Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, Regarding Hate Crimes Against Latinos: “Oops. My Bad.”
by Guest Contributor Alex Alvarez, originally published at Guanabee
You might recall our recent look at the murder of Long Island resident Marcelo Lucero and his community’s reaction to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation. Levy said the murder of Lucero was a “one-day story” that was receiving “undue” media coverage. Well, Levy has since apologized for those remarks:
“It was absolutely the wrong time for me to suggest that coverage of events in Suffolk is treated differently by the media,” Levy said in a letter to Newsday. “The horrible incident is indeed more than a one-day story. It was a reminder of how far we as a society still have to go.”
We understand that murderers commit murder, and that the seven teen boys charged with carrying out the actual beating and slaying of Lucero are the ones who most need to pay for their crime. But, while they are the ones who need to carry the bulk of the burden of culpability in this case, their guilt is shared by people like Steve Levy. Some people commit murder with bullets and blades, some do it with their words and examples. Steve Levy is not a murderer, but he worked to perpetuate a culture of murder, an allegation echoed by activist Tony Asion and Dean Kevin Johnson in their recent interview with NPR concerning hate crimes against Latinos.
The “one-day story” made its way into the New York Times. The NYT article quoted Levy as calling the seven murders “white supremacists.” Which, we think, is a step back.
See, by further villainizing the defendants as monstrous members of a small, fringe group, one takes away from the reality that hate exists anywhere and everywhere and that it doesn’t take a monster, necessarily, to perpetuate hate. It merely takes ignorance. People we love, people we freely label as being “good folks” who lead “decent lives” are also guilty of perpetuating hatred. It’s important to deal with xenophobia against Latinos as a reality, not as some fantastic story in the media that does not touch our own lives or exists somewhere beyond the television screen, never fully reaching into our own living rooms.
This is why it’s important to educate people. Not that murder is wrong — if one doesn’t sense that simply by being a member of society, one is probably beyond hope — but that Latinos are human. It’s the dehumanization of a group that gives otherwise “good folks” the freedom to treat them as subhuman. Many loving mothers and fathers and best friends shared culpability in lynchings, in the Holocaust, in civil wars that tear villages apart. Many good people did terrible things because they were under the impression that they were not slaying people, but animals. Parasites. Vermin. This wasn’t murder, it was extermination. This, then, should be the goal of educating against hatred and intolerance – lending a human face and a beating heart to a name on a page or an anonymous figure on your block. And county executives? Are not exempt.
Levy: I was wrong about hate-crime coverage in media [Newsday]
A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate [NY Times]
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Mimi wrote:
This was incredibly written. Thank you.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 11:26 am ¶
Lola wrote:
once again crimes against minorities are not considered newsworthy
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 11:32 am ¶
Lola wrote:
and yes we do need to educate people that minorities are human and stop the othernessing that is rampant in this culture
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 11:33 am ¶
drispe wrote:
Calling the murderers white supremacists is definitely not a step back, unless you count the fact that one of those boys is anything but white. And who said white supremacists constitute a “small, fringe group”? Not all of them murder, threaten and preach hate. What about gentrifying people out of low-income neighborhoods and denying people jobs? Even if you only had a moment of white supremacy during the time it took to bludgeon someone, you still fit the description in any court of law. Hate crimes are about acts of hate, not a history of it. I have a hard time with this notion of teaching people to treat me the way they should know how to already. Who says they’ll let you get close enough to start their lessons? Trying to get their boots off your neck is already time consuming. Everyone has an obligation to see themselves in others and treat them accordingly. One of the boys was as dark as the man they murdered. How was he less scary than the victim? Ignorance side, there might not be a damn thing for these punks to do in their town other than terrorize people. It’s probably less about them not knowing any better than assuming they’d get away with it. Sometimes it’s not your core beliefs that get you into trouble, but a desire to fit in.
People who participated in lynchings were elitist hypocrites. KKK members carried out these acts in the name of Christ, who I’m sure never authorized such barbarity. Therefore they had no rational basis for their hatred, and should have found a new hobby. I’m sure racists are normally great when they aren’t looking at me with the eyes of dehumanization. Like I’m a fucking gecko.
Posted 17 Nov 2008 at 1:12 pm ¶
willow33 wrote:
A great post.
This post, particularly the last paragraph, makes me also think about capital punishment. I know it is not exactly related to this story. But I can’t help but be reminded of how many people’s view of criminals as what you call vermin, and especially how that relates to CP.
Posted 18 Nov 2008 at 10:54 pm ¶
alston green wrote:
This was awful insensitivity, especially coming from some one who is Jewish. HIs afterthought of an apology to the family of their deceased son Marcelo Lucero is lackluster.
More racial sensitivity and inclusion is something we can hope will happen in this country sooner that later !
Posted 19 Nov 2008 at 12:14 am ¶
Steve wrote:
Levy is a pathetic excuse for a human.
Posted 09 Aug 2009 at 12:56 am ¶