Until recently, probably the most famous person to hail from my hometown of West Islip, Long Island, New York, was the actor Ken Marino, star of Wet Hot American Summer, Party Down and other entertainment fare. Marino is a good “most famous.” People like him. He’s handsome. Hasn’t been cancelled. Ken Marino, the local boy who made good.

But Marino’s been replaced. The most famous West Islip alum now is Daniel Penny, who choked a Black man named Jordan Neely to death on a New York City subway train because Neely was yelling about his suffering as a homeless person. Daniel Penny, the local boy who killed a guy. I don’t think Ken Marino ever got a skybox with the President at a football game.

I wanted to shrug off my shared history with Penny as a sad twist of life. But the very same day Penny was acquitted, the West Islip basketball team made the news for hurling racial slurs at a rival team. And I watched a popular West Islip Facebook group hail Penny in almost messianic terms. With all this staring me in the face, I was forced to think more deeply about the town that gave me a genuinely beautiful childhood — even while it was infamously known to both residents and outsiders as “White Islip.”

West Islip is technically a hamlet and school district in the Town of Islip, County of Suffolk. I lived there for the first 18 years of my life and for a few random months in my 20s as I halfheartedly tried to kick an alcohol habit. There’s a lot to love about West Islip. It’s no mystery why families flock to Suffolk or why housing prices are through the roof. West Islip in particular boasts wildly easy beach access, as the bridge to Robert Moses State Park runs right through town. My house growing up was 10 minutes away from the beach without traffic. My grandparents lived in town on the Great South Bay and had a houseboat, so we spent two weeks every summer on Fire Island (the not gay part). A lot of my friends surfed. Growing up in WI means the beach never leaves you.

West Islip is safe. Murders are essentially non-existent. A common gripe during my teenage years was that the cops had nothing to do other than bust kids for drinking and smoking weed (which was an accurate complaint). By ten years old, I was allowed to ride my bike alone pretty much wherever I wanted. Maybe it was being raised in this bubble, fostering an idealized sense of security, that led Penny to react murderously when confronted with a man raising his voice.

A Black man raising his voice, to be specific. In “White Islip,” Penny could not have been around many Black people growing up. While some boomers will insist that the genesis of the town’s nickname is the amount of cocaine that flowed through it in the ’70s, my friends and I always knew it to refer to the town’s racial makeup. 

I can remember a total of one Black person in my entire high school, which had around 1,600 students. I don’t think there were any Asians or Latinos, and very few Jews. Based on the 2020 census stats, it’s diversified slightly since my time there, but the town is still 86% white and just 0.7% Black. Contrast that to Bay Shore, the town directly to WI’s east, which is nearly 20% Black. North Babylon, directly west, is 7% Black. 

We are an outlier, even for Long Island. And this can’t be blamed on wealth. West Islip these days has wealthy residents, but it’s not a haven for the rich like the Hamptons or some towns on the north shore. My friends’ parents were teachers, nurses and cops. White Islip is a deliberate creation, no doubt owing partly to realtors like the one uncovered by Newsday in 2019 who referred to the town using its infamous nickname while he was training other realtors in… fair housing laws.

Penny almost certainly did not grow up casually tossing around N-bombs. Rarely did I witness racism that blatant. Instead, the West Islip I’ve known displayed a strong vein of ethnic tribalism — Blacks and whites belong with their own. On a recent visit home, one lifelong West Islip resident tried to convince me that “not wanting to live around Blacks” was not, per se, racist. This leads to a natural skepticism, even fear, of all things New York City, which I felt (particularly from older residents) on every visit  back after I moved to New York City in 2002. I’ve never met Penny. But I know that apart from his stint in the military, he lived in West Islip his entire life. He carried this history onto that subway car with him.

Now, West Islip is also a MAGA stronghold. Every single voting district in the town went for Trump by more than 65%. In the run-up to the last election, Trump signs were on copious display. One house I had to pass frequently when visiting family had a massive poster of a jacked, shirtless Trump holding a machine gun like an ’80s action star.

West Islip is in many ways a microcosm of how Trump came to power. A good chunk of its population is now comfortable-bordering-on-rich, and its southern side, which adjoins the Bay, is dotted with McMansions that in recent years have replaced the old wood and brick ranches built in the ’50s and ’60s. But West Islip thrives on working-class vibes, with moms who shop at big-box stores and dads who drive Ford trucks. Public school is the norm. Much of the wealth comes not from law or medicine, but construction and entrepreneurship. WASPs are a distinct minority; the town is heavily Italian. And as in much of downstate white New York, religion is an afterthought, with Bible thumpers seen as freaks. Such factors, combined with the racial makeup, primed the town to become a bastion of Trumpism. These were people our politics forgot — irreligious, economically comfortable, white and strongly resentful of anything smelling like elitism.

Trump and Penny are inextricably tied, something Penny has welcomed. Even as he has mostly kept his head down after getting away with murder, he accepted Trump’s high profile skybox invite. Penny was destined to become another Kyle Rittenhouse, a killer-turned-MAGA-hero. West Islip is feting him openly, at least if the town’s Facebook page is a good gauge. Posts celebrating his acquittal garner hundreds of hearts and likes, with not a single critical reply to be seen. “Our WI hero!!!;” “AMEN!!! GOD IS GOOD;” “A hero in every respect.” One would think Penny just made the game-winning shot in the NBA playoffs.

When I read that Facebook page, with its posts threatening gun violence against intruders or excusing and downplaying the racist basketball incident, I feel like I barely know the town I came from. I left when I was only 18. Were things always so bleak? Some memories peek through — a father casually correcting his son in front of me for referring to “gay people” instead of “fags.” But when I came out of the closet, to a tee, every friend of mine stood with me. Was it Trump? Or did decades of racial exclusivity and the rising cost of living curdle the population? The home I grew up in was once for the middle class. Now Zillow has it at $840,000.

What I know is this. The weight of West Islip, of Long Island, of Donald Trump, came through Penny’s arms as he held Neely in a death grip. It’s not a coincidence that Neely was killed by an outsider — a New Yorker would know that sometimes, mentally unstable people yell on a subway. And I can’t help but feel it wasn’t a coincidence that he came from West Islip, New York.

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