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Don't expect sound-byte solutions in Freehold

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 03/4/07

Three-and-a-half months ago, a councilman in Freehold posted some regrettable remarks on an infrequently visited Web site. He had just read an article in a conservative urban-policy magazine, and his thoughts on the story got away from him, veered off course and took on a life of their own.

Three-and-a-half months later, the leaders of a large segment of the local population reacted to what he had posted. They were highly offended. They called this newspaper and alerted other media outlets as well.

So the councilman was all over the news, in New Jersey, in New York, who knows where else. He made it through at least half a news cycle.

Marc LeVine was portrayed as an ignorant bumpkin with some curious thoughts on Hispanics in general and Dominicans in particular.

Out loud and online, he spoke in sweeping terms of promiscuous behavior, and of "a society in which these people often expect to subsidize their mistakes in growing large families that they cannot afford to support on their own."

In a news release issued Wednesday, Frank Argote-Freyre wrote that "Councilman LeVine's racial theories are quite advanced for the 17th century."

Argote-Freyre lives in Freehold. He is the director of the Monmouth County chapter of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey.

The people from the alliance wanted an apology, and they wanted LeVine to resign. They got the apology, but the resignation is not forthcoming.

LeVine maintains that he didn't mean it the way it came out, and that he is not "the second coming of David Duke." He is no racist, he says, and to prove it, he has a lengthy resume that he will gladly recite upon request.

Ten years ago, he worked at the Asbury Park Press, in human resources. During that time, he helped write the diversity plan for the paper. Argote-Freyre also worked at the Press as a reporter.

He is now in the staffing industry, and has his own human-resources consulting firm. He also teaches Latin American history at Kean University.

LeVine and Argote-Freyre are at odds. This may have been inevitable.

The Hispanic population of Freehold practically doubled between 1990 and 2000, going from 14 percent to 28 percent. In 2005, the census bureau estimated that Hispanics accounted for 35 percent of the population of the town.

Freehold is not a big place. Something had to give. Those who represent the local establishment and those who represent the newcomers were bound to clash at some point. That's as American as pizza pie and the Toyota Corolla.

Illegal immigration is a serious national issue, everyone agrees. The federal government needs to fix this, no quarrel there. In the meantime, what do they do in a place like Freehold?

As a public official, Marc LeVine isn't supposed to be saying the kind of things he said. He himself may not be a racist, but there's no shortage of knuckle-dragging geniuses out there, and they need no encouragement.

They already see all brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking people as a threat to their way of life. And they make no distinction between the Hispanics who are here legally and those who are here illegally. That's how bigotry works.

Now that black Americans have established some boundaries and are pretty much off limits to racists, at least in public settings, Hispanics provide an alternative, a convenient outlet for the rage of those who love to hate.

"They need to feel superior to somebody," says Argote-Freyre. "They pick somebody on the low end of the economic scale. They're easy targets."

This is inherently unfair, of course. It is equally unfair for outsiders to pass judgment on towns like Freehold, where low-income housing exists, where there is a downtown area, a built-in invitation for problems.

Long-time residents of such towns should not be dismissed as racists simply because they are looking out for their own interests. As Argote-Freyre puts it: "It's very easy for people in Rumson and Fair Haven and Marlboro to be high-minded."

In those towns, they don't have low-income housing and overcrowded schools and grown men standing on street corners early in the morning, waiting for someone to come by and offer them work.

In Freehold, you have these complex issues. The situation doesn't lend itself to the sound-byte treatment we seem to favor in our great rush to get to the next breathless celebrity sighting, and the next, and the next.

In Freehold, you have media skirmishes such as L'affaire LeVine leading up to real confrontations such as landlords renting to undocumented tenants.

Meanwhile, the town keeps growing and changing.

"This is the American story," says Argote-Freyre. "It's about change. They're having a real difficult time dealing with this here, I think. There is a cultural adjustment issue at the root of the whole thing.

"They think of Freehold as Bruce Springsteen's town. But Bruce moved out in the 1970s. You walk down Main Street today, you don't hear Springsteen. You're more likely to hear reggaeton and salsa music and mariachi bands."

LeVine disagrees. He doesn't believe it's a cultural issue at all. He sees it as a legal issue, pure and simple. "We've been dealing with the fallout effects of illegal immigration," he says.

The problem is, some people are still incapable of distinguishing between illegal and legal immigrants, and those people need no encouragement.

Still, this is a two-way street. Somehow, the leaders on both sides will have to find a way to drop all the old perceptions and racial judgments as they go about their daily give-and-take. Otherwise, neither side will get what it wants.

Bill Handleman is an Asbury Park Press columnist. E-mail: handle@app.com