Four Diverse Communities

(Professor Margaret Chin’s Seminar 2 Class, with ITF Jesse Goldstein)

While the 2010 census numbers describe a tremendous growth of Asian and Asian American communities in New York City, a closer look by the students in Prof Chin’s 2012 Peopling of New York class discovered that these communities were by far more diverse and in fact, Asian and Asian Americans are learning to coexist side by side with the ethnic groups who were already there. With the exception of Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, where the Asian American population has fallen, all of the other neighborhoods of Flushing, Bensonhurst and Jackson Heights have seen a tremendous increase.

As the oldest Asian community, Lower Manhattan, is now moving to finding institutional and structural solutions to the needs of the larger Asian American community with its establishment of museums, arts and cultural centers, as well as community health organizations. In Flushing, Jackson Heights and Bensonhurst, there is tremendous ethnic and religious diversity not only among the Asian and Asian American groups but among their neighbors. The residents of all of these communities are aware and accepting of the diversity, in some cases, they are neither friends nor enemies, but they coexist in peace. Look further to read the students’ field work in these neighborhoods.