Smithtown faces inconvenient truth

My wife and I moved to Smithtown in 1983, shortly before the birth of our daughter, because it was close to our jobs. A neighbor greeted us with the words, "Welcome to lily-white Smithtown." We were shocked.

However, buying a house, raising a baby, going to work and taking care of our ailing parents took precedence. Fast-forward to 2021 ["Smithtown, please don’t give up," Opinion, May 25].

Smithtown has become another beachhead in a culture war to protect white interests for those convinced they are victims of "reverse discrimination" and "cancel culture." Smithtown schools’ percentage of Black students is 2%. Those "sick of hearing about Black Lives Matter" have created a false equivalence between their family’s challenges and Black lives while ignoring hundreds of years of slavery, redlining, denial of housing and jobs, fear about a simple traffic stop, and "stop and frisk."

There is now a proliferation of "Blue Lives Matter" and "Don’t Tread on Me" flags on Smithtown front lawns and streaming from pickup trucks.

"One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" is an inconvenient truth.

Louis Vincents, Smithtown

Growing up, I watched my parents make many sacrifices in order to send me to a school district "as good as" Smithtown. The district may have given me the tools to earn a good SAT score and a college scholarship.

Smithtown schools, however, did me a great disservice by teaching little about equity but a lot of how to perpetuate and tolerate both racial insensitivity and blatant racism. In the fourth grade, I had to write an essay pretending to be a slave. Students would draw swastikas on the fog of the school bus window with no repercussions. White students called each other a racial epithet as a joke. When we learned about artists in my high school Spanish class, only white men were discussed.

Now, I’m a rising senior journalism and political science major at Hofstra University. College was the place I could step out of the bubble of whiteness that my earlier schooling had created for me, and it was beautiful.

Smithtown, you are backward. There is so much more knowledge for students to gain besides your whitewashed curriculum and lack of equality. There’s a big world out there — make sure to let students see the color.

Leah M. Chiappino, Smithtown

The letters you received about Smithtown were succinct and right on target ["Smithtown leaders need not apologize," May 21]. I was raised in a South Shore community, then raised my own family in another. I must have been terribly naive, or was it just well-hidden in those days?

It is so obvious that the new defense offered by those opposed to the equity curriculum is . . . "poor us, we are being marginalized." It’s now looked upon as "cancel culture."

It’s time for Long Island to recognize the once-hidden, now-overt racism that lives in our communities. A truly sad but necessary wake-up call.

Wendy Frischer, Rockville Centre

Pointing fingers across the centuries:

• In 1692 Salem, Massachusetts: "You’re a witch! And you’re a witch! And you’re a witch!"
• In 1950s Washington, D.C.: "You’re a Commie! And you’re a Commie! And you’re a Commie!"
• In 2021 America: "You’re a racist! And you’re a racist! And you’re a racist!"

Peter Vercillo Jr., Brentwood