Cookie’s just tip of iceberg: The Villager
To The Editor:
Re “Panthers vow to shut down ‘Negro Head’ cookie baker” (news article, Feb. 4):
Racism has real impact on people’s lives; it kills, it hurts, it spoils our world. If you’ve ever seen the face or been the face of someone who gets targeted that way, you know. You know you don’t want it anywhere near you or the people you love or hope to love.
Good for the Black Panthers for standing against it. Good for the neighborhood for acknowledging those cookies as sheer racism and for not patronizing a business that would profit from it. No excuse avoids our responsibility for the racism we carry. But belittling the guy who wears his overtly, begs the question. It may feel easier for those of us who are white to point at this individual, distancing ourselves from his version of racism, harder to face our own.
You don’t grow up in this culture and not absorb its lessons. Whether you are the one “privileged” by racism or the one who is dealt the blunt force of it, you get the message.
Racism isn’t caused by “stupidity,” though it makes us act stupidly. It is caused and kept in motion by unaware or deliberate misinformation, enormous hurt and institutionalized policies. No one escapes its effects.
It is essential that racism be interrupted, but raining down condemnation on any one person who carries it masquerades as respite from its poisonous effect on every one of us. Really, the place to start cleaning house is in our own minds.
K Webster
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
City strikes out on stadium
To The Editor:
Re “Paying for Yankee Stadium is a major league error” (talking point, by Deborah Glick, Jan. 28: The Villager):
Thanks to Deborah Glick for laying out the sheer hubris of luxury construction, of any kind, in our troubled city. The market for luxury projects is dwindling — rapidly. Whatever arguments were made for that strategy no longer apply. And they never did long range.
The foolishness of destroying Yankee Stadium is breathtaking. Taxpayers are subsidizing its reconstruction, parking garages, new train station and parks — in the last case, to replace those seized and moved far from their Little League users.
And in return? Five thousand fewer seats, most of these beyond fans’ ability to pay. As Bill Moyers puts it:
“…[T]here will be more luxury suites and party rooms… . Corporations and wealthy individuals will…rent the luxury suites for…$600,000 to $850,000 tax-deductible dollars a year, assuming they haven’t filed for bankruptcy... .
“…[B]id farewell to dear old Yankee Stadium, and await the new colossus… . It will cast its…shadow across one of the country’s poorest neighborhoods, whose residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of…new…parking spaces. Never mind…the exhaust, even though in this part of town respiratory disease is already so high they call it ‘asthma alley.’ ”
Environmental damage, destruction of a historic stadium, loss of community space, less affordable entertainment and outrageous cost at a time when we desperately need ideas and projects that create a real future for our city.
Re “Paying for Yankee Stadium is a major league error” (talking point, by Deborah Glick, Jan. 28: The Villager):
Thanks to Deborah Glick for laying out the sheer hubris of luxury construction, of any kind, in our troubled city. The market for luxury projects is dwindling — rapidly. Whatever arguments were made for that strategy no longer apply. And they never did long range.
The foolishness of destroying Yankee Stadium is breathtaking. Taxpayers are subsidizing its reconstruction, parking garages, new train station and parks — in the last case, to replace those seized and moved far from their Little League users.
And in return? Five thousand fewer seats, most of these beyond fans’ ability to pay. As Bill Moyers puts it:
“…[T]here will be more luxury suites and party rooms… . Corporations and wealthy individuals will…rent the luxury suites for…$600,000 to $850,000 tax-deductible dollars a year, assuming they haven’t filed for bankruptcy... .
“…[B]id farewell to dear old Yankee Stadium, and await the new colossus… . It will cast its…shadow across one of the country’s poorest neighborhoods, whose residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of…new…parking spaces. Never mind…the exhaust, even though in this part of town respiratory disease is already so high they call it ‘asthma alley.’ ”
Environmental damage, destruction of a historic stadium, loss of community space, less affordable entertainment and outrageous cost at a time when we desperately need ideas and projects that create a real future for our city.
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