Racist or Reasonable?

There's a piece in the NY Times today that points out some opposition by the almost completely homogeneously Ultra-Orthodox and Hassidic neighborhood of Borough Park to the plan for a public school to be moved to the neighborhood. The school will apparently service a large demographic of black and hispanic. Some of the points made in the article against the school by community members and leaders sound legitimate, like this one:

And the plan for the new school has angered community leaders, who say that any one of the neighborhood's yeshivas would be thrilled to buy the building for a fair price.

"The yeshivas are bursting — every time you turn around, there's more going up, and boy, would our community like to get those schools that are empty," said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat who represents the area.

That seems like a very fair point. Anyone who has ever driven through Borough Park, the "baby boom capital of NYC" when school is letting out, has likely seen the hordes of Yeshiva age children boarding the buses. It's also not hard to extrapolate how overcrowded the schools must be in a neighborhood as built out as Boro Park, where every square foot of property seems to be covered by some sort of structure. Though I'm not sure of the legal issues of selling a public school building for use as a private school, especially when the space is needed for public school students, I am sure the building would be of great use to the Borough Park Orthodox community.

However, the exclusionist tone of the other points made against the school really irks me. Said Dov Hikind:

He said of the neighborhood: "It is basically Hasidic, and one of the things in good government is you adjust to the changes. It's such an obvious thing to recognize, that our community is what it is. It is a wonderful community, a taxpaying community, it is a community of one of the lowest rates of crimes." He added, "We'd like to keep it that way."

I'm sure you would. He goes on:

Soon, he said, fliers were being distributed at synagogues and in the streets, urging residents to protest the plan at meetings of the local Community Education Council.

"These students will be imported from out of Boro Park and will have to walk through our streets during many hours of the day," read one such flier. "Can't you shudder to think what will become of our peaceful neighborhood?"

God forbid the residents of Borough Park should have to share their streets with outsiders in the free country of the USA. Nuts. Even more troubling is the headline and wording of yesterday's article on the subject in the Ultra-Orthodox daily Hamodia:

Shock, Anger Greet Boro Park High School Plan

...Neighborhood residents were livid over the plan, voicing their fears of the "impending deterioration of the quality of life" in the area.

One mother shared her anxiety with Hamodia: "I'm absolutely petrified. I won't be able to send my children to the grocery store or let them go to their friends on their own. They won't be safe coming home from school."

One would think from the fear the community is expressing the proposal concerns a community jail being built in the neighborhood, not a secondary school. Todays headline of Hamodia is even nuttier:

Kehillah Leaders Meet to Address Local Crisis

Crisis? This is a crisis? There are sick, impoverished people in our midsts, and this is how they define a crisis? The mind boggles. More choice bits about what was discussed at the meeting from today's Hamodia article:

Over and over again, Rav Rosenblum stressed that the crisis was all about the immoral alien cuture that was about to be imported into our insulated neighborhood, a unique and pure environment...He recommended that mothers in particular get together to express their pain and fears directly to the mayor, pointing out how this plan could destroy the entire value system they work so hard to imbue in their children.

Best graf:

When Hikind tried to calm the assemblage by describing the student body in question as highly scholastic and motivational youths who would not destroy the complexion of the neighborhood, Harav Epstein objected strongly and insisted that, notwithstanding their scholastic achievments, these youths would bring an unprecedented level of pritzus into the community that we could not accept.

Wow. I don't believe comment from me is even necessary on this one.

One additional point in the Hamodia piece that was made by local critics of the plan is that the government would bend over backwards to "preserve the homogeneous cultures like those in Amishtown". This is a ridiculous argument. If the residents of Boro Park would like to pick themselves up and move to a country setting in Central Pennsylvania or Ohio, as the Amish have done, their chances of being "infiltrated" by a (gasp) public school would probably be considerably lower. However, choosing to live in the middle of New York City significantly maximizes their cheances of "intrusion". It's been done before - see: Kiryas Yoel. Ain't nobody building a public school in that Orthodox neighborhood.

Bottom line, I am troubled by the exclusionist tone of the community. This is America, and smack in the middle of one of the most heterogenous cities in the world. Let's be reasonable, and choose our words a bit more carefully.