Overwhelmed by the Ignorance

By Christine Insinga

  It's been more than a week since Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero was stabbed and killed around the corner from his East Patchogue home.  Cops say 7 local kids took his life just because he was Hispanic.  Yesterday, a grand jury indictment was supposed to be unsealed on the group of Patchogue/Medford teens prosecutors have labeled a "lynch mob." According to officials close to the case, boys were hanging out a local park when they hatched a plan to "go f$%# up some Mexicans."  The 16 and 17 year olds are accused of surrounding the 38 year old Lucero, and yelling racial slurs at him before one of them allegedly plunged a knife in him and they all left him for dead. 

Yes, this is the United States of America and the teens are presumed innocent until proved guilty.

    Now, is this all true?  Was is Jeff Conroy with the knife that night?  Were ALL the guys involved?  Was Lucero's death really the result of hate crime, a crime of opportunity, or something different completely?  For that we'll all have to wait for the trial of these young high school students who--for all intents and purposes--have basically been stripped of their youth and will face trial as adults.

Even if ALL of it isn't true, fellow classmates say Conroy has a swastika tattoo on his leg.  Who permanently injects ink in that design into a 17 year old??  Does he think it's ok?  I'm guessing not--otherwise he'd probably have gotten it somewhere a bit more visible.  Or maybe he just wanted to hide it from his parents.  I hope in some small/odd way that actually is the case--that his parents would be infuriated if they saw such a symbol of hate basically engraved in their son's body.  

This is far from the only act of ignorance in recent months.  It feels like every other day we are covering a story of hate:

Racial slurs slopped in shoe polish on people's cars in Mastic, and scribbled on streets and a school in North Babylon.  Anti-semitic symbols and holes from a BB gun found at a Nassau Jewish Center--not to mention hundreds of Ku Klux Klan fliers tacked onto cars at the Deer Park train station and on folks' front lawn in Islip Terrace. 

Where does all the hate/intolerance/ignorance begin?

More importantly WHEN does it all end?  {##}

Comments

[SUSAN L.RUDNICK]

I HAD AN UNEASY FEELING WHEN I SAW THE LINE OF YOUNG MEN BEING ESCORTED FROM THE POLICE STATION LAST WEEK.THE MAIN YOUNG MAN HAD A LOOK TOO FAMILIAR ;AND HE LOOKED FOCUSED !I KNEW DEEP DOWN THAT HE COULD BE AFFILIATED WITH A NEO NAZI GROUP,AND LOW & BEHOLD WE NOW HAVE LEARNED HIS BODY BEARS THE WORST SYMBOL OF HATE KNOWN TO THE 21ST CENTURY!I'D LIKE TO KNOW IF HIS FAMILY WAS AWARE OF THIS TATOO,AS WAS HIS GYM TEACHER @ SCHOOL?

[John]

While I don't for a second wish to imply that these kids weren't completely in the wrong by attacking (let alone killing) Lucero, I'm tired of "hate crimes" as a concept. Further, I think those very laws start the intolerance ball rolling.

I mean, really, what difference does it make if he's from Ecuador, Greece, Tibet, England, or Glen Cove? Someone brutally killed him. Would it have been less bad, somehow, if he was Bill Smith whose father came over on the Mayflower? What if Marcelo immigrated from Spain rather than Ecuador?

What difference does it make if the kids are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, or purple with orange polka-dots, for that matter? What difference does it make if they think the Nazis and KKK were/are right? Again, would it have been OK if the killing was part of a robbery?

While hate is probably a permanent part of life (example: I very much hate that I'm defending the KKK's right to hate), I can't help but believe that the intolerance will end when we stop making such an issue out of our differences. That goes as much for the old concept of the "Melting Pot" (translation: "Lose the accent, stop cooking smelly food, and get a desk job if you want to blend in") as the modern concepts of "ethnic (religious, sexual) pride" and "hate crime legislation."

There must be a middle ground between "hide your identity and act WASPy" and "push your native culture in anybody's face who doesn't move away fast enough and curse them for not caring enough." I think that's the space where we get to come together, when we can without being required to deny OR celebrate our differences.

Oh, hey, look. Somehow, my shoes have sprouted what appears to be a soapbox. Sorry to rant in your space, but every one of these incidents reminds me that we keep swinging between extremes, and always seem to make the problem worse through social engineering.