Philadelphia Casino: Creating Another Injustice

In 1974, the Boston City Council created an “adult entertainment zone” next to the city’s Chinatown to contain the sex industry and associated vices in one controllable area. It was a glaring case of environmental racism.

Chinatown residents have suffered ever since, enduring solicitation of women and children, rampant prostitution, drugs, and other petty crimes - all so the rest of Boston can exercise its “First Amendment rights.”

Will Mayor Nutter and Councilman Frank DiCicco’s proposed “commercial entertainment district” next to Philadelphia’s Chinatown create another such injustice?

City officials required an environmental impact review and took almost a year and a half considering plans for the original proposed site of a Foxwoods casino on the riverfront in South Philadelphia. But the new site, near Philadelphia’s Chinatown, is being fast-tracked, without meaningful input from the people most affected. There is an obvious disparity of process and transparency.

Why does Chinatown have to deal with more of a burden than the rest of the city or state? The casino could bring in hundreds of cars per hour, air pollution and congestion, petty and organized crime, and increased gambling addiction in the Asian community. While catering to the concerns of other neighborhoods and Foxwoods, city officials are not doing their part to represent Chinatown.

This type of economic development is built on the backs of a community of color that has been neglected at best and exploited at worst.

Casinos know Asians are a key clientele, and it is common to find them aiming predatory marketing schemes at Asian communities. Casino advertisements abound in Asian-language newspapers. Every day, casino buses line up in virtually every Chinatown across the country - Boston, San Francisco, New York, Seattle - waiting to cart off busloads of Asians, many of them elderly, to gamble away their earnings.

While Asians might face cultural or linguistic barriers in other industries, casinos employ a number of tactics to eliminate those barriers. They include Asian staff, Asian gambling games such as mahjong and pai gow, Asian entertainment stars to entice homesick immigrants, and ethnic nights. Foxwoods’ Web site even maintains a Chinese version.

Relocating Foxwoods next to Chinatown is a marketer’s dream. No buses are needed; Asians can just walk in.

A 2003 study by the University of Connecticut Health Center (near Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in that state) found that 59 percent of Southeast Asians who had sought social-service assistance were classified as “pathological gamblers.”

Such gamblers make up 1 percent to 3 percent of the American population, but among Asian Americans, the figure is 6.5 percent to 15 percent. In a health survey in San Francisco’s Chinatown, 70 percent of respondents indicated that “problem gambling” was their top social concern.

Timothy Fong, co-director of UCLA’s Gambling Studies Program, called gambling a “real hidden addiction” for Asians, because cultural norms dictate silence. A vicious cycle develops, wherein policymakers do not see the problem and therefore offer no services to address it.

Yet, politicians do support this effort to reap general revenue for all at Chinatown’s expense.

In my studies of Chinatowns, a common threat is the failure to understand them as more than just places to eat Asian food. Chinatown is a vibrant, historical community, full of residents who work and live in Philadelphia - and one worthy of protection.

Chinatown survived the ravages of the highway during the urban-renewal era, and it conquered a proposal to build a stadium there in 2000. It has thrived even under harsh conditions. Imagine how well it would do if officials gave it a fair chance.

 

Andrew Leong is the Chair to Proect Chinatown in Boston and an associate professor at the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.  His e-mail address is

 

Click here to view the original article:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20081110_Casino_Creating_another_injustice.html