crackers" during the bloody melee, which raged for almost 20 minutes.

"This is not being looked at as a bias crime," NYPD Deputy Inspector Kevin McGinn said at the meeting.

"When I pulled my car up to the park, I witnessed a pandemonium I've never seen in my life," said Debbie, a mother of one victim who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons. Her daughter ran to the car, screaming, "They're going to kill us," Debbie recalled. My daughter was so scared and kids were running around like crazy. Pursued by dozens of teens, some of the girls were "literally running into traffic to save their lives," she said.

One girl made it as far as a nearby house, but was dragged by her hair back into the playground by a "wolf pack of children," Debbie said. The St. Edmund girls were bleeding and beaten to the point where they had cuts, scrapes, footprints and dirt all over them - and the attackers surrounded her car and started pounding on the windows as Debbie tried to herd the terrified children into her vehicle.

Two girls were hospitalized - one with a broken nose and one with a head injury, according to Edith, the mother of another girl. According to Lt. Mark Molinari, from the 63rd Precinct, five of the assailants, who attend Marine Park Junior High School, were arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault. But since the attackers are all under the age of 16, they are facing charges in Family Court, and were arraigned last Friday.

"I always felt safe in the area and after hearing about such an incident, you start thinking what else could happen. These situations should not be happening, not in Marine Park, or anywhere else, and the safety of our kids should be of most importance," said Denise Williams, a parent from Gerritsen Beach. "It's getting progressively worse in the community - these types of gangs are not only taking away our parks, they're ruining our neighborhoods," said parent Cathy Miller. "Nobody expects their child to go to a park and get beaten, with footprints on her head and arm, everyone just wants their child to be safe," said Edith. "Everyone should have the right to be safe from teens, to small kids, to seniors, to mothers with strollers, no one should fear of being beaten while enjoying a day in the park."

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MEXICO LESS POLITICALLY CORRECT

President Vicente Fox refused to apologize Monday for saying Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won't a comment widely viewed as acceptable in a country where blackface comedy is still considered funny and nicknames often reflect skin color. Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar, said Mexican and foreign news media have misinterpreted the remark as a racial slur. He said the president was speaking in defense of Mexican migrants as they come under attack by the new U.S. immigration measures that include a wall along the U.S.-California border.

Stung by the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigrants, many Mexicans including Mexico City's archbishop said Fox was just stating a fact. "The president was just telling the truth," said Celedonio Gonzalez, a 35-year-old carpenter who worked illegally in Dallas for six months in 2001. "Mexicans go to the United States because they have to. Blacks want to earn better wages, and the Mexican because he is illegal takes what they pay him."

But the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Fox should apologize. "His statement had the impact of being inciting and divisive," Jackson said Monday, noting that in many U.S. cities tensions are already high between blacks and Latinos because they compete for scarce jobs and often have children crowded into underfunded schools. Another American civil rights activist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said the comment was especially disturbing because Fox was educated in the United States and "he is not unaware of the racial sensitivities here."

Fox made the comment Friday during a public appearance in Puerto Vallarta, saying: "There's no doubt that Mexican men and women full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States." Responding to the criticism during his daily news conference Monday, Aguilar read a statement expressing Fox's "enormous respect for minorities, whatever their racial, ethnic or religious origin."

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GERMANY LESS POLITICALLY CORRECT

Until recently, German nationality was based on the principle of descent, rather than place of birth, meaning that a person could be born in Germany and not qualify as a German citizen. A child born in Russia to descendents of German emigrants had more right to German citizenship than the offspring of Turkish parents living in Germany. Although the law was recently changed to make children born in Germany to foreign parents eligible for German citizenship, the general population still consider family to be more important than place of birth in defining nationality. Germans of Turkish descent are routinely referred to as 'Turks' or even 'Ausl,nder' (foreigners) and are seldom regarded as full German citizens.

Similarly, expats of colour are frequently asked where they are 'really' from when they give their nationality, or are subjected to crass speculation about their country of origin. Comments such as "I thought you were Spanish with your dark skin" are not uncommon.

Advertising is another area where insensitivity to questions of ethnicity can be seen. This often takes the form of crass attempts at humour. An advertisement by the Berlin public transport authority, the BVG, showed a black woman beneath the slogan 'Schwarzfahrer' (literally 'black passenger' but also meaning fare-dodger). In a similar vein, a recent cinema ad for the TV licence authority GEZ featured a black actor and a white actor, with a slogan that punned on 'schwarz' (black) and 'weiss' (white).

One company who should really have known better is McDonald's, whose German ad for its 'Chicken McFu' hamburgers played on stereotypes of Asians with slogans such as 'Plima!' and "Liesig!' "These ads are jolly and funny," commented a McDonald's Germany spokesman in response to complaints by Chinese-German groups, showing the kind of insensitivity typical of those who have never been on the receiving end of such stereotyping.

Juergen Ruettgers, the CDU's candidate for the key 22 May state election in North Rhine-Westfalia, is one mainstream politician who has repeatedly made racist comments. In 2000, he infamously called for "Kinder statt Inder" ("Children instead of Indians"), proposing that Germany fill its IT skills gap through procreation rather than employing foreign specialists. Then in a recent television interview, R_ttgers said that as a Catholic he believed the Christian worldview was the correct one, and not comparable with worldviews of other cultures

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