Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Catholics & racism Piedmont, Calif. To the Editors: [In] your editorial, "The Business of Us All" [September 22], regarding the Bensonhurst incident, a very painful fact of this...
...To ignore it, in the fashion of so much of the media, and now Commonweal as well, must appear to the neighbors of Yusef Hawkins's murderers as a perplexing hypocrisy...
...In a previous editorial, "Crime and Its Remedies" [May 19,1989], we argued that those involved in the Central Park wilding should pay for their crimes in accordance with the law...
...This is no doubt true, and no doubt justified...
...The editors reply: New York, N.Y...
...If you were their Catholic pastor, how would you explain it...
...This is an unchallengeable fact of everyday experience in New York, wholly supported by crime statistics...
...I think, Commonweal should not so demean itself...
...The record of the past twenty-five to thirty years is far from good and shows no sign of improvement...
...But their acts, like those of the black youngsters involved in the Central Park wilding last spring, have only heightened the fears of all New Yorkers...
...To the Editors: [In] your editorial, "The Business of Us All" [September 22], regarding the Bensonhurst incident, a very painful fact of this deplorable action was not mentioned...
...But the fear whites entertain for blacks is very much more widespread in New York, and equally justified...
...All New Yorkers do likewise, including both whites and blacks, and for all the fear is very largely of blacks...
...racial violence in such areas as Chicago and Boston, all seem to come out of ethnic groups which have been purportedly subject to the cultural and religious influence of the Catholic church...
...It is patronizing to blacks to attempt to do so, and, I The young white men who attacked and murdered Yusef Hawkins may indeed have reason to fear blacks, even if as whites , they are part of the city's racial majority...
...Obviously, the same applies to the Hawkins tragedy...
...Commonweal quotes approvingly another black man's complaint that he cannot walk "throughout" New York "without fearing (whites...
...The perpetrators of this incident, as in the Howard Beach matter of a year or so ago, as well as much of the past (and present, maybe...
...Both incidents point to the same conclusion: one's fears and one's skin color can never justify the kind of brutalization shown in the murder of Yusef Hawkins or the beating and rape of the woman jogger...
...It is, in fact, difficult to discern how he jumped to his conclusions from reading "The Business of Us All...
...CHARLES P. WEST Who's afraid of whom...
...Each of the young white men who attacked Hawkins has reason for fear in much larger areas of New York than does any black, as all know...
...Why is it that Hispanic, black, and Asian groups prefer to separate themselves from mainstream parish life...
...Where is the evidence that the American Catholic church's influence has had any significant positive effect on how [Catholics] treat their fellow humans...
...A balance in accounting for these terrible events will not be obtained by teeing off on Sharpton and Farrakhan...
...THE EDITORSdy...
...THE EDITORS...
...In the same way, are not Christians required, after duly acknowledging the frightful history of oppression of blacks in America, to hold young black men responsible for their crimes...
...To the Editors: It is disheartening to find Commonweal ["The Business of Us All," September 22] joining in the conventional reaction to the tragic murder of Yusef Hawkins, a young black man, in a largely white (and Catholic) neighborhood of Brooklyn...
...And each has witnessed daily the fears of his parents and grandparents simply in riding the subways, or visiting the store...
...Here in San Francisco, gays and lesbians know which parts of town to avoid for fear of their personal safety...guess which groups predominate there...
...Balance, that is to say honesty, will be achieved by stating the facts as they are and, nonetheless, holding these young men wholly responsible for their actions...
...West's concern for equal application of the law is an important one, but was not the subject of our editorial...
...Nor can such fear, however deeply engrained or plausibly explicable, excuse racial prejudice of any kind...
...As we count bodies and worry about the ebb and flow of attendance at Mass, Catholic schools, CCD, etc., maybe we need to address a more serious question...
Vol. 116 • November 1989 • No. 20
