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  • Many otherwise astute Italian-born commentators on American life often mistake the grand indicators of diversity in American population statistics as indicators of extensive social mixing. Although America is far more diverse than Italy, and in some places like New York City, a great deal of more or less pleasant social mixing is apparent, the facts on the ground are that in most of the USA the situation is not very different from that which can be found back home in Italy.
  • This was the first of two articles I wrote in The Brooklyn Free Press shortly after Yusuf Hawkins' murder in the summer of 1989. Although it concerns his brutal slaying by a cowardly group of bigoted hoodlums in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, it connects that single, very local, act to city-wide, nation-wide, and indeed world-wide issues of racism and politics.