November 18, 2008 1:02 PM
Steve Levy will give an address on racial tolerance tonight on News12 Long Island. Hopefully it will go beyond his statements at the American Jewish Committee today. He seems to be focusing on the failure of teenagers who knew the seven attackers to report their prior attacks. He did not highlight the responsibility of politicians who marginalized the Latino victims of those attacks to an extent that the victims were afraid to come forward.
I encourage you to watch the speech, and also to call in to News12 afterward to give a reaction. Here are things to watch for:
1. Does Levy focus strictly on the attack or does he look at the background of anti-immigrant agitation that provided a media for hatred to thrive? Deploring the attack is easy, no reponsible person could be in favor of murder. But does he go further to identify the deeper prejudices against Latinos that he has in the past used to political advantage.
2. Does he try to paint the attackers as monsters? He has taken to referring to the seven accused as "White Supremacists", a term which likely does fit at least two of the men, and is unproven as to the remainder. By doing so he is essentially saying that their biases were abnormal and completely outside the range of opinion in Suffolk beyond these seven men. This notion of an alien ideology settling in these men's souls means that we can rest assured that nothing the Suffolk political class did could have contributed to the violence. Monsterization of the attackers means that the community can disclaim any responsibility for the manufacture of these high school students' hatred. If Levy does this, and I hope he does not, the county loses the opportunity for introspective examination of its own collective conscience.
3. Does he recognize that low Latino hate crime stats during his administration are nothing to crow about? They in fact represent, at the very least, a fear by Latinos to come forward and report crimes. If Levy understands that the stats vastly underestimate the abuse Latinos suffer, he may then start to build bridges to Latino crime victims.
4. Does he move beyond his "five point program"?
5. Does he announce that he is establishing mechanisms to listen to the genuine voice of the Latino and broader immigrant communities?
Update: here is my commentary on his speech