c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ In February, four New York City policemen fired 41 bullets at Amadou Diallo, killing the unarmed street peddler who had recently come to the United States from West Africa.

In March, 26-year-old Amy Watkins, a social worker who had moved to New York City from Kansas, was knifed to death by a single assailant while walking home alone from the subway.

Not surprisingly, Diallo’s death has sparked sharp criticism of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the city’s police force. Watkins’ murder, meanwhile, was a painful reminder that, although New York’s murder rate has dramatically dropped in recent years, random violence remains a fearful feature of urban life.

Both instances were tragic and horrible. But I’ve been surprised by what I’ve heard about them while listening to several national radio talk shows in their immediate aftermath.

Many callers repeated the usual anti-New York litany about the extraordinary dangers of living in America’s largest city, even with its decreasing crime rate.

One caller expressed a sentiment attributed to the late Sen. Barry Goldwater about sawing off America’s Northeast population centers and letting them float out into the Atlantic Ocean. The remark jogged my memory, and I recalled that during the 1970s oil crisis some Texas oil workers reportedly said:”Let New Yorkers freeze this winter. They deserve it.” Also upsetting was the callers’ clear lack of compassion for Diallo and Watkins. One caller smugly declared that the young social worker should never have gone to New York to further her education and professional career:”New York’s a cesspool, a terrible place to live.” Another caller proudly boasted that his small town”has no African immigrants,”and he claimed that the police force in his community would never kill an unarmed person.”Such things do not happen in my town,”he said.

I’m not sure what angered me more; the callers’ hatred of New York and other big cities, or the callers’ historical amnesia about recent bloody events in four small towns.

Have they conveniently repressed memories about the fatal school shootings in Pearl, Miss., West Paducah, Ky., Jonesboro, Ark., and Springfield, Ore.?

In each case the murderers were students in the very schools where they went on their murderous sprees. Following each massacre, enormous compassion poured into the bereaving communities from all parts of America, as it should have.

However, I do not recall anyone castigating small-town American culture because it produced some teen-age killers. Nor do I recall hearing many people condemning how easy it is for boys in small towns to acquire guns.

Did the radio callers forget the brutal deaths of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man, in Laramie, Wyo.? Or the equally shocking death of another gay man, Billy Gaither, in Sylacauga, Ala.?

Did they suppress the horrific image of James Bird, a black man from Jasper, Texas, who was dragged to death by a truck driven by three white racists?

And what about the burned bodies recently discovered in a car trunk near Mi-Wuk Village, Calif.? Carole Sund, her daughter Julie, and their friend Selvina Pelosso were visiting Yosemite National Park when they were apparently brutally murdered. I wonder whether the callers will now criticize the three women for visiting Yosemite, and staying in a La Porta, Calif., motel where they were last seen alive. I doubt it.

When tragic killings happen in big cities there are always immediate negative depictions of urban culture. Cities are frequently portrayed as breeding grounds of crime and violence, and small towns are often celebrated for being free of serious crime and violence.

Why do so many Americans employ a double standard of judgment when comparing life in the big cities with small towns? Am I the only one who has noticed that the murdered students, Matthew Shepherd, Billy Gaither, James Bird and the visitors to Yosemite were all killed in smaller cities and towns or rural areas?

Proclaiming the lie that small towns are somehow immune to violence is a grave disservice to America’s national mental health. Equally destructive is the campaign of vilification aimed at America’s largest cities.

What is desperately needed now is a moratorium on such divisive talk. It’s time to acknowledge that no village, town, or city is free of the deadly social pathology that infects our entire country. It’s time to recognize that violence and murder do not respect a community’s size.

IR END RUDIN