Ilanit Zada

Science and Technology in NYC

10-26-13

Professor Adams

The reading assigned for this week was a few chapters taken from Jamaica Bay Ethnographic Overview and Assessment  by William Kornblum and Kristen Van Hoorweghe. As soon as I began to read chapter 3 and saw the mention of Bedford Stuyvesant, I felt an immediate connection to what I was going to read but I could not figure out what the information had to do with that specific area. The text then went into discussing the history and background information about the Jamaica Bay area, leaving me even more confused. However, I finally came across one sentence that connected the dots for me and allowed me to see the relationship that exists between Bedford Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy) and Jamaica Bay.

The text discusses the event that occurred, a plane crash, that caused turmoil in Jamaica Bay. This problem as well as others led people to stereotype the area as a dump, as stated in the text: “Since so much of the area had been surplus military property for two decades or more, there were many areas of the bay shore and wetlands that had become urban wilderness where junked and stolen cars and other waste was being illegally dumped” (48). This reminded me of a similar situation in Bedford Stuyvesant (that I have researched for a paper last semester). Due to its history (of crime rates and such), many people are under the impression that Bed-Stuy is a dangerous neighborhood that they would not want to enter for fear of risking their safety. However, this is not the case; to the residents of Bed-Stuy, Bedford Stuyvesant is simply their home, as Jamaica Bay is to many people as well. Individuals have to remember this and think twice before making a generalization or stereotyping an area simply because of past events.