I grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens, and in the following description of the place I call home, I wanted to look at it at the new perspective we’re learning about this semester. As a result, I informally assessed Richmond Hill by the demographics. I apologize in advance for the lack of a statistical background (in other words, sorry for the lack of pretty graphs and hard numbers!)

  The neighborhood has many places of worship for different religions. There are churches for different Christian denominations, Sikh temples, Hindu temples, Jewish synagogues, and Muslim mosques. For the most part, this describes the racial breakdown of Richmond Hill: white, Hispanic, South Asian, and Carribean. North Richmond Hill is mostly made up of white families whose origins lie in a general mix of Western and Eastern European backgrounds. Even further north, Jewish households become more present as Kew Gardens is to the north of Richmond Hill. The South Asian, Carribean, and Hispanic groups mostly live in south or west Richmond Hill, but for the last twenty years, they've slowly been moving into North Richmond Hill. This is according to my mom, who about 20 years ago was one of three nonwhite households on our North Richmond Hill block. Throughout the years, the elderly white either died or moved away, and more Hispanic, South Asian, Carribean and mixed race families have started moving here, now making up more than half of the block. Another thing I noticed recently is the presence of young black families, a rarity a few years ago. There are still many, many white families in Richmond Hill, but a good portion of the whites are aging or elderly. When you see the other races in our neighborhood, even aging matriarchs or patriarchs, they are usually with growing families.  Generally, the neighborhood is diversifying.

For my personal opinion, I really like my neighborhood because it's pretty diverse and I've never seen any outright racism. The only racism I've really seen is from really old residents or really new residents. We're in the vicinity of a few transportation lines, making it easy to come and go. There are grocery and small stores to the south and the scenic Forest Park with walking, running, biking and horse riding trails to the north. Some neighbors are petty or downright mean, but for the most part, people are civil and benevolent towards one another. There is no remarkable violence or crime in our neighborhood. All in all, it's a nice place to call home.

-Christina John