WHERE BILLIONAIRS SUMMER, THEIR GARDNER DIES IN THE SNOW

We’ve all heard that phrase, “Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.” America’s Thing With Race is so everywhere…so common…so All-American that it’s hard to notice. It would be like noticing that you’re breathing. I’ve mentioned before a friend I used to have that fancied himself a “color-blind” non-racist…not to be confused with an anti-racist. Huge difference. Anyway, given that he fancied himself “color blind”, he’d get angry at me for not being color blind too. He’d accuse me of actively looking for racism. But I wasn’t.

I grew up the son of mixed race dairy farmers. Not a Black parent and a White parent sort of mixed race. Both parents were bi-racial.

Mom and Dad on the farm in Amherst NH. Early 1940’s

Me? I’m 53% Irish, but look way more Black than Irish. My schools, K-11, were all White. 100%. Like all my friends, I enjoyed hanging out, chasing or longing for girls, skiing, hiking, biking, drinking beer. Race was not an issue until I joined the Marine Corps. It was 1968 – the height of the Civil Rights movement.

In more recent years, I’ve heard Marines or former Marines say that there were no Black Marines, or White marines. There were only Green Marines. But when I was in, it was completely not true. It was more true to say that that there was no such thing as a Green Marine. There were only White Marines and Black Marines.

When Reverand King was assassinated in April, 1968, I was still in training at Camp LeJeune, NC. I drew the unpleasant task that night of being security at the base beer club. Young Marines, straight out of boot camp, no calming effect of women, and beer…not a great combo, so I wasn’t all that eager to walk around with a night stick trying to get high-testosterone young men who had just been encouraged and trained to fight to stop fighting.

But here’s what I remember from that evening of April 4^th: Every White Marine was celebrating Reverand King’s murder. So while I may have been oblivious to race and skin color while growing up, the Marine Corps changed that pretty quickly. I had seen racism and once seen, I could not unsee it.

That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of The Civil Conversations Project – to help you see America’s Thing With Race. It’s kinda’ hard to change something you don’t know is there. But…it’s there.

So this morning I’m cruising through the NY Times when I encounter an article with the lede, Where billionaires summer, a gardener dies in the snow. A landscaper’s difficult life and lonely death reveal the human cost behind the Hamptons’ manicured landscape.

A couple of things really caught my attention. For one, I knew the Hamptons was a ritzy place. But I was surprised to read that the Hamptons contains some of the most expensive real estate on the entire planet. On the entire planet? What about Dubai?

I continued to be surprised as I read that the average price of a home in the Hamptons soared well over a million dollars years ago and that today, some homeowners spend well over that puny amount just caring for their landscaped lawns.

I was probably less surprised to learn that Hampton’s landscapers are Brown-skinned Guatemalans who live and try to survive on ten dollars an hour and live within tarps set in the woods. I was disappointed in my ultra wealthy fellow Americans but not surprised to learn they could spend a million dollars on their shrubs, but nothing to keep their gardeners warm, housed, or fed.

There is some discussion of the problem. But you know how that turns out. NIMBY. Theresa K. Quigley, deputy supervisor of the Town of East Hampton, told The New York Times in 2012 “They say they’re talking about overcrowding, but they’re talking about Latinos.” Surprise surprise.

If you’d like to read the full, not-very-long story, here you go. But warning….you won’t be able to un-see it.