Every time I step outside of my house, I am reminded of the immigrant-centered city I live in. My own neighborhood of Bayside, Queens has become increasingly Asian and Hispanic (mostly Asian) throughout recent years. When I go to Flushing, I feel entirely out of place. For all I know, I could be in China, Korea, Japan. I can’t read the Asian writing on store signs (thanks to a recent law, most have small English lettering somewhere underneath) and I rarely understand what those around me are saying. This is disconcerting, to say the least. Although I agree with Foner when she states that times have changed and more immigrants are mixing with other immigrants from different places as well as natives, my experience living in this particular part of New York City has made me believe that people of the same ethnicity still tend to cluster together. It only make sense. If I came to this country with no knowledge of the customs, language, etc. I know I would want to live in an area with my own people at least until I got used to the new culture.

Aside from ethnic clustering (or lack of it), Foner’s charts and analyses touched on the fact that native born blacks live in worse housing, obtain lower income, and are less accepted than many immigrants today. This astounds me. Native born blacks have less rights than those who weren’t even born here. We as natives have, for the most part, accepted foreign born Asians, Hispanics, Russians, you name it, yet we are unable to accept those who were perhaps here before us. I would speculate that this racism is in part due to United States history that blacks were largely a part of. Natives (as well as other immigrants, probably) were taught about slavery since they were young. Although our country has progressed tremendously, many people still have not gotten over the fact that blacks were once literally enslaved by whites. Immigrants (Asians, Hispanics, etc.) do not have that history with native born Americans and New Yorkers of being extremely subpar. They weren’t such a major part of our history so there has been less opportunity to discriminate against them. Although Foner spoke relatively little about the situation of Native born blacks, her data is extremely troubling. We have accepted so many immigrants of various cultures into our country; when are we going to accept the ones who lived here all along?