Letters

I found your coverage of the protest held in Hampton Bays on Sunday, June 14, to be misguided and ironic, to the extent that you chose to pursue an angle to the story that disparaged the entire Hampton Bays community as a “racist counterforce” [“Protesters Gather in Hampton Bays To Demand Justice, Denounce Police Brutality,” 27east.com, June 15].

Certainly, the protest story itself merited better, and on the same page you did report that message — namely, hundreds coming out against, among other things, the wrong of stereotyping entire groups or communities based upon the actions of a few.

But you chose to warp that message into stereotyping the entire Hampton Bays community on the thinnest evidence — which apparently also happened in East Hampton — and the basis of the story was really nothing more than innuendo from the persons interviewed.

By taking this angle, you were able to elicit a quote from the protests’ co-organizer stating: “Nothing against Hampton Bays, but the stigma is there.” Well, I know insincerity when I read it. This is like remarking to a stranger wearing a hat: “That is the ugliest hat I ever saw — but, oh, it looks good on you.”

I suppose it made your newspapers and the organizers feel good to perpetuate this nonsense about Hampton Bays, but it was wrong.

In any event, the organizers can now retreat to the other side of the canal in their “wokeness.”

Ed Kelly

Hampton Bays