Burnt Out

With the veneration being paid by some to Geno's owner Joey Vento, as noted in my previous post, He Did Say Please, is it any wonder that the racists are making a re-emergence on the scene? Almost coinciding with the Vento hearing being conducted at the Arch Street Meeting, just a few miles away, racism was being demonstrated in another way.

The photo tells the story almost better than words could. As described in the accompanying article, A SCRAWL OF HATE:

The first-floor windows are shattered, the screens behind them torn and frayed.

The inside of the red-brick rowhouse - which was recently cleaned, cleared out and painted in anticipation of new renters - is now stained with venomous hatred in every room.

Grafitti on the floor declares, 'All n-----s should be hung,' next to a spray-painted cross and the letters 'KKK.' Similar phrases are tattooed in stairways and even the bathtub.

While this disturbing act of vandalism reads like a page from a civil-rights-era history book, it actually occurred earlier this week in a predominantly white Port Richmond neighborhood that police say a black couple soon planned to move into.

Ah yes. As is the case elsewhere, racism is alive and well and flourishing in Philly -- City of Brotherly Love. Despite the assertions of conservatives on the right that we're past all that, I believe bigotry (against blacks, gays, Arabs and Mexicans and others) is on the rise. Fueled by the venom of those who persist in promoting racist sentiments under the guise of an aversion to "political correctness," as evidenced by a rise in hate crimes, bigotry has become more mainstream. See e.g., Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Silence.

We like to think things have improved, yet reality sometimes has a way of intruding, to show us that it's not so, in an ugly way. Those of us who are more "privileged" may not have the right vantage point to really understand that the words of a Vento are empowering to bigots. Others have a better understanding, as observed in Advice about racism proved to be prophetic:

Looking back now, the older construction worker's words were downright prophetic.

Earlier this month, when Shawn Jenkins and his girlfriend decided it was time to move out of Feltonville, he asked his fellow construction workers for their opinions on his planned destination.

Jenkins had fallen in love with a tidy, red-brick Port Richmond rowhouse that was being rented out by a relative of one of his co-workers.

The neighborhood was quiet, tree-lined and clean.

The block of Edgemont Street near Cambria that Jenkins and his girlfriend - who are black - soon planned to call home was predominantly white, but he didn't expect any racial tensions.

"Everyone said we should be fine, but this one older guy at my job, he said, 'You don't want to do that. They'll burn you out of there,' " Jenkins said last night.

"I guess he was right."

Though they didn't actually resort to arson, vandals broke into 2917 Edgemont St. earlier this week, shattering windows and scarring the walls with hate-filled graffiti, declaring "All n-----s should be hung," police said.

Jenkins and his 21-year-old girlfriend - who was also verbally harassed when she visited the house over the weekend - were left shaken by the hate crime, which sounds like a leftover nightmare from the Jim Crow era.

"You just don't think that this kind of stuff would go on today," Jenkins said.

It goes on in big and little ways. From the noose incident at the Comcast construction site in Center City Philly, Inquiry sought in racial incident involving noose, to this.