I grew up in Bensonhurst among people who, if they had little else, had the courage of their contradictions. I grew up trying to sort truth from fiction (which was almost always more picturesque and more compelling than truth) among proud, stubborn Italian — Americans who were convinced that they were doomed to be misunderstood... a conviction that paradoxically was a source of stoic pride. To compound the paradox, these same people — who were eloquent in their belief that they would be forever deprived, by the pazzi Americans, of what was rightfully theirs — managed also to believe absolutely in the American Dream: when Grandpa wasn‘t singing hymns to the Brownshirts, he was singing Frank Sinatra‘s ‘What is America to Me?’ The house I live in... the street, the house, the road... the church, the school, the clubhouse.., the little corner newsstand... the dream that’s been agrowin‘ for about two hundred years.

Bensonhurst is still Sinatra territory. Some say it is Mafia territory. It is still peopled by proud, stubborn, first-, second-, and third-generation southern Italians for whom the ownership of a little bit of land represents not just material success but the attainment of the highest moral and ethical ideal. The church, the school, the clubhouse - - especially the neighbourhood school - - are regarded now, as they were then, as theirs to love and theirs to defend. Now, more than ever, Bensonhurst‘s Italian-Americans are convinced that they are trying to take away the just rewards — especially the neighbourhood schoolhouse — that by right should have accrued to decent, hardworking patriots.

What is no longer certain is that anyone in Bensonhurst believes, any more, in the American Dream. The dreams of Bensonhurst‘s Italian-Americans are blood-coloured now, and the stink of fear is in the air.

On Monday, October 7, racial tension exploded into racial violence at New Utrecht High School (my old high school).