Thanks for your comments. Hearing/reading about the murder of Luis Ramirez left me deeply troubled, with an unshakeable sense that something is terribly wrong with our country. Reading the comments posted on Stormfront didn’t help matters either.

It seems some people believe that undocumented migrants do not have the right to life (not to mention liberty and the pursuit of happiness) in this country. We’ve basically managed to criminalize an entire population with the label “illegal immigrant.” But our legal system is set up this way. For example, EU citizens do not need a visa to visit the US and they can stay for as long as 90 days. If you go out to Ocean City, MD or any of the North/South Carolina beaches, you would be surprised by the number of European kids working as lifeguards, waiting tables, or bartending. But these kids have special visa programs that allow them to come here and work for the summer. Many come back several summers in a row. Fruit and vegetable pickers like Luis Ramirez have no special visa that would allow them to be here “legally,” but there is no shortage of employers willing to hire them, usually at a low wage. And I remember there was a time when in some states, it was “illegal” for any Black man to be caught off a plantation without proper papers. No need to remind y’all of the consequences in these instances.

The problem is that there is a real need for migrant labor, which is why people keep coming. It’s not like these guys are coming here and sitting around unemployed. There is a direct link between employment and their presence in this country. But there is no official program to recognize those migrants who come here for work or to regulate their movement into and presence in the US. Instead, we devalue and dehumanize them with the term “illegal aliens” and leave them at the mercy of White supremacists. After all, the kids who killed Luis Ramirez had no way of knowing his immigration status, but they assumed he was an “illegal” because he was Mexican.

At the end of the day, and Irish or Romanian summer worker who overstays her/his visa technically becomes “illegal.” But a group of White teenagers looking to beat up an “illegal” would never go looking for them.

Such is the way of the racist, I suppose.

Yet, while living in “da burgh”, there were many famous cases of African-American men routinely being harassed by the police and in one particularly case of an African-American man being picked up on a bogus charge and being beaten to death because he appeared “suspicious”- i.e. he was passing through an all-white neighborhood. In that particularly case, I believe the police involved got off on all charges and were able to return back to work- business as usual. It is commonly understood among the African-American community that it’s best to stay out of certain neighborhoods (usually all white) at night, thus reinforcing a hidden segregation.

People keep going on about the Southern legacy of racism, but wake up and smell the java, the North also has its fair share of hostile racism too! While I consider Pittsburgh an East Coast-meets-Mid-West city, there have been many cases of police brutality among non-white and often poor residents in the city-looks can be deceiving. The influx of illegal migrant workers is also happening- part and parcel of a globalized economy. I suspect that in the smaller communities outside of Philly and Pittsburgh, already economically depressed from lack of job opportunities (think of Billy Joel’s Allentown), the local population will jump on the racist bandwagon to eliminate what they view is an outright threat to their economic and social well-being.

From personal experience, I always sensed Pittsburgh’s racial/ethnic tensions, but after September 11th, listening to KDKA, WKQV and other talk-radio formated stations, and all the rabid Islamophobia and “let’s nuke ‘em to bits” rhetoric, it left a utter chill down my spine. Even in very “liberal” areas, you’d see people all hyped up ultra-patriotic gear (the U.S. flags made in China, the “We Stand United” bumper stickers), I realized how quickly these so-called “liberal” people could change the tune of their song, and it left me feeling very unsafe and unsettled.

I remember under Mayor Murphy, there were many projects designed, which I participated in and collaborated on to help jump-start highly skilled immigrants to settle in Pittsburgh, in part to create job growth. After one year working on some of these ventures, I realized it is the city and the mentality of many of its inhabitants that need to change for diversity to exist. If it wasn’t for places like Oakland, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Strip District, and the South Side, then they would hardly be any diversity or cool things to go/do.

The rest of PA needs an mentality “face-lift”. Highly-skilled and creative people (like myself) aren’t willing to live in areas where bigotry is institutionally accepted policy.

Very unfortunate the value of a human being is measured by their ethnicity. If that one factor — race — were to be switched, FOX, CNN, BBC PBS would pick it up as headline news. But the way it is is just an unfortunate situation: “a street fight that went wrong.”

I echo your sentiments. I’m a little ashamed that I just found out about LaVena’s story yesterday, but the incident took place in 2005 and her family has been fighting ever since. Thanks to some decent journalists and people like Anne Wright, their daughter’s story is finally getting the coverage it deserves. Hopefully LaVena’s rapist/murderer will get the justice he deserves and her parents can finally get the closure they need.

On a side note, if any of you were watching the Mandela 90th Birthday concert in London, when Amy Winehouse came up to perform, instead of singing “Free Mandela” she sang, “Free Blakey”. Sorry, but if it were MY 90th birthday and I spent half of my life in a prison getting the shit beaten out of me on a daily basis, I’d be fucking insulted by some crack-head singing about freeing her husband who is a fuck up. It would have been the highlight to see Mandela take his cane and give Wino’s beehive a good smack! That would by far have been a fitting gesture.

Thanks for reading my blog and leaving a comment. I agree that biologically speaking, there’s no denying that women enter sexual maturity earlier than men. My issue is with how different behaviors are perceived as mature or less mature, depending on who engages in them. Boys continue to play video games long after puberty, and this behavior is still considered immature. Why? Similarly, post-adolescent women will spend hours on the phone or over brunch discussing their romantic interests, yet this behavior is never considered immature. Why?

Thoughts? Comments?