On Tuesday, August 23, Mary Znidarsic-Nicosia and Dr. Nicholas Nicosia, the hosts of a party at the center of an ongoing City investigation, held a press conference to attempt to address allegations of racism at the party in question. The gathering took place at the Nicosias’ 9,800 square foot mansion on July 7 and came to public awareness after a Black firefighter, Jerrod Jones, alleged his captain took him and others to the party in the middle of a work shift. There, Jones stated he observed Juneteenth flags displayed alongside buckets of fried chicken, gift bags including bottles of Hennessy cognac and Juneteenth commemorative cups, and headshots of liberal politicians on stakes in the yard. The captain in question, Jeffrey Krywy, told Jones and the others in their group not to take any photographs at the gathering. Krywy has since resigned from the force.

In the fallout from Jones’s lawsuit to seek $4 million in damages from the City of Rochester for failing to respond to his internally filed complaints, Mary Znidarsic-Nicosia was accused of running an openly racist Twitter account (“@HoHoHomeboyROC”) but denied being associated with the account when approached by CITY Newspaper last week. In the press conference on Tuesday, Znidarsic-Nicosia appeared alongside her husband and their lawyer, Corey Hogan, to admit she was, in fact, the person behind the “parody account” and that she “made blatantly racist comments under that persona.” In a truly bizarre attempt at exonerating herself and her husband from being racists, Znidarsic-Nicosia admitted to regularly writing racist remarks and sharing racist memes online. The racist tweets in question are, in the words of the Nicosias’ own attorney, “wrong,” “vile,” and “shouldn’t exist.” It is curious that Hogan then challenged the reporters in attendance to “look into [the Nicosias’] backgrounds, find anything they’ve done in their lives, their 50-plus year lives, that’s racist.”

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What the Nicosias and Hogan would like for our community to believe is that there is a bright line between the “persona” on display in an openly hateful, but anonymous, racist social media account and their “real” life choices. The Twitter account was “wrong” but there was “no racism,” as Hogan repeatedly claimed, in (supposedly unknowingly) placing fried chicken, Juneteenth flags, Hennessy, and heads on stakes together at a single event.

At the Urban League of Rochester, we believe in the power of education to fight racism, so let’s quickly break this image down:

1) American fried chicken, of the variety served at the Nicosias’ event, has its roots in the slavery-era Deep South and has been prominently tied to vicious stereotypes of Black people since its appearance in the vile 1915 Ku Klux Klan propaganda film Birth of a Nation. To mention, as Hogan did, the existence of 27,000 Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in the world, as though that could entirely absolve the Nicosias of racism in choosing to serve fried chicken of all possible foods, is an intentional red herring.

2) Juneteenth, also called the “Black Independence Day,” is the celebration of the anniversary of when the news of the emancipation of enslaved people finally reached Texas on June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It took until 2021, another 156 years, for Juneteenth to be declared a federal holiday. One year later, the Nicosias—or a guest of theirs, per their report—displayed Juneteenth flags in order to, per Hogan, “make fun of liberal causes.” Liberal causes… like ending chattel slavery? This is a strawman argument: The issue at hand is not whether or not one should be allowed to pillory liberal politics; the issue is racism.

3) Hennessy cognac, per Hogan, sells “70 million bottles… every year. It has a racial undertone to it. The Nicosias knew nothing about it.” That may be true, but ignorance is no excuse: French cognac has been an emblem of Black success since at least the Harlem Renaissance, when prominent Black artists like Josephine Baker chose to migrate to France where they could be appreciated for their creativity outside of the systemic racism present in the U.S. arts world. In Paris, Baker and others were celebrated and free to indulge in the benefits of acclaim, including drinking more expensive alcohol like cognac. Hennessy specifically was the NAACP’s first corporate sponsor in 1909 and also supported the founding of what would become our parent organization, the National Urban League, in 1910. After World War II, the French sent U.S. Black battalions cases of Hennessy to thank them for protecting the French democracy. Today, the absence of Hennessy at different bars is perceived as an intentional and racist choice. Its inclusion, of all possible liquors, at the Nicosias’ party is likewise racist and intentional.

4) Finally, the Nicosias chose to display pictures of Democratic leaders from our community on stakes in their grass. The real historical practice of placing the heads of one’s enemies of war on stakes or pikes goes back thousands of years and is a commonly included and gruesome sight in popular period pieces today, such as Game of Thrones. A supposedly lighthearted gathering of Znidarsic-Nicosia’s “idiot friends”—a direct quote from Dr. Nicosia—stands in stark contrast to heads on pikes, but the presence of wooden stakes in the Nicosias’ yard also harkens back to a different historical image: the wooden crosses the Ku Klux Klan constructed and then burned in their Black lynching victims’ yards. As of yet, there has been no public report of what was done with the photographs staked to the Nicosias’ lawn during their so-called “1st Annual Liberal Smashin’ Splish Splash Pool Party” (emphasis added).

The choice to flippantly utilize any one of these four items independently would be questionable behavior, though, to Hogan’s point, the Nicosias could reasonably plead ignorance in a vacuum. The collocation, however, of all four, alongside Znidarsic-Nicosia’s digital blackface Twitter account; Jerrod Jones’s description of the Get Out-esque experience of the party; and the subsequent inaction on the part of the firefighters / City of Rochester in response to Jones being transported to this gathering while on the clock paints a clear picture of racism.

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The Nicosias’ willful blindness to the consequences of their racist beliefs and actions and their ability to serve up until now as leaders in Rochester’s community highlights a severe problem that we cannot overlook. Prior to the fallout from this party, the Nicosias held campaign fundraisers for major politicians and also served as not just members but leaders of prominent and impactful boards: Dr. Nicosia was the vice chair of the board of directors of Highland Hospital, and Znidarsic-Nicosia was the vice president of development for the Landmark Society of Western New York. Both have since been removed from their positions, but it is deeply concerning to me as a person of color that individuals who display such racist behaviors as those catalogued above, have been able to invisibly inform policy and decision making practices of such cornerstone institutions of our community.

How can I be certain that I, a Black woman, will receive the same level of care as a white person at a hospital whose vice chair hosts this sort of racist gathering? How can I be certain that Black Rochesterians’ culture and history will be treated with the same respect as those of white Rochesterians by a preservation society who counts the host of this sort of racist party among their leadership?

The insidious nature of systemic racism is how it is baked into the very fabric of American society and culture, and, as Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and other thought leaders have made clear for us, it is not enough to just choose to “not be racist;” in the face of the pervasiveness of systemic racism, one must be actively antiracist… or be a racist oneself. The choice is that simple. Dr. Nicosia may claim he was merely co-hosting the party in question in service to his wife, but even if he had nothing to do with choosing which potentially racist food choices or party favors would be on hand, et cetera, that is exactly the problem: He did nothing. Doing nothing when encountering clear racism is being a racist. So, Hogan may claim we can dig through the Nicosias’ 50-year history without finding any proof of their alleged racism, but it was clearly on display in Tuesday’s press conference alone.

The Nicosias claim to have been victimized by the cruelty of cancel culture, but the reality of the situation is that they are not the victims here. This fallacious appeal to pity overlooks the true victims: Jerrod Jones, any other people of color who had to endure this racist gathering, as well as all of the other folks who may have been materially and negatively impacted by the potentially racist policies and practices of the systems and institutions the Nicosias and others like them were and are allowed to helm in Rochester. The Nicosias aren’t being shamed or “canceled;” they are being held accountable for their actions, which have a direct causal link to the harm Jones and others experienced.

The actions of the Nicosias rise to the level of needing an immediate response far beyond an apology, due in no small part to their prominent place in Rochester society. Their intentions are immaterial when compared to the impacts of their actions. Their racist ideologies and behaviors have greater influence because of their positions of power, and as such, unfortunately, litigation cannot remedy the entire situation. The Nicosias must commit to doing the work to unlearn their racist ideologies and behaviors, take a long, hard look at the white supremacist cultures they are upholding, and seek to self-educate and better understand the impacts of their racist actions. The Nicosias, if truly apologetic, have a moral obligation to explore a pathway to reflect on their actions and become actively antiracist.

I personally want to invite the Nicosias and every single one of their party attendees to join me at the INTERRUPT RACISM Summit taking place September 19-21. I will gladly cover the cost of their admission so that they may join the Urban League and our Interrupters in immersing ourselves in the tenets of antiracism so that we may better interrupt and dismantle systemic racism in Rochester.

I strongly urge business leaders, policy makers, civil rights advocates, and the general public in our community to pay close attention to the implications of these types of behaviors and mitigate the risks of such a racist event as the Nicosias’ party happening again in Rochester by speaking out. In failing to pay attention to people’s behaviors within and outside of the workplace as of one piece, we allow the status quo of systemic racism in continue unchallenged. I argue the attendees at the party, the followers of Znidarsic-Nicosia’s Twitter account, the colleagues who heard and witnessed racist statements and behaviors, and the City officials who didn’t respond to Jones’s complaint appropriately, among others, are all just as guilty of racism as the Nicosias themselves.

We must not normalize racist behaviors by standing by and doing nothing. And “we” means all of us: Black, white, AAPI, Latinx, indigenous / Native American, LGBTQIA+, liberal, conservative, all of us. We each bear an individual responsibility to demand change when we see racist policies and practices within our homes, offices, places of worship, community organizations, and local governmental bodies. If we say nothing when we encounter racism, we are racists ourselves. Supposedly hidden racist behaviors and ideas shown at parties and on anonymous Twitter accounts don’t stay hidden. Our antiracist responses to them must not be hidden either.

— Dr. Seanelle Hawkins
President and CEO
Urban League of Rochester

Questions and media inquiries may be directed to ebenedick@ulr.org.