Re: your Oct. 13 article, “DePasquale says he’ll resign in March”:

Maybe I’m being an overly sensitive Italian-American, but when I read in The Star that one city leader, Rotary Club Past President Dale Parvin, referred to another city leader, Moorpark Unified School District Superintendent Frank DePasquale, as “boy,” I became upset, especially when he referred to his so-called friend as a “nice Italian boy” and occasionally calls him “Godfather.”

I find none of it funny or quaint. I’ve been subjected to too many incidents where my ethnicity has been insulted.

The term “boy” was always used as a derogatory connotation, like when Southern whites addressed African-Americans as “boys,” regardless of their age. There are still some bigots in all parts of this great land who still refer to their countrymen as “boys.”

Calling an Italian-American “Godfather” is not only trite and cliched, but it’s insulting. It gives the impression that the only things Italian-Americans have to contribute are good food, great singers and very evil gangsters. I’m not a bad cook, but I can’t sing and I’ve never committed a crime or had anything to do with the Mafia.

Bantering between friends by using ethnic slurs is one thing. I do it myself. But to make a public comment using ethnic slurs in the local newspaper shows a lack of sensitivity and lack of common sense.

— William Poleri, Moorpark