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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Was Clarkston misjudged?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After the New York Times ran an article about a plucky group of refugee kids in Clarkston, residents felt their town was misrepresented. Read AJC story
The soccer team — a mix of kids from war-ravaged countries including Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia and Kosovo — was having a tough time finding a permanent field to play on.
The story said Clarkston Mayor Lee Swaney, who is white, issued a decree last summer banning soccer in a town park.
“There will be nothing but baseball down there as long as I am mayor,” Swaney said.
The New York Times article went on to say:
In Clarkston, soccer means something different than in most places. As many as half the residents are refugees from war-torn countries around the world. Placed by resettlement agencies in a once mostly white town, they receive 90 days of assistance from the government and then are left to fend for themselves. Soccer is their game.”
“But to many longtime residents, soccer is a sign of unwanted change, as unfamiliar and threatening as the hijabs worn by the Muslim women in town. … Mayor Swaney even has a name for the sort of folks who play the game: the soccer people.”
It pointed to “some town residents, opposing players and even the parents of those players …hurling racial epithets and making it clear they resent the mostly African team.” The story noted that Clarkston is in a region “where passions run high on the subject of illegal immigration” and people don’t know or don’t care that the Fugees are in the United States legally.
City Clerk Tracy Ashby said she fielded about 300 e-mails, 40 letters and more than 50 calls from people around the country criticizing the town and suggesting that it was run by racists. That’s a lot of feedback for a town with about 7,000 residents that covers 1.1 square miles.
(The New York Times article is available online for a fee from the New York Times archive. The text can also be found with a Google search.)
Is the Times right to represent the mayor as discriminatory?
Or has the town been unfairly represented?
