Buffalo Rising Online

I have been saying for years...two young people get shot dead on the East Side...it gets minimal news TV & Print coverage. A white kid from Clarence gets in a car wreak and dies...the Buffalo News will do a huge story on that kid. It's absolutely not fair and I can't believe people don't point that out more.

I will say one thing regarding The Why Guy...he does stories that are pitched to him by marketing people (I've worked with him many times - and he's a good guy). You would think that he would broaden his horizons a little, but with so many segments to produce each day, I bet you he goes with what stories have been pitched.

Eric, Thank you for sharing your opinions in this rant. We all see the world through our own lenses and filters that shape our perceptions. Your perception is that all news about the suburbs involves rich kids is no less misguided than someone who sees only the criminal activity in the city. There are a lot of great things happening in the city, and although I believe that the local media could do a much better job of highlighting them, they are covered in most of the media outlets. I do watch the channel 2 and channel 4 news in the mornings, and I believe that they try to offer a balance of perspectives in their human interest stories. It is important to differentiate their reporting on 'news', 'sports', 'weather' and 'human interest'. I had the opportunity to meet Chesley O'Neal (I may have spelled that incorrectly) at a fund raiser a couple of months ago and asked him why he doesn't showcase more downtown activities on his morning segments from SPOT coffee, he told me that he brings on everyone who wants to come on the show. Involvement is a two-way street, I applaud your efforts to paint a better picture of the city from the African-American perspective, and I hope it brings in greater involvement in development and progress from that community.

I am glad to see that there will be a point person for bringing in news from the minority community. Sometime it is hard to even know where to begin because there is such a lifestyle and social divide along main street that unless you have good friends or live there, it is a tale of two cities.

I also much agree with the point about the major news outlets. There coverage of one story versus the other is the main reason I found BRO to begin with and like their coverage of positive city happenings. It isn't always just a minority versus white thing but often the line falls at the city line no matter what race is involved. Good news is almost exclusively about those events and places popular the larger regional population. Shea's, Allentown Art Festival or the Taste of Buffalo. They fill the rest of the time by talking about violence and race.

Remember the example of the west side deli that got robbed a couple months back. I attempted to watch every news station trying to see how they covered it. They all just said stuff like, "more violence on the city's west side." A shop owner shoots a would be criminal. Totally leaving out the fact of where the criminal actually came from (North Tonawanda). As soon as it is a city person doing something wrong the story changes.. "An east side man was accused of robbing.."

News is news, blood sells, but there really does need to be a little bit more consistency on how it is reported. You shouldn't arbitrarily leave out socio political information because it might hurt someones feels or change the perception of some towns / villages. No one is trying to say there isn't crime in the city we can pull out the stats and end that case real quick but the way the story is told is very divisive and perpetuates many negative emotions.

Although I agree with the concerns expressed here, is a targeted attack labeling one news reporter appropriate on this site? And does this particular BRO correspondent get to use language like "take your suburban ass to the East side???" Is that bringing us together? And nice job, BRO, with the disclaimer making sure to note that you're not one of THOSE bad news outlets!

I think this issue is important and worth exploring, but in a more responsible way.

I stopped watching TV news a long time ago. The stories that this article talks about, crime and "lifestyle" both, are not really helpful, so I don't pay attention to either one. While I would like them to change, I don't expect them to change.

Instead, I will seek out those stories on my own, create them when I can, and share them with anyone who will listen.

I agree with the larger sentiment behind it, but this was an odd post. I mean, segregation is an important topic to talk about and work on, but I don't see what it has to do with the Why Guy.

Critt-So no dissenting views? And who exactly is the "we" that will revitalize our home? Some of your points are a bit contradictory.

^^^racist^^^

Josh,

Please don't give South Buffalo a bad name.

your son,

Colin

And another thing -- who's the guy in the pirate shirt?

The sad truth is that realist and racist are often the same in Buffalo... I personally had more than a few relatives that considered themselves realists that after some time away from them and growing personally I look back upon as fairly racist. Far from bigots or extreme but subtly affected by race to their core perception of people and events. There is a lot of history on both sides of the fence that need some good hashing, who knows maybe even a good ole yelling match followed up with a beer to relieve stress.

The point I think this article hints at, is that there is little to no dialogue across 'main street' or 'city line' and 40 years of not talking has created a lot of misconceptions from all parties. If nothing happened but a little rational discourse about what people feel is or isn't wrong with the 'system' then it would be a win for all sides.

1. Josh's post appeared to blame non-whites for the poverty in certain areas of the city, which is wrong for all sorts of reasons. But it's also racist, in that it creates racial hierarchies and essentializes entire groups of people into neat little categories.

2. Racism is a problem. It isn't "realism," "common sense," or anything like it. One of the most basic things we can do to fight racism is to call it when we see it. If we don't, and we let it pass, it builds up until some sad people actually think it's true.

3. "Political correctness" is a term that stupid people use to hide behind when someone challenges their ignorance.

4. I have a perfect right to "bust out" any word I please. Just try and stop me, racist.

What's surprising about stories about Germans, Poles and Irish? They, along with Italians, are the largest ethnic groups in the area. In fact, German is the largest ethnic group in the USA (Irish second).

As for BR being a place where local politicians could mix, well, I have noted the strange and complete absence of local politicians on this site or any other site. I have my theories.

BR should be exactly what its owners want it to be. That’s capitalism.

Is that this dude's "myspace" picture? How do you determine what reader submissions to post on this site? Did you just pick a rant out of a hat and post it?

The race situation in Buffalo is one of the reasons why a little piece of my desire to move back dies each day.

I feel the need to defend BRO a little bit here. Could and should they do more to get stories about what happens in all segments of Buffalo sure. I agree. It would be nice to find out what is happening all over. Just a couple days ago there was an article about the BBQ place on Fox Street. A while ago people complained about South Buffalo after which came a slew of articles that could have made people think it was South Buffalo Rising.

Are people in Kaisertown, Lovejoy, Riverside, Black Rock yelling over a lack of proper representation on BRO. I don't think so and they certainly aren't linking it to a race thing. Maybe the articles happen as things happen and I don't think anyone could argue with the fact that there is more development and change happening in Elmwood / Hertel than most of the city proper combined.

If there is something going on in your neighborhood why don't you email it to BRO. I am sure they would be happy to explore it. I sent something to them about a happenings on Jefferson. Without speaking up and telling your stories to someplace (like BRO or the TV news) how do you think they would get reported. The truth about BRO over the other news outlets is they would probably be more willing to listen and report on it..

Hence this article.

About time someone noticed and said something about this, and THANK YOU BR for posting this too. I never was a fan of WGRZ either, mostly because it bored the hell out of me everytime, just the way they present the news was always dull. But it's so true, they go to extreme for the newsless and same old status quo. If your representing the BUFFALO NEWS, then present MORE of it.

Also a part of the disproportionate stories could come from the (forgive me for a little jargon) digital divide. There is a divide between those who can afford both the money and time to blog and type out stories to be submitted online. Someone working two jobs striving to pay rent doesn't have time to sift through the internet to find and blog on BRO. So unfortunately maybe BRO is stuck in a sort of crux where they rely on people giving them leads but those giving them leads rely on internet access. Unfortunately not everyone can afford a computer with broadband (a necessity to us BRO).

use*

"Blacks were treated kindly by northern cities whose abolition-minded residents sympathized with them over the injustices of slavery and who helped many of them escape their servitude through the Underground Railroad. Blacks found northern cities to be refuges from Jim Crow laws early on and were eager to join the ranks of the factory workers to begin new lives. . . . To this day, the most segregated cities in america are in the Midwest, once a bastion of Lincoln Republicans that welcomed Blacks."

I have to disagree. The North was quite racist in its own way. There were draft riots when Lincoln changed the goal of the Civil War from union to anti-slavery. The North had Black Codes to match the South's Jim Crow.

Mark Goldman's book, City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York, is about official racial discrimination against blacks in the 20th century. About Civil War-era Buffalo, he writes:

"Like most Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century, Buffalonians were distinctly racist, and while many may well have abhorred slavery (no working man in his right mind would want to compete with slave labor), the overwhelming majority had no desire to live among blacks. This was true of the reform-minded WASP community who supported colonization of America’s blacks in Africa as well as for the German and Irish immigrant community who for racial as well as economic reasons wasted little love on the black race." [p. 90]

Goldman quotes from a German-language newspaper: "’We want no negroes in the northern states because we anticipate nothing good from the mixing of the black and white races. We want the region of Kansas to be reserved for honest white workers.’" [p. 90] Goldman continues:

"race relations in the city. . . were further poisoned during the Civil War years by the imposition of a federal draft * * * were the Irish really expected to offer their lives to free people who offered them thanks by breaking their strikes?" [pp. 92-93] There was "a lack of enthusiasm for the Union effort, particularly following the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. . . " [p. 122]

1. RD666 has it right. The reason these neighborhods went downhill has everything to do with economics, not with the pigmentation of the people livign there.

2. Josh's original post made an explicit point of contrasting the racial/ethnic makeup of neighborhods on the east and west sides, and how changes in those demographics tracked with changes in the quality of those neighborhoods.

3. Josh's implied argument confises correlation and causation. Just because non-whites became predominant in certain areas as they were in decline doesn't mean that non-whites were responsible for that decline. This is especiialy true when you cionsider that this was all hapening in the midst of several decades of city-wide economic carnage.

4. Race is a real problem in Buffalo. Almost noone is willing to address it in a way that goes beyond flippant responses about "moving past it" or how we've "learned from the past."

Consider the recent praise on BR of the Forgotten Buffalo tours and Web site. In reality, it's more like "Forgotten Polonia".

The OP is absolutely correct; for decades, celebration and recognition of ethnicity and diversity in Buffalo is mostly limited to the "Big Three" ethnic groups; Polish, Italian and Irish. No disrespect, but three ethnic groups does not equal "diverse". While the Big Three have helped to shape Buffalo's unique "old school" culture, the lack of new blood is a major factor in its stagnation.

I've always believed that Buffalo's ethnic insularity and limited diversity is something that is a liability. To those not in the Big Three, living in the Buffalo area can feel like you're on the outside looking in; that area residents belong to a club that you can never, ever join. I wonder if people who aren't in the Big Three are more likely to leave the area than those who are Polish, Italian and Irish?

As I said, the Big One is the Germans, so we in the "big three" are the ones who should feel left out.

Not mentioned here explicitly yet, but there implicitly is the myth of Buffalo as "one of the most" segregated or racist cities. Total bull.

Human nature is pretty much the same all over. Buffalo's housing patterns are pretty much the same as similar-sized cities in the Northeast with similar immigration histories. Comparing us to the South and the West is absurd on its face.

Our alleged greater racism is the useful scapegoat for the true cause of Buffalo's decline: big government, the failure of all big government policies tried in the last 50-60 years. People around here will twist logic and fact to obscure the obvious cause of our decline: excessive consumption of capital by the political class.

A followup: there's the saying that in Buffalo, it doesn't matter if you're Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or an atheist. You'll still grow up Catholic.

I wonder if the OP's concerns can be extended to religion. Conservative Roman Catholicism is the modal religion of the Buffalo region -- the second most Catholic metropolitan area in the US -- and all too often, it's assumed that EVERYBODY is Catholic. Minor Diocese news makes the front page of the Buffalo News, and often it's the headline article. People decry the closing of Catholic churches, but there is no such mourning for equally prominent Protestant congregations. Many beautiful churches shuttered their doors or were passed on to new congregations as racial transition changed the face of the Kensington neighborhood in the 1990s, but only St. Gerard and St. James made the news.

The Buffalo area has some 25,000 Jews -- 40,000 when college is in session -- but they're treated as something of an odd curiosity, only worthy of recognition for a few minutes during Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah. As far as the growing Muslim community, well ... media coverage seems limited to the Lackawanna Six and problem delis. Buddhists, Hindus, and others: nonexistent in the eyes of many Buffalonians.

Surprisingly, the most diverse part of the region when it comes to religion is ... Amherst. The "Amherst is all upper income WASPS" meme hasn't been true since the 1970s, when a good number of Buffalo's Jews made the move from North Buffalo and Tonawanda to the 14221/14226 area, and international faculty members of the then-rapidly growing UB made their home in the town.

Jim, Buffalo's German-American community is very large, but it doesn't have the visibility of the Big Three. Predominantly German neighborhoods in the closer-in sections of the East Side were displaced by the outmigration of African-Americans from the Lower East Side after World War II, while outlying German neighborhoods (Kensington, East End/Delavan-Bailey, Schiller Park) were diluted with a rush of first-time homebuyers of various ethnicities from the 1950s through the 1980s. The once rural towns of Amherst and Cheektowaga list their German flavor with post-war suburbanization.

Unlike the displacement of other ethnic communities (Italians from the West Side to North Buffalo and Tonawanda, Poles from the East Side to Cheektowaga/Sloan/Depew, Jews from Hamlin Park to North Buffalo and Tonawanda, and later Amherst/Williamsville), German communities didn't regroup after they were displaced. The towns in Niagara County north of North Tonawanda still have something of a German flavor; for example, the greatest concentration of Missouri Synod Lutheran churches in the region can be found in Cambria, Wilson and the surrounding area.

Also, other elements of Buffalo's German culture were lost after WWII; for example, the decline of Buffalo's once-mighty brewing industry. German food never made its way into Buffalo's collective culture in the same way that Italian food and Polish-rooted "Buffalo style cuisine" did.

Okay, so I forgot about beef on weck. :)

Agreed, I always think, where are those Germans hiding? But then, I'm married to one! (part-German anyway) I used to think Poles were largest group here but then I looked it up.

Well, first of all, thanks to your and your wife for watching Daybreak, even though you lump us in with " public organizations that perpetuate segregation need to be exposed and held accountable".

While I do plead guilty to doing segments commemorating Irish, German, and Polish holidays, I STRONGLY disagree with your contention that other ethnicities, and their celebrations, are ignored.

I can provide specific examples of shows I've done, and people I've interviewed, that celebrate Western New York's unique diversity. Hispanic? check. Middle Eastern? check. African-American? check. Asian? check.

Your very simple "solution", putting " the feel-good, celebratory stories on rotation" is utterly impractical. Are you suggesting I do as many shows on Samoan Western New Yorkers as I do on Italians? I'm obliged to do a show with a Lebanese Western New Yorker, because I did two "Polish" shows last month?

Yes, I cover ethnic events and will continue too (Hellenic Festival around the corner). Regarding my interviewees, I can honestly tell you that decisions will NEVER be made whether or not to talk to someone by their last name or the color of their skin.

One suggestion: since most of my ideas come from viewers, I look forward to YOUR suggestions for stories. Any specific people, places, or events that you feel deserve coverage?

Thanks,

Kevin O'Neill