Crazy Racism at Work in Seneca Deal

Enzo Luciani does not mince words. After decades of paying taxes here, why should Senecas have more rights than him?

The best question of the week was posed by one of our advertisers and more astute readers, Enzo Luciani, of Pine Avenue Hardware.

Let us try to answer that question, amusing as it sounds at first blush.

While Enzo meant it for its double entendre and perhaps especially how Cuomo gave away everything to the Indians, it is not so amusing.

An Indian giver is an old expression - tinged with racism - and used to describe a person who gives a gift and later wants it back, or wants something equivalent in return.

Originally it probably referred to an exchange of gifts and may have originated from a cultural misunderstanding that arose when Europeans first encountered Native Americans in North America in the 15th century.

Europeans perhaps thought they were receiving gifts from Native Americans, while the Native Americans believed they were bartering: this resulted in the Europeans finding Native American behavior ungenerous and insulting.

At the end of the day, we find Gov. Andrew Cuomo to be a true Indian giver. He gave our entire store away to the Indians and it cost him nothing at all.

He got the gifts from an unquestioning, uncritical press and the city of Niagara Falls will pay for it in the long run.

Unhappily, our city, unlike much of the rest of the state, will remain in a legally binding netherworld of racial inequality: Those born of Seneca blood can live here tax free and have the right to operate gaming businesses in what is historically the city of Niagara Falls. Those born of every other race cannot operate gaming or open and operate businesses tax free.

It is a stunning racial inequality that rivals, at least by law, some of the worst racial inequalities this country has known since the abolition of slavery.  

In a word: Why should someone who happens to be born a Seneca have superior legal rights in Niagara Falls to someone who is born an American?

Because Gov. Cuomo and before him Gov. George Pataki said so.

To claim that it is a foreign country and then allow, no, even encourage, Americans to go there and gamble; to say that gambling is illegal for Americans for moral reasons, then encourage Senecas to operate gaming facilities for mainly American customers and to give away 52 acres of what use to be Niagara Falls, New York, USA and call it now a foreign country so that gambling can occur on it is, if not racism of the worst kind, then governance of the worst kind.

Americans should have the same legal rights as the Senecas and if our government cannot do for us what it can do for the Senecas then we should throw every one of the rascals out during this next election.

The Niagara Falls Reporter is calling for the ousting of every elected official who does not oppose the racial and legal inequality that exists here in Niagara Falls (with its artificial lines of an Albany-created foreign country).

We demand for the people of Niagara Falls the exact same legal rights as the Senecas.