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SubTitle: Values That Work in the World At-Large
Posted by: Bob Sheridan (bobsheridan@earthlink.net) on 11/11/1997@21:27hrs:
The most important thing you learn as a Staten Islander is how to get along in a diverse world, to put your provincial, parochial, and personal prejudices aside for the greater good of getting along. Once you learn that you can function as a respected adult on the Island or off. I didn't like some of the postings I saw to the Breslin article as they reminded me of some of the better reasons to leave the Island. References to people who want to change the world, as though change is evil, when it is constant, and to "guidoland" as though the writer was superior to anybody. I moved from SI to SF (San Francisco) which is one place where the diversity rivals New York's. I saw a posting in Classifieds from a soldier from PRHS stationed in Bosnia, Joe Santiago, and invited him to repeat his "Hello-to-All" right here. He's over there acting as the lid on a boiling-over pot of ethnic hatreds. Staten Island has the same choice: learn to respect and get along with everyone, or boil over and engage in genocide. The trick is not to take that first step down the wrong road, because when you do, you can't get back. Look at the followers of Hitler for the object examples of this. I grew up on the Island thinking we could do no wrong, as part of the WWII or postwar generation who benefitted from the Victory that thousands died for. The triumph of democracy it was called and it sounded a lot better than the triumph of racism still being urged by people who say things like "guidoland," which isn't a big jump from "kill anyone who isn't exactly like me." The people exactly like you are few and far between, so we'd better get a clue. The thing that makes NY work, all joking aside, is not that it's a "melting pot" an outworn metaphor if ever there was one, but that it is a tossed salad, where the whole is better than the parts, and the tomatoes are still tomatoes,and the cucumbers still cucumbers, and the mix is exactly to my taste, even if it's not to yours.
So the next poster who gives me racist crapp can take a flying leap into the Fresh Kills Dump.
Luv,
Bob