When I lived in Buffalo the place was still segregated into little ethnic communities. There wasn’t much sharing that went on – each group remained isolated, and kept its treasures hidden under the bushel basket – accessible only to fellow travelers.

As the city breaks down, and anyone who can leaves (see the City’s very own population trends and estimates at Buffalo’s Comprehensive Plan), those neighborhood enclaves aren’t as sacrosanct as they once were.

The breakdown of a community reveals some of the nastier charactersI grew up in Kaisertown, a Polish enclave. This is where I was called a polack for the first time – by a grade school principal, with whom I was meeting, to discuss issues of language education. She herself was the child of immigrants. ethic enclaving creates.

Two examples from today’s Buffalo News:

Former state employee wins $150,000 in reverse discrimination case

Mark Pasternak said he lost his state job helping troubled youths because he couldn’t stand working under a black boss who called him racist names like —cracker,— —polack— and —stupid white boy.—

Pasternak was dismissed from his position as a youth worker with the state Office of Children and Family Services in 1999. But today, he feels some relief and vindication.

After a rare reverse racial discrimination trial in Buffalo’s federal court, a jury Tuesday awarded Pasternak $150,000. Jurors found that his former boss, Tommy E. Baines, discriminated against him racially and created a hostile working environment.

…

Pasternak was subjected to three years of cruel abuse from Baines, a veteran supervisor with the agency formerly known as the state Division for Youth, according to Pasternak’s attorney, David J. Seeger.

The abuse came in the form of race-based slurs, job sabotage and crude insults that Baines made about Pasternak in front of co-workers, according to court papers and testimony…

Enough said on this one. Let’s go on – to a State Senator…

Volker apologizes for using ethnic term

[State] Sen. Dale M. Volker issued an apology Wednesday for uttering a rarely used, offensive ethnic term Monday.

Volker, R-Depew, had dropped in on a meeting in the Lancaster Opera House to discuss Lancaster’s deteriorating Cemetery Road bridge. In his comments to the audience, Volker made disparaging remarks about a Rochester Institute of Technology engineering professor who had criticized the bridge’s condition in the media.

He called Abi Aghayere a —bohunk,— a disparaging term for a person of central European descent, especially a laborer. Aghayere is from Nigeria, according to the RIT Web site.

Volker issued a statement Wednesday saying the word —may have been misinterpreted, misunderstood and a poor choice for which I am sincerely apologetic and one which I regret.—

Craig Miller, Volker’s spokesman, said Wednesday that Volker did not mean the term in a derogatory or malicious way, even though it might have sounded that way.

—I think he looked at the word ‘bohunk’ as ‘an outsider,’ someone from the outside looking in,— Miller said. —I, myself, have never heard of the term…—

So, the Senator desires that we break people down into two camps – insiders and outsiders. I wonder, what would the better choice of words been?

Very good Senator. I can just about guess where you learned that insider/outsider distinction – from mom or dad, grandma or grandpa calling those stupid polacks that invaded their neighborhood bohunks.

‘Be careful young Dale, those pretty bohunk girls are gonna get you. We wouldn’t want that in our nice German bloodlines now would we…’

It always seems to be about us and them, insiders and outsiders. Somehow, the face of Christ disappears when we look into the eyes of those mysterious (oh, and aren’t they dangerous) outsiders.

Who said Natavist idealogy was dead?