This is sort of a feedback from last month.
Students at St.Paul School(this is one of the elite school)
Two dozen black student received threatening letters.
Please read the editoral on this.
Concord must do more than deplore racist acts. The city should rise up with one voice and say, as other communities have, "Not In Our Town."

It's easy to be blind to one's prejudices in a largely all-white city like Concord. No minority group is large enough to feel threatening. No neighborhoods are segregated by race. Slurs, both purposeful and those made out of ignorance, can be heard, but newsworthy racial incidents are rare - or used to be.

Last month, nearly two dozen black students at St. Paul's School received threatening letters sent through the postal service. The warning "Get Out" was followed in the letter by a bulls-eye target and the words "Bang, Bang." School officials and the police took the threats seriously. A school-wide meeting was held and security tightened.

A few weeks later, in what was likely an unrelated incident, vandals sprayed the words "dirty spic" on the home and family car of a Hispanic student at Concord High School. The attack, and previous insults, have made the youth afraid to walk the few blocks from his home to the school. Each incident was probably the doing of a single person or a just a few, but they prove how fragile the sense of security for a person of color can be, even in a community that considers itself tolerant.

Last summer, the Greater Concord Task Force Against Racism and Intolerance and other groups held a multicultural fair on the State House lawn. Some 600 people attended. Many came to welcome the refugees from several continents who have made Concord their home. Such events help. They show people that Concord welcomes diversity. But they aren't enough. The city, and all its organizations, must also condemn hate crimes and, by supporting those victimized by them, show those who hate how loathsome their views and actions are.

"Not In Our Town" is a campaign launched by a documentary television show that first aired on PBS channels in 1995. That film described how Billings, Mont., responded to a series of hate violence, including the distribution of KKK flyers, the desecration of a Jewish cemetery, the painting of swastikas on the home of a Native American family and an attack on a Jewish home that had a menorah in the window.

In short, the community stepped up to condemn the violence. The local painters' union restored the home and the local newspaper printed a full-page picture of a menorah that 10,000 Billings families put in their front windows. The attacks stopped.

The media company that made the film went on to document the reactions to hate crimes undertaken in other communities. Those too became films shown in schools and churches and to community groups. Copies are available through The Working Group at theworkinggroup.org. They should be shown in Concord.

In Bloomington, Ill., hate violence led the city to erect street signs on which the word "racism" appears beneath a slash in a circle above the words "Not In Our Town." Many communities formally issued a proclamation denouncing hate crimes. Concord should do so as well. The city should prominently declare, on the opening page of its website, that Concord celebrates diversity and will not tolerate hate-inspired violence.

Two incidents do not constitute a trend or a crime wave, but they are sign that more work needs to be done.





This article is: 0 days old.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print article Letter to editor Send and share Email to a friend Del.icio.us Digg Newsvine Facebook Hyperlink

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------