Unstated Premises and the Fate of the Little Library in Costello Memorial Park

 

Unstated Premises and the Fate of the Little Library in Costello Memorial Park

Why More Money is Not the Answer

The rules do not apply to us. Those who tell us to follow the rules are slave drivers. Telling us to follow rules that everyone else follows is racist oppression. We are owed. All of those other people who aren't exactly like us, including Jews, including Asians, including whites who immigrated to this country long after the end of slavery, including Africans who immigrated to this country long after the end of slavery, as well as American-born blacks who have done well, all of them, they all, owe us. None of them know what suffering is. If they don't pay us, and they never pay us enough, we can take anything we want from them. We are justified. We would be suckers, fools, naive, not to take anything we can get away with taking. Pimps, looters, shoplifters, drug dealers and anyone running a scam is clever and resourceful. The ambition to achieve in mainstream society is betrayal. The American Dream is a scam for suckers. Our rite of passage is a young man's first epic defiance of mainstream society. Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed. Nice is phony, hypocritical, weak. People who like nice are "acting white." Our lives are not nice so anything nice affronts us, challenges us. We must destroy it so that, in its destroyed state, it justifies our wallow in misery. We must "keep it real." Keeping it real means keeping it cynical, sneering, base.

No, none of my black neighbors in Paterson has stated these premises to me. Why, then, do I think that some of them think this way? Because of behavior I've observed, including the destruction of the Little Library in Costello Memorial Park. That destruction is but one example of a wider, decades-long pattern. It indicates why the leftist solution of pumping more taxpayer dollars into black underclass urban areas solves nothing.

Plenty of black people have, unsolicited, condemned these attitudes to me. Black neighbors in this building reject these premises. Their children are well-groomed, well-behaved, and attend school, work, and church regularly. I've been around long enough to witness generations achieve academic and professional goals, take on responsible jobs, and purchase property in better neighborhoods.

And, of course, not just black people act on similar unstated premises. There is a good deal of some Polish people's attitudes in the above list. I've seen older Polish people so wounded by invasions and occupations, wars and failed Utopian schemes, that they can't allow anything to be nice. They pick unnecessary fights, they make enemies, and, yes, they break laws.

I sometimes act in accord with the above flawed premises. To overcome the psychological legacy of my own trauma as well as the ancestral trauma that I've inherited, I intervene in my thought processes. Christianity and Twelve Step provide tools for replacing "Stinking Thinking." Here are a few examples of "Stinking Thinking":

Blaming others rather than focusing on what you can control.

Resenting other people rather than learning to forgive.

Viewing the world in black and white rather than living with shades of gray.

To defeat "Stinking Thinking," Twelve Steppers make "a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Then we make "a list of all persons we had harmed" and become "willing to make amends to them all." This is very like a Catholic "examination of conscience" that one performs daily. Placing the focus on personal responsibility and improving one's own behavior remakes the person.

Conditions for the black underclass will improve in cities like Paterson when leaders stop projecting blame outward, while simultaneously waiting in vain for salvation to arrive from the outside. Conditions will improve when self-examination and self-correction are championed by political, cultural, and religious leaders. Black conservatives like Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Jason Riley, Jason D. Hill, and Larry Elder have walked this path and they've outlined it in their publications. They deserve greater support from parents, teachers, preachers, funders, and politicians. 

Barack Obama's mentor Jeremiah Wright has been called a "prophet" in the same mold as Isaiah and Jeremiah. He is not. In the Old Testament, the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah fearlessly told audiences what they were doing wrong. Prophets spelled out the inevitable punishments from God for bad behavior. Jeremiah warned ancient Jews to quit sinning. Otherwise, "the carcasses of this people will become food for the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate."

Can you imagine a Jeremiah Wright, an Al Sharpton, a Raphael Warnock, prophesying thus to black congregations? Of course not. Preachers like Wright tell congregations not how they can improve their lives by changing their thinking and their behavior. No, their congregations are all innocent victims of "God damn America" as Wright put it in an infamous sermon. No growth can come from a culture that preaches demonization of the other while exculpating the hearer from personal responsibility for personal failings.

Clinging to extinct circumstances distorts behavior in the here and now. Over thirty years ago, I visited Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I had just returned from studying in Poland. I was homesick for Polishness and I'd heard that Greenpoint has a large Polish population. A Polish-style grocery store, right there in the five boroughs of New York City, offered familiar beets, mushrooms, and crackly-crusted loaves of the very best rye bread you have ever tasted. There was also a long line. I had just left communist-era Poland where people had to line up for food, and here Poles were queuing in America, the land of abundance, where people don't have to face long lines for much of anything except the post office and the DMV. An elderly babcia approached the counter. "Prosze pana, czy jest chleb?" "Please, sir. Is there bread?"

I wanted to spin her around and shout, "Grandmother! You are in America! There is bread! There's even butter!"

That babcia was so locked into her worldview that she couldn't process the concrete reality around her, and adapt her behavior to changed circumstances. I saw that same paralysis in some black students. Their worldview, and thus their behavior, were a holdover from the days of slavery and Jim Crow. It was more comfortable to them to cling to outmoded premises than to recognize that they were no longer in Egypt; they had reached the Promised Land.

"Listen," I would say to them. "You are living in a charmed time. There are institutions begging for qualified black candidates for internships, scholarships and desirable jobs. All you have to do is groom yourself. Arrive on time. Read the assigned work. Study before a test. Grab this brass ring that life is thrusting at you!"

Reflective of national trends, those who did respond positively to life's invitation were more likely to be female. At school and at work, black women are doing better than black men. My black female students appeared much more comfortable accepting guidance from me, a white woman. Black males were more likely to resist a white, female teacher telling them what to do. They were stuck in unstated premises about what is means to be a black man, and to them, to be a black man meant to arrive late, in sagging pants, and high on drugs, to perform no work, and to disrespect the white woman who dared to tell them what to do. These behaviors were "keeping it real." In contrast, recent black male immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean were operating on the American Dream template. They looked great, they worked hard, and they were a joy to teach. They received A grades. American-born black males disdained the recent immigrants for "acting white."

Paterson is surrounded by cleaner, safer towns. I cross on foot, almost daily, from one town border to another. Suddenly there are no car stereos blasting noise every bit as loud as a stadium loudspeaker. There's little garbage in the streets. Drivers can leave their car window open on a hot day, do some shopping, return, and the spare change in the console has not disappeared, and the car's paint has not been keyed. People say "excuse me," rather than "Ima kill you." Homeowners make an effort to beautify their property.

Woodland Park is one of these bordering towns. Woodland Park used to be West Paterson. In 2008, residents voted to change the town's name. Insulted Patersonians joked that they should change the name of their city to "East Woodland Park."

"Racism!" our friends on the Left insist. Balderdash. In many of Paterson's surrounding, superior border communities, the folks contributing to a better quality of life are black. Stephanie, a colleague, gushed to me a few years ago. Stephanie and her family had finally socked away enough cash to move out of Paterson into Prospect Park, a bordering town. "I'm so glad to get out of Paterson," Stephanie said. "To get away from the garbage in the streets and the crime. I used to hate watching people hurt nature and hurt animals," she said, plaintively. Stephanie is black, as are her spouse and her children.

There's a humble home I pass in my daily walks; it is close to the border between Paterson and Woodland Park. Saint Valentine's day ignites red twinkly lights and a big heart in the window. Green lights twinkle and leprechauns cavort for Saint Patrick's Day. Memorial Day is red, white, and blue. For Christmas and Easter they go all out. The house is tiny. The homeowners appear to be Peruvian or some other Hispanic immigrant group that displays significant Native American ancestry. Their family is intact, their street is clean, and they celebrate America's holidays with evident gratitude and gusto. They aren't richer or whiter than the average Patersonian. They just have a different attitude.

There are folks with that different attitude within Paterson itself. The other day I was on Liberty Street, which runs between Kennedy High School and Hinchliffe Stadium. Kennedy High School has been ranked 406th out of 415 public schools in NJ. When I pass Kennedy, I can't help but think of Hector Robles, a 42-year-old man who was beaten to death in 2001 by a "whole crowd" of black high school students. It was June and students were celebrating summer recess by beating any Hispanic they could find. Robles was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and of the wrong ethnicity. In testimony, one student said, "One person would hit him, and the others would stomp him and go through his pockets.'' Afterward, Robles' teen killers went swimming and shopping. Only one of the sixteen assailants had a jury trial. John Williams was represented by Michael F. Kelly, a white defense attorney who lived in distant, wooded West Milford, where residents worry more about bears than crime. Williams was acquitted of murder, though it was Williams who began the attacks, announcing that he wanted to beat up "Spanish" people. After the acquittal, Williams' grandmother hugged Kelly.

Every time I walk past Kennedy High School I think of Hector Robles, a name you are not to say, a name you are not to remember, a life that apparently didn't much matter.

The other end of Liberty Street evokes Paterson's pride. Hinchliffe Stadium is one of the few remaining stadia that used to host Negro League baseball games. Larry Doby broke the American League color barrier in 1947, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson began to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Doby attended high school in Paterson. When his high school football team was invited to play in Florida, the hosts said that Doby, the only black player, could not participate. The team refused, out of solidarity with Doby. Doby played both football and baseball in Hinchliffe Stadium.

Kennedy high school was at my back and Hinchliffe stadium was in front of me as I walked down Liberty Street the other day. I saw something so astounding I couldn't figure out what to make of it. A tiny woman in a faded sari was squatting on the sidewalk. She looked like women I used to see in Nepal, but those women, in that squatting posture, were winnowing rice or tending a fire. This woman was clearly one of many recent immigrants from Bangladesh who now live near Kennedy High School. But why was she squatting on the sidewalk?

As I got closer, I could see that this tiny squatting woman was using a hand spade to remove the weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalk in front of her apartment. She proudly displayed to me the bucket beside her. It was filled with the weeds she had previously removed.

"Wow! Hard work! Well done!" I said in English. I'm sure she didn't understand my words, but she smiled broadly.

She lives in a tough neighborhood of a dangerous city. But her sidewalk, in sha'Allah, will be orderly. Her focus on getting a job done, her insistence on improving her tiny corner of the world, her refusal to let surrounding degeneracy and decay diminish her, are exemplary.

Paramus, a world-famous shopping mecca, is just seven miles from Paterson. Consumers spend six billion dollars annually in Paramus, more than in any other zip code in the US. Attracting shoppers to Paterson would benefit Paterson. In fact Paterson itself used to be a shopping mecca. See here, here, and here. There could be jobs and tax revenue; employees and shoppers could gain experience of the wider world. To that end, taxpayer money goes to Paterson's status as an Urban Enterprise Zone. "The Urban Enterprise Zone is a state-designated program created to alleviate unemployment and to enhance the economic climate in distressed cities throughout the State of New Jersey. The City of Paterson is one of New Jersey's original Urban Enterprise Zones." Businesses "charge reduced sales tax."

Even more taxpayer money goes to a greater police presence. This greater presence, Paterson politicians assure us, is needed not because of anything any Patersonian has ever done. No, no. The problem is white people outside of Paterson. They have a negative attitude. "Over 400 businesses in the City of Paterson have expressed concerns over the negative connotations that the City of Paterson has and believes [sic] that with the larger presence of the police patrol throughout the UEZ corridors, it will promote a much safer environment for businesses and shoppers alike." One must notice this difference. It is entirely acceptable, required, even, to smear everyone who doesn't live in Paterson as a racist. It is never acceptable to mention that Patersonians commit many more violent crimes per capita than the residents of surrounding towns. And that that crime rate is the reason, even with the reduced sales tax, no outsider who can avoid it comes to shop in Paterson.

Say you decide that you, brave, Woke, righteous you, are going to overcome "Racism!" and spend the day shopping in Paterson. So you drive to Paterson. This is where you first encounter the first unstated premise, above. "The rules do not apply to us." Drivers run red lights, idle at green lights, speed, make U-turns, drive the wrong way, and stop in the middle of the street to consult their phones, sneeringly dismissing anyone beeping behind them. Pedestrians dart into traffic. At one crosswalk I use regularly, I am perhaps the only pedestrian who has ever used it. I have watched parents with children in tow a mere twenty feet from the zebra-striped crosswalk, a crosswalk that is accompanied by a blinking stop sign, and parents choose to walk out randomly into heavy traffic with their toddler holding their hand and learning young, "The rules do not apply to us."

"Well," our Leftist friends would say, "It's a more relaxed culture. Not so anal retentive as white people can be. Looser! More creative! Like jazz! Who am I judge?"

Okay, leftist friend, but when is the last time you shopped in Paterson? Never. Because you went once and you saw how people drive, and a pedestrian darted in front of your car, and you instantaneously imagined a very dark scenario. You, a white person alone behind the wheel, struck a black pedestrian, in an all-black neighborhood. And you said, "I'm never driving down here again." Rules, even what appear to be minor rules, make civil society possible. You don't have to be mugged in Paterson or shot in Paterson to be afraid of Paterson. You just have to drive here once and almost strike a pedestrian who is breaking a little rule, by jaywalking, to eliminate ever coming here again. So much for the taxpayer dollars pushed into making Paterson an Urban Enterprise Zone.

"Black pedestrians are twice as likely to be struck and killed while walking than white pedestrians." But, of course, if police stop black people for jaywalking, that is because Amerikkka is RACIST! So say numerous news sources.

Researchers have discovered that Japanese people are much less likely to jaywalk than French people. It is permissible for researchers to study this question, and to publish their results. It's not okay for me to mention that I have repeatedly seen black Paterson parents drag young children into oncoming traffic though a cross walk that is just feet away. You can't solve problems you are demonized for naming.

Stephanie rejoiced that she could move to Prospect Park. She confessed that she was tired of watching people in Paterson hurt nature and animals. She referred specifically to residents dumping their garbage on the ground, and also in the Passaic River. "That hurts the ducks and the fish!" As with the jaywalking example, the garbage issue is not about lack of facilities. There are garbage cans. People ignore them.

Stephanie said that people hurt the trees. They do. As a daily walker, I have seen the city plant trees and flowers, no doubt with taxpayer money from other municipalities that have healthy tax bases. I have then watched Patersonians vandalize trees. Pull branches off trees. Carve up the bark. Chop down freshly-planted lindens, trees that are fragrant in summer, to make it easier to park. Place cigarettes and emptied cans in flower beds. Trample flower beds. Trees and flowers are something nice. Nice things are an affront. We gotta "keep it real."

Everyone in Paterson? No. A minority of residents, as the rest of us look on, our hearts breaking, as Stephanie's did. But enough people that any Leftist who says, "The problem is lack of funds; let's give them taxpayer money" is deluded. Paterson needs your money much less than Paterson needs a different set of unstated premises. You can ship all the flowers to Paterson that you want. It's just a matter of time till they are trampled. Not by most of us; most of us are poor and we are here because we can't afford to move. But poverty has not poisoned us; we, the poor, mostly detour around flowers, rather than trample them. We, though poor, get it that the rules apply to us. Some of us don't get that, and when you demonize the police, neuter the judicial system, and drill into schoolchildren's heads that they are oppressed victims and as oppressed victims they owe the world nothing, including decent behavior, that rather than owing anyone anything they are owed, they are owed, they are owed, you, my big-hearted leftist friends, guarantee that poor folks like me live among trampled flowers.

"The rules don't apply to us … we can take anything we want from them. We are justified. We would be suckers, fools, naive, not to take anything we can get away with taking. Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed." Adherence to these unstated premises doesn't just damage others. It damages the self. Back in the twentieth century, I was working on a campus when computers were taking over. In those days not many people were computer literate and those who were were a superior caste. Calvin was one of those nerds. He was just a kid but we all deferred to him. He owned the campus. Everyone loved him; everyone needed him. Calvin was discovered stealing. I was told he went to prison. He had a brilliant career ahead of him. Whatever short-term benefit he gained from stealing was of negligible value compared to the good will, respect, and future earnings he sabotaged. Given the opprobrium for "acting white," I have to wonder if Calvin didn't steal, not for attempted financial gain, but to redeem his own status. Calvin had the kind of mind that was comfortable with computers when most people regarded computers as impenetrably complex. Maybe stealing was his way of proving to his community that he wasn't "acting white." That he was "keeping it real."

Andre Sayegh promotes his mayoralty by reminding voters of how many outside taxpayer dollars he has siphoned in to underwrite Paterson's hemorrhaging needs. All that money has not made Paterson's streets cleaner or safer or its nights quieter. Money won't solve those problems; changes in unstated premises would.

Imagine if the young black men driving the cars blasting out obscene rap lyrics at three a.m. were taught to think about the working people, the mothers, fathers, and children, whose sleep they steal. Imagine if those young black men were taught to think of themselves, not as helpless victims who have been cheated by some outside force, but as members of a society where they owe others their decency and self-control. Imagine if young black men were informed, "Every time you act like a jerk, observers conclude negative things about you, about your family, about other innocent people who just happen to share your skin color, and about your ancestors. When you act like a jerk, you make the world a worse place for other black people." Imagine, further, if they were told, "What, you're a victim? Everyone on this planet is a victim. No one's life is perfect. Get the therapy you need. At a certain point we all have to shuck off the victim role and start looking at how we are using the power we have to make the world a better or a worse place." Imagine if those young black men were told, "You have a priceless gift. You have youth. You have a male's strength and focus. Every day get down on you knees and thank God for these gifts and then go out into the world you will be leaving soon enough and use your powers to make the world a better place." I used to say these things to students. Superiors condemned me as a reactionary.

None of these interventions will take place any time soon. Democrats go on pretending that what Paterson really needs is to siphon tax dollars from communities where people are mature enough to put their own pain aside, and where they do feel that they owe something to someone other than themselves, and where able-bodied people do work and pay taxes.

Mayor Sayegh trumpeted his efforts to renovate Lou Costello Memorial Park. Costello, of Abbot and Costello fame, was born in Paterson. Sayegh's administration erected a playground. Old-timers rolled their eyes. How long before "Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed" was applied?

One of the additions to the park was a "Little Free Library." A Little Free Library is a wooden box, held about five feet or so above the ground by a wooden post. Its glass door keeps the donated books inside clean and dry. The Little Free Library motto is "take a book; leave a book." The project's website says, "Our mission is to be a catalyst for building community, inspiring readers, and expanding book access … We believe all people are empowered when the opportunity to discover a personally relevant book to read is not limited by time, space, or privilege." This high-minded prose is rather silly. Free libraries exist across the US. Paterson's Danforth Library is on the National Register of Historic Places. The neoclassical building dates from 1905. Its interior walls are lined with gorgeous original oil paintings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated thirty-five computers in 2022. The last time I braved the hookers, pickpockets, and drunken men on the sidewalks surrounding the library, I sat next to a black guy who was using his computer to shop for a gun. I tried to talk him out of it, unsuccessfully.

I no longer use the Paterson library, though it is very close to me. I walk two and a half miles to the Woodland Park library, where I confront no hookers, pickpockets, or drunken men before entering. In addition to the main building, there is also a Little Free Library located just behind it. I've been taking free books out of the Little Free Library in Woodland Park for years.

When, as part of Mayor Sayegh's renovation, a Little Free Library appeared in Costello Memorial Park in Paterson, I just waited. The first vandalism occurred almost immediately. Someone began to remove books from the Little Free Library, tear them to pieces, and leave the pages of the books all over the park and the adjacent street. After that, of course, someone smashed the glass in the door. Any books left in the Little Free Library were exposed to rain. Then someone pulled the entire remaining door off of its hinges. Then someone dumped a pile of books, floppy discs, videos, and other paraphernalia on the ground under the Little Free Library. Then someone ripped everything to shreds. Again, pages from books and glass and wood scattered on the ground, and piled up in the corner of the brand, spanking new playground of which Mayor Sayegh was so proud.

The minority of blacks who adopt the unstated premises that demand destruction are encouraged by rich, white leftists. Joy Behar is co-host of television's The View. She's an 80-year-old Italian American multimillionaire and TV star. She recently lectured Senator Tim Scott, a black man who believes in hard work, service, and getting ahead in life. She mocked his belief in "pulling yourself by your bootstraps." Behar says that black people can't get ahead because of "systemic racism." "He doesn't get it," Behar said.

Such attitudes are not limited to obnoxious TV stars. Amiri Baraka wrote, "A woman asked me in all earnestness, couldn't any whites help? I said, you can help by dying. You are a cancer. You can help the world's people with your death." And, "The black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has … most whites … know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped." Baraka also recommended, in obscene language, that blacks commit genocide against Jews. Whites elevated Baraka to New Jersey's poet laureate. The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation and others honored him.

What is the legacy of men like Amiri Baraka who touted a hyper-violent, hyper-sexual, racist, grievance-mongering, self-pitying, genocidal, anti-social role model for black men? What is the legacy of rich, white leftists who advanced this image, and who belittled successful, law-abiding black men like Tim Scott as "Uncle Tom"? That legacy includes Donqua Thomas, a Paterson man who, in 2020, shot to death Remy Lee, eight months pregnant, carrying Thomas' baby. That legacy includes Jhymiere Moore, who, when he was just a teenager, shot to death 12-year-old Genesis Rincon and 15-year-old Ragee Clark, 15, on Paterson's streets. That legacy includes John Williams, who lead a mob in beating and stomping Hector Robles to death for no reason other than his ethnicity.

In mid-June, 2023, a grotesque video circulates on the web of two black men, in broad daylight, fighting to the death in a Manhattan street, as traffic and pedestrians pass them. The video ends with the dead man's blood staining the street. That is the legacy of the unstated premises advanced by rich white leftists and hyper violent poseurs like Amiri Baraka. Stinking thinking doesn't just destroy Little Libraries. It destroys human lives. And all the money in the world won't fix it.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery