Race and Ethnicity in New York City: Volume 7

Some chapters provide us with a snapshot (intentional) of ethnic community across the city. Others look closely at a particular place. Still others look across the whole ethnic landscape of the city. Neither individually nor as a whole collection do they form a complete picture. But perhaps because they are so eclectic maybe they form a challenge to urban sociology to exam not just macro level change in urban form and metropolitan space, but to apply other methodologies to better understand the increasingly complex, unfocused mosaic of social worlds in the American city.

Ever since Robert Ezra Park and Ernest Burgess published their classic research on Chicago which described “how” residential neighborhoods follow a distinct ecological pattern, generations of urban practitioners and theoreticians have been arguing about “why” they are spatially distributed. This essay is designed to demonstrate the utility of Visual Sociology and the study of Vernacular Landscapes to document and analyze how the built environment reflects the changing cultural identities of neighborhood residents. It is strongly suggested that a visual approach can also help build a bridge between various theoretical and applied disciplines that focus on the form and function of the metropolis. While discussing some of these often-competing models, the text is illustrated by a selection of photographs taken in Brooklyn, New York whose neighborhoods over the past century have been a virtual Roman fountain of ethnic transitions. Although many of the oldest and newest residents of Brooklyn such as Chinese, Italians, Jews, and Poles would be familiar to Park and Burgess, others such as Bangladeshis, Egyptians, and Koreans would not. Ideas about Old and New cities from the “classical” to the “post-modern”; from Park and Burgess to Harvey and Lefebvre are also synthesized via the insights of J. B. Jackson.

New York City’s status as a majority “minority” city is reflected in many local neighborhoods that exemplify the racial and ethnic diversity of the urban landscape in the 21st century. In this quintessential immigrant city, the relative share of foreign-born has reached levels not seen since the historic immigrant wave at the turn of the last century (Foner, 2000; Scott, 2002). While “all the nations under heaven” are represented among old and new New Yorkers, researchers find that patterns of residential segregation persist and in fact, have worsened especially for African Americans (Beveridge, 2001; Logan, 2001). The racial balkanization of New York City, however, is tempered by the expansion of “polyethnic” or “global” neighborhoods. These racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods are found throughout New York City but their concentration in the borough of Queens is notable. Moreover, the magnitude of ethnic diversity in these neighborhoods has “no parallel in previous waves of immigration” (Foner, 2000, p. 58).

For the Muslim faithful, the Islamic week indirectly derives from an act of “divine revelation” for the Prophet Muhammad that directs them to use Friday as a congregational day of prayer.⁷ The Koran is strict about this prescription and presents it as an obligation to the faithful. Verses 9 to 11 from chapter 62 provide the social context and religious meaning of the peak day of the Islamic week.⁸ 9. O you who believe, when the call is sounded for prayer on Friday, hasten to the remembrance of Allah and leave off traffic. That is better for you, if you know. 10. But when the prayer is ended, disperse abroad in the land and seek of Allah’s grace, and remember Allah much, that you may be successful. 11. And when they see merchandise or sport, they break away to it, and leave thee standing. Say: what is Allah is better than sport and merchandise. And Allah is the Best of Providers.The exegesis of verses 9 and 11 reveals or implies that the day of congregation is a work day and that Muslims, upon hearing the call for prayer, must leave all their earthly activities – commerce, sport, or any other – and attend the gathering (Juma’a) at the mosque. So work is permitted before the congregational prayer. Verse 10 also indicates that after prayer, one may return to work, confident that entrepreneurial activities may be successful because of the grace of Allah. Friday thus is parceled out in three distinct moments according to the Koran: the half-day’s work in the morning, the prayer time around noon, and the later half-day’s work in the afternoon. It is the only day of the week that is thus fractured.

Cultural visibility is closely linked to physical and social mobility, and access to – or denial of – free movement through private and public spaces powerfully shapes individual and social identities. As Liam Kennedy has shown in the context of urban space, “the operations of power are everywhere evident in space: space is hierarchical – zoned, segregated, gated – and encodes both freedoms and restrictions – of mobility, of access, of vision” (2000, pp. 169–170). A consideration of how film articulates a relationship between space and identity might thus begin by breaking down the concept of space itself into three distinct yet interconnected areas of analysis: first, the notion of socially produced space, as shown in the work of Henri Lefebvre and others; second, the idea of audience space or the architectural space of the theater; and finally, the theory of film space or the space of the screen. Given this essay’s limited scope, the latter will be examined in more detail than the first two, but I would like to stress the underlying interconnectedness of the three. While, for example, formalist studies of film aesthetics may be just as valuable as in-depth studies of changing viewing habits, audience demographics, and exhibition technologies, film interpretation should strive to keep in view the variety of spatial formations and conditions that might come to bear on any particular visual text.

While the issue of “Blackness” has long pervaded American society, it has rarely been problematized in social science literature and treated as a taken-for-granted. This article utilizes in-depth interviews with second generation West Indian adults in New York City to examine the ways in which they conceive of their Blackness, both racially and ethnically. New York City is viewed as an important urban context that in many ways facilitates the formation of identity for this population. The assimilation process, or not, of second generation West Indians is also considered in terms of socioeconomic status and gender. The results indicate that second generation West Indians strongly identify with both their racial and ethnic identities, which in turn calls for a reconceptualization of “Blackness”. There is also evidence that points to New York City as a space of cross-cultural integration where identity formation is significantly impacted by the presence of other immigrants (and their children) that leads to a pan-immigrant or pan-ethnic identity among young New Yorkers.

The “change of sovereignty,” the transfer of Puerto Rico to U.S. rule after Spain’s loss in the Spanish-American War of 1898, could not easily erase centuries of Spanish misrule of its island colony. Nor could it reconstruct an economy based on monocultural agricultural crops. For centuries, ranching and subsistence farming had lured settlers from the coast. Highland towns, founded in the eighteenth century under royal auspices but increasingly isolated and removed from imperial control came to define the peasant, the jı́baro, who though generally slight in stature came to loom large as the cultural backbone of Puerto Rico. Run by ministers of the Spanish monarchy and corrupt and sometimes tyrannical military governors, the island during the 1800s ineptly staggered through sequential agricultural monocultures. Sugar crops tended by coastal workers of mixed African and European backgrounds (with slavery and peonage existing side by side) yielded prominence in mid-century to large-scale coffee plantations in the mountainous interior, attracting capital and labor from the coast as well as from the Spanish homeland. By the mid-1800s U.S. interests had begun to pull on this strategically located military outpost – first through trade and then by conquest and new guardianship.

Habermas’ theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere has been a point of departure for theoretical debate for more than forty years. Habermas’ explains the decline of a discursive space for public discussion of collective interests as resulting from the emergence of consumer culture in post-industrial capitalism. Whereas the public sphere was originally a location of rational-critical activity, public life today is a spectator sport. The dominance of media corporations has undermined the potential for critical debate of pressing social issues, including race. This study seeks to illuminate the change in public discussions of race in New York City. A comparison is made between nineteenth-century and contemporary discourse. The nineteenth-century discourse is represented by texts from The Weekly Advocate and The Colored American, two important black Abolitionist newspapers published in New York City between 1837 and 1841; this discourse has a two-sided focus: an attack on slavery and a call for civil rights, and as such, combines analysis of the violence of racism and the nature of racial inequality. To find a parallel in the contemporary discourse, news articles from New York Times, from 1998, were collected. An innovative semiotic content coding strategy is used to describe the conceptual network and ideology of public discussions of race in New York City.

Philanthropy takes many forms among African immigrant communities. It exists in the form of mutual aid for friends, extended family, lineage, and fictive kin. This last category includes, but is not limited to, those from an individual’s ethnic group, or even from their country of origin. Philanthropy is also to be found in the form of kindness and generosity toward strangers. Above all, elements of philanthropy are to be found in the corporatization of community-based efforts to develop the human and material resources among many African ethnic groups. Many studies of the process of urbanization in Africa indicate the ubiquity of formation of hometown organizations that perform social functions including philanthropy among newly urbanized Africans. These organizations assist urbanized home folk from the villages and the towns of origin from which these urbanized groups originally emerged in various respects. The assistance offered include giving material and moral support in times of significant social celebration and mourning, for education as well as for home construction, construction of infrastructure for the home community, and for various other community-based development efforts. The efforts of African immigrants in the United States and elsewhere closely follow the patterns described above. The patterns are so ubiquitous as to warrant a claim of their emergence from a philosophical orientation toward philanthropy in African society.

This study explores the history of conflict and future options for cooperation between two distinct ethnic groups in New York City, Caribbean-Americans and Jews. The argues, however, that relations between both groups cannot be read through the crude lens of “Black/Jewish relations.” The article is divided in two major parts. In the first part, the authors explore the historical trajectory of relations between the two groups largely by focusing on the Crown Heights district in Brooklyn, home to a variety of Caribbean nationals, and the Jewish Lubavitcher Hasidic community. As the survey of historical material will reveal, in the late 1960s/early 1970s, issues pertaining to contestation over space and resources increasingly affected relations between both groups. A low point was reached in 1991 with the “Crown Heights unrest,” which threw this part of Brooklyn into several days of openly violent conflict. Although – as Part II will demonstrate – issues such as crime, cultural peculiarities, access to resources and political influence, remain on the agenda, both groups have since managed to restore less conflict-prone and productive relationships. Although conflicts have been often couched in terms of these relations, additional cultural factors suggest that the conflict has been shaped by other dynamics.

The political campaigns of Una Clarke and Major Owens show an interesting display of ethnic politics. In this paper, I argue that the presence of a Caribbean population in Brooklyn New York presents itself as a challenge to the already present African-American structure. The Caribbean politicians do not subscribe nor fully ally with the African-American politicians, and instead, seek to carve out a niche for themselves and utilize their ties to home in an effort to cajole the Caribbean populace for support. Through the purview of a political campaign in Brooklyn between an African-American incumbent and a Caribbean insurgent, I attempt to contribute to the transnationalist literature through illustrating the concept of the nation−state, which can be explained as an immigrant’s continual bond to their home country while living abroad.

The boundaries of Little Italy are not precise, and have shifted over time. In the 19th century, the district extended south of Canal Street into the area identified by Jacob Riis as the “Mulberry Bend,” and described as “the foul core of New York’s slums.”³ By the 1960s, Little Italy had retreated across Canal Street, as the Italian population began to leave the neighborhood for other areas in the city. For the purposes of this paper, Little Italy shall be understood as comprising three census tracts in New York City’s Manhattan county, numbers 41, 43, and 45. This area, lying within a short walking distance of City Hall, is roughly bounded by Canal Street on the south, Bowery on the East, Broadway on the west, and East Houston street to the north. Nicknamed the Mulberry District, it became the first and largest Italian enclave in the United States between 1870s and 1924. While there had been an Italian community in New York for generations, historian George Pozetta has argued that the winter of 1872–1873 was pivotal in the development of this community, when more than 2000 poor Italian immigrants, arrived at Castle Garden, the immigrant reception center, unable to care for themselves.⁴ These immigrants were quickly fitted in to the preexisting Italian community, taking advantage of the contacts provided by the bossi, typically northern Italian men who had arrived earlier, to find jobs in such local enterprises as groceries and saloons, and with American employers. Once the new comers settled, a process of chain-migration began. By the later 1870s, the bossi were acting as agents for gangs of labor sent out from New York to work in other areas across North American. As a result, the Mulberry district became a sort of transshipment point for Italian labor.

The chapter relies on a variety of methods to trace the development of changing racial ideologies among Greeks. The methodologies used include: (1) historical secondary sources; (2) one hundred and ten interviews (of both immigrants and Greeks in Greece, with interviewees varying in age from 19 to 74); and (3) content analysis of poems, popular songs and electronic discussion groups. The primary aim of selecting the data was to understand the changing nature of racial classifications themselves rather than to measure rates and pervasiveness.