Dear World: We’re Sorry & United Against Racism

By Ray Gallagher

I’m a proud Putnam County guy, through and through. Born and raised in the Bronx until I was nine, my roots were pulled from the heaving cement of 226 Naples Terrace and transplanted in the summer of 1972 in the rural thicket of Putnam Valley, where more than a few donkeys (literally) were my closest friends.

I always said I would never leave my chums in the Valley, unless of course it was for bordering Mahopac where it turns out my soul mate was nestled neatly somewhere behind the old K-Mart off Route 6. I would leave PV in 2002 for Mahopac, the home of perhaps the most madcap sporting folk in the state. When it comes to its prep sports and its sporting reputation, few towns in Section 1 can match Mahopac; from Pop Warner Football to Mahopac varsity basketball.

On Feb. 27, the basketball team found itself in the throes of a national whirlwind since its 43-40 sectional semifinal loss to nine-time state champion Mount Vernon, in the Section 1 Class AA Final 4 or beyond for the fifth time since the turn of the century.

The ensuing, unwarranted situation is now so outlandish – and somewhat out of proportion depending upon whom you ask — because the race card was pulled from the deck after the Mahopac student body was baited and incensed by fervent Mount Vernon adults, who taunted them from beneath the main grandstand of the Westchester County Center.

Those heated, verbal exchanges culminated in the now-viral tweets by at least eight Mahopac students who enraged the Mount Vernon partisans, who then paraded their share of activists seeking to stir outrage against Mahopac. The local media then piled on.
Never mind the Mahopac cheerleader that allegedly got popped by a Mount Vernon supporter, never mind the taunts and challenges of grown men, who hurled profane comments at the fabled Mahopac Maniac student body, showing the type of moxie and pride that Duke’s Cameron Crazies would in a Tobacco Road dustup with hated North Carolina.

There is no better student section in the state than the loyal, blue and gold-bleeding @MahopacManiacs.

The tables would turn to rage after a slew of tweets and the allegations of a detestable Confederate flag at the Mecca of Section 1 basketball. The repulsive tweets are simply indefensible, bordering on a 1920s-style ignorance right there on the worldwide web. #FAIL!

Suddenly, Mount Vernon vs. Mahopac has whipped up a frenzy for the ages after those asinine tweets surfaced, which included illicit, racial tones that I was assured time and time again would no longer stem from this new generation of liberality. So why was it that a bunch of teens from Mahopac couldn’t hack the derisive mocks of several grown men of color after their moment of playoff perdition? What set their emotions off?

The blowback has weakened the cultural immune system of beloved Mahopac Coach Kevin Downes, a proud black man with as much legendary clout in Mahopac as former Indian great Dave Fleming and as much street cred as former Indian AD and Section 1 hoops royalist Bill Behrends. If Mahopac were truly the racially charged community it has now been brandished as, how did Downes, the former All-Section running back and basketball legend, get to the top of the food chain? Because Mahopac respects a black man just as much as the next standard-bearing community in the U.S., but this heavy Italian-Irish community won’t take any guff from anybody: Black, White, Hispanic, Asian or Carmel, if it feels disrespected.

In fact, had Carmel fans taunted Mahopac kids after a football game, the way in which Mount Vernon adults did in the Section 1 semifinals, they would have said things about the Rams on Twitter, too.

Race would not have mattered one iota, but since they stirred it up in this urban vs. rural instance, Mahopac has dealt with the debacle by suspending eight students as of Monday and imposing sensitivity training while Mount Vernon Superintendent Judith Johnson has vowed to have theIndians’ 2015 season cancelled. Yeah, um, Judy can you have a cup of tea with that moral high ground you’ve ceded with your disproportional demands and denunciations.

That’s a bit much, considering the Mahopac basketball team and its coach were a class act throughout this entire situation and continue to be so. (Mount Vernon officials are calling
on the state to recognize the situation as a civil rights violation.)

So what did we learn from this fiasco, which channels 2, 4, 5, 7 and 11 helped erroneously fuel. (ABC News, in particular, with its wholly inaccurate report that basketball players made the tweets.) Either we learned that a handful of the 10,000 mostly white folk in Mahopac are still stuck in the ’60s in their assimilation deprived surroundings, or, as Mount Vernon would have you believe, we’re ALL racists here in Putnam County.
Some in Mahopac were dumb enough to hit send/tweet with their vile views, so the entire community must own up now and pledge this never happens again.

Having witnessed the taunts that initiated this firestorm from spitting distance, I can assure you Mount Vernon’s fans spewed some very abusive B.S. at the Mahopac Maniacs, and a small handful of those normally responsible Maniacs didn’t deal well with their emotions and went to technology to unleash a wave of lunacy.

So maybe it’s time to take a long, hard look in the mirror since Mahopac seems to have blurred the lines, perhaps crossed it, on more than one occasion, according to several coaches interviewed for this piece.

“What’s going on at Mahopac has been cultivated by some of their coaches over the last four or five years,” one respected local coach said on condition of anonymity. “This past event is not an isolated event but a pattern established with no accountability by their administration.”

When I tell you I respect the coach that said this to me, I mean it with all my heart, and as a Mahopacian, with two young children in the district, it bothers me that people I respect in the area feel that way about the district I am beholden to.

It happened, Mahopac, and now we have to wear it, knowing full well that change is in order if this is truly a reflection of our community, though I’d bet my house it’s not.

The words of Mahopac High Principal, Adam S. Pease, (@PeaseAMHS) are more indicative of what most in Mahopac feel: “Dear World: The disgraceful actions of a select few (Mahopac High) students do not represent our school’s values. We stand with you against racism!”

 I have seen this Mahopac community rally around one another for causes as important as civil rights, and I can guarantee that Mahopac would be there to lend assistance to any community in need of support, including Mount Vernon.

There is no doubt in my mind that the principal’s thoughts are the prevailing sentiment from Lake Secor to Lake Casse and all points in between, but we need to be on our best behavior going forward, gang.

The world is watching now, and the first slip will only fuel an incessant fire that Mahopac is just a small part of. Black or white; we’re in this thing together, folks.