[SEMCO] Racism on Cape Cod

[Paul Marilyn Schlansky]

This is a letter to the editor about an incident that happened to my family
on a Harwich beach.  I would appreciate it if you would print it.

Sincerely,
Marilyn Schlansky

28 Glenwood Drive
Harwich, MA 02645
774-237-0698
schlansky2 at gmail.com

July 3, 2017



Letter to the Editor



“Hatred Comes to Harwich”



It’s taken me a week to write this letter because I wanted to be very clear
about the facts.  My husband and I live year round in Harwich, and delight
in having our children and grandchildren come to visit, as so many of us
do.  I want to tell you about an ugly incident that happened to us at the
lakeside beach on Cahoon Road off Route 137 on June 26th.  To set the scene
let me introduce the cast of characters.  There are myself and my husband,
typical grey-haired retirees; my son, daughter-in-law, and toddler daughter
(all white); my daughter, her Guyanese American husband, (brown), and their
two teenage daughters, (tan, and light brown respectively).  We set our
chairs up in the shade about 50 feet from the lakeshore, and my husband,
myself, the baby and her parents, went down to the water.  My daughter and
family were chatting quietly in the shade.  Also on the beach near us, a
Latina woman and her two small boys, not related, but also brown.



An elderly lady and her husband, who wore a red Trump hat, sat about 25
feet behind us.  This elderly lady came up to my 16 year old granddaughter
and said she was angry that she sat in front of her, albeit 25 feet away.
My son-in-law politely apologized and offered to have his daughter move.
The woman did not think this was acceptable.  This woman said, and I quote
my daughter, “I don’t know how they do things where you come from, but we
don’t do that here”.  My son-in-law again offered to have his daughter
move, but the woman just repeated her comment.  My daughter asked her what
she meant by this, and told her if she didn’t want the girl to move than to
leave them alone, and to stop making racist remarks.  We had come up from
the water by now to find our daughter in tears but reluctant to tell us the
reason.



A few days later my daughter wrote about the incident on Facebook.  I
shared it with my Facebook friends.  I immediately had offers of a posse to
go down to the beach and tell these folks a thing or two.  And the point
is, these loyal supporters include two Episcopal priests, a Catholic
priest, and people of Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, and Buddhist
persuasions.  This is what I know about Harwich.  This welcoming, diverse
town is where I live.  Now I don’t know if these Trump hat wearing people
lived here, were summer visitors, rented, or what.  But I do know what
proud, patriotic, generous and compassionate people my daughter and her
family are.  They are known among their friends and ours for charities they
support, the people they help, the kindness they show.



Now we all know how Cape businesses depend on this image of small-town,
old-fashioned, American fun during the summer.  This is a place where
people bring their kids to make family memories, as my husband and I did
years ago.  This is a place where restaurants, ice cream parlors, hometown
baseball games, beaches and boatrides thrive because people, all kinds of
people, feel welcome and at home here.  But the newspapers back in May were
full of stories about how these businesses were impacted by the loss of
seasonal workers, some who had been coming for years, who all of a sudden
couldn’t get visas.  There are dozens of summer jobs going unfulfilled and
this translates to the bottom line of someone who lives and works here.



The cover of this week’s New Yorker magazine depicts a young black woman in
a blue bathing suit covered in white stars holding a red and white striped
beach ball.  Now which image do you want for Harwich?  This one?  Or a guy
in a Trump hat ready to decide who gets to be on the beach and who
doesn’t?  Let’s keep hatred out of Harwich and off the Cape.



Sincerely,



Marilyn Schlansky

Harwich





Marilyn Schlansky

28 Glenwood Drive

Harwich, MA 02645

774-237-0698

schlansky2 at gmail.com
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